Justin Anderson

Organization Prospect Rankings

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  Ranked Los Angeles Angels #25 prospect in 2017
  Already 24 and coming off a difficult season at high Class A Inland Empire, Anderson nonetheless remains an intriguing prospect. He is still relatively inexperienced at pitching, having been a two-way player at Texas-San Antonio and pitching sparingly until his junior year with the Roadrunners. Anderson saw relatively little action in his first summer as a pro before working mostly as a starter in 2015 with low Class A Burlington. He struggled with the difficult jump to the California League, posting a 5.70 ERA with a .322 opponent average. His main problem was leaving balls up too much, and he had to work on landing his offspeed pitches down in the zone for strikes. Anderson has plenty of arm strength, delivering a fastball with arm side tail sitting 90-95 mph and touching 98. He added more depth to his 82-86 mph slider during the season, which contributed to his 83-86 mph changeup becoming a more useful weapon. Observers believe Anderson's arsenal would play up out of the bullpen, especially considering his rough delivery. He worked as a reliever in the Arizona Fall League and could jump to Double-A in Mobile's bullpen in 2017.
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  Ranked Los Angeles Angels #22 prospect in 2016
  Anderson was a two-way player at Texas-San Antonio, pitching sparingly until his junior year when he earned the Sunday starter job and posted a 2.92 ERA. The highlight of Anderson's college season came in his final game when he shut out Southern Mississippi over eight innings in the semifinals of the 2014 Conference USA tournament. He saw limited activity in his professional debut, split between the Rookie-level Arizona League and Rookie-level Orem. Anderson opened enough eyes during spring training last year to earn a regular rotation job with low Class A Burlington and turned out to be one of the system's bigger surprises in 2015. Anderson doesn't have a lot of feel for pitching but has good pure stuff. His fastball sits in the 92-96 mph range with good life, and he complements the heater with a hard slider in the upper 80s with good tilt. His changeup from 82-84 mph shows good fade. While he has a ways to go with command, he showed improvement during the course of the season and got his delivery faster to the plate. A step up to the high Class A California League will be Anderson's next challenge.