Dodgers Betting On Stuff Over Performance With Yaisel Sierra

The Dodgers are banking that the performance will eventually match the stuff on Cuban righthander Yaisel Sierra. The team is closing in on an agreement to sign Sierra for around $30 million, according to a report from Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports, with Jon Heyman reporting that it’s a six-year contract.

Sierra, 24, ranked as the No. 13 player on Baseball America’s list of the Top 20 Cuban players still on the island last year in April. Sierra’s contract is exempt from the international bonus pools.

Sierra’s athletic frame (6-foot-1, 170 pounds), clean arm action and pure stuff are promising, though his results never matched his potential in Cuba. At his best, Sierra has looked like a midrotation starter, including in a dominant start in July 2014 against the U.S. college national team. Yet last season in Cuba, Sierra posted a 6.10 ERA with 55 strikeouts and 31 walks in 70 innings as a reliever, leading the league with 11 wild pitches.

Still, Sierra’s stuff is impressive, with a fastball that sat at 91-94 mph and touched 96 in Cuba, reaching 97 since then. His fastball has good life, enabling him to get swings and misses on that pitch in the strike zone. His slider flashes as another plus pitch with tight spin and late tilt. Sierra also threw a splitter when he was in Cuba, though he has since ditched that pitch in favor of a changeup. Like many Cuban pitchers, Sierra used to throw from multiple arm angles in Cuba, getting more movement on his pitches when he dropped down to a lower arm slot, though he now pitches exclusively from a higher arm angle.

There are some similarities between Sierra and Reds righthander Raisel Iglesias, another Cuban pitcher with good stuff who frequently pitched from multiple arm angles when he was in Cuba, with Sierra having more size but Iglesias showing more polish and better performance in his final season in Cuba.

Sierra is not major league ready yet, but he should start somewhere in the upper levels of the minors, possibly in Triple-A. The key for Sierra will be whether he can improve his control and his overall feel for pitching. While Sierra has a tendency to fly open early and get uphill in his mechanics, there’s reason to believe that sticking with one arm slot might help him repeat his delivery and in turn throw more strikes, but that remains the biggest risk factor for whether Sierra can reach his potential.