NL West Draft Picks With The Most Intriguing Statcast Pitch Data
Image credit: RHP Tyson Neighbors (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
Each week, I dip into public Statcast data to provide insight on up-and-coming minor league talent. Now that the draft is complete, I will shift gears and dig into some data on recent draftees.
It is important to note that the dataset is incomplete. Pitchers may or may not translate their pitch shapes directly from college baseball to the majors due to differences in the baseballs, as well as potential differences in data quality and measurement. If a pitcher isn’t included here, it’s because there wasn’t any Statcast data.
We’ll also be looking at things primarily through a “stuff” lens. Namely, those pitch shapes that have the potential to work in the major leagues. This is inspired by the countless examples of unheralded college pitchers who take huge leaps once they hit a major league development system.
Arizona Diamondbacks
Mason Marriott, RHP, 6th Round
Marriott possesses a solid fastball, sitting 93 and topping out at 95, with slightly below-average ride, which will likely be worse with the minor league ball. He pairs that with with a two-plane curveball at 80 mph, with promising feel for spin (2800 rpm), which might be a nice secondary for him. He mixes in a changeup that will need some development. It’s a shallow arsenal, and his performance in college wasn’t great either, so he’ll need to develop a slider and/or gain a few ticks of velo to be a viable prospect.
Luke Craig, LHP, 7th Round
Craig’s got the natural arm slot for a plus sweeper. While it only gets about 8 inches of sweep at the moment, he’s not getting the spin efficiency he needs to generate the plus sweep that his 2600 rpms should be able to generate. He’s able to get the almost perfectly horizontal spin axis required, he’ll just need to learn how to avoid gyro spin on the pitch. This is likely something that can be tweaked with professional training. His hard pitch looks like a sinker with great run, and a lot of movement on both planes. I have it as an above-average pitch even at its 92 mph velocity. This is an arsenal that will work very well against lefties, and completely fall apart against righties.
John West, RHP, 12th Round
West is a massive human, standing 6-foot-8, 265 pounds, giving him the potential to throw a lot harder than his sinker’s current 91-92 mph average velocity. One of the ways to generate velocity, both as a hitter and a pitcher, is to leverage ground forces, which having more mass helps with. His sinker will be a fantastic weapon against righthanded batters, as it’s a SSW sinker, with huge run and massive vertical movement deviation (movement that differs from what the spin axis would predict). He has a nice gyro slider that he uses as his primary secondary, and should be a platoon-neutral weapon, but he’ll need to push his sinker velocity up to help it play up.
West also has a fascinating changeup, with negative vert and decent fade. It’s quite rare for a changeup to have negative vert, which could give it potential to really fool batters. This gives us a very different movement plot:
It’s almost entirely an east-west movement profile. I think he’ll need to add a four-seam fastball, and should have an easy time learning the sweeper given the arm slot and ability to sweep the sinker. I’m very intrigued by this profile, and look forward to seeing what he can accomplish with pro development at his disposal.
Kyle Ayers, RHP, 13th Round
Ayers represents a tale of two sets of numbers. On the one hand, he’s a proverbial “stuff monster;” on the other hand he’s a college reliever with a terrible track record of performance. He also underwent Tommy John surgery and is likely out for the season. Despite all that, I think Ayers has a chance to be a high-leverage arm that could move very quickly.
Ayers has an easy plus fastball from a shape and velocity standpoint, with nearly 3 inches of ride over expected (19 inches IVB/flight), and great velocity at 96 mph, with very good spin at 2500 rpm. The ride is easy to see, as almost all of his fastballs are above the expected IVB line. He pairs it with a gyro slider/cutter with negative vert that should be an absolute weapon for him, with elite feel for spin at 2950 rpms.
He has the rare ability to throw it with curveball spin, which helps him get “death ball” movement. This pitch looks like it has plus-plus potential from a stuff perspective. He throws a huge two-plane curveball at 80-81 that he probably won’t need. I probably shouldn’t be this excited about a relief pitcher prospect, but his pitch data is just so compelling, I can’t help myself. I’ll be keeping on eye on Ayers as he makes his way through Arizona’s system.
Rocco Reid, LHP, 15th Round
Reid is a low-slot sinkerballing lefty, with a nice changeup that shows huge depth, and his data look a lot like John West’s, albeit from the left side, and with about 8 inches less height. The low-slot sinker plus depthy changeup might be a profile that Arizona was targeting in the later rounds.
Dawson Brown, RHP, 16th Round
Brown has an interesting gyro cutter at 88 mph, and decent velo on his sinker at 93 mph (from a low slot like the other guys listed here), along with a changeup with negative vert. He’ll need some work to fix the sinker shape, but his slider and changeup could be decent.
Colorado Rockies
Brody Brecht, RHP, CB-B
Brecht’s fastball is likely not going to be his calling card. It’s a low-spin pitch with well below-average ride. While he has good velocity at 96, he’ll need to rush it up at around 100 to offset what will be poor shape. His slider, on the other hand, is a fantastic pitch, with “death ball” movement at -4 inches of vertical break. He could likely get major league hitters out with that pitch. As a low-spin guy, he might need to develop a splitter to give him a weapon against lefties. I was expecting to be blown away by Brecht’s data, given the scouting superlatives, but to my eyes, it looks like a plus-plus slider, with the athleticism to dream on the other stuff being good enough that it will all come together for him. I do think the low-spin arsenal is a theoretically better fit for Coors field.
Lebarron Johnson, RHP, 5th Round
Lebarron’s movement chart is just begging for a two-plane curveball to fill out the movement profile. However, he already shows a very promising three-pitch mix. The fastball looks almost average in every respect, sitting 94 mph, with average ride given the slot, average spin rates and average extension. That may sound like a bad thing, but sometimes the important thing with a fastball is that it shouldn’t be terrible. He throws both a hard riding cutter at 87 and a gyro slider at 84. He’ll need both those pitches to become plus to succeed.
Fidel Ulloa, RHP, 7th Round
Ulloa is a reliever with a subpar fastball at 93-94 and a gyro slider/cutter that got a lot of whiffs at 84-87 mph. He pales in comparison to Brock Moore who was taken later in the 7th round, without any clear reason to me as to why a team would select Ulloa over Brock Moore if they were choosing just between the two. It’s somewhat easier for me to do a post-facto analysis, rather than picking from a giant pool of players, however, I believe teams should be taking as many arms as they can that have a realistic shot at being a major leaguer. I’m guessing the Rockies really like the slider here, and I will be very happy to be proven wrong by Ulloa.
Luke Jewett, RHP, 8th Round
Jewett started 14 games this season for UCLA, with a solid 4.35 ERA and decent command, averaging almost six innings a start. He has a starter’s frame, standing 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds. More importantly, he has a four- or five-pitch arsenal that, while not exciting, could make him a back0of-the-rotation starter if everything breaks right.
The fastball gets only 16 inches of ride, with about 2 inches of ride below expected, and he’ll need to throw harder than the 92 he currently does. You can see above that he gets his whiffs on the few pitches that get above-average ride. He also throws a sinker, with some decent vertical movement deviation, giving him a couple of fastballs he can use against righties. The throws either a gyro slider/curve that is a tweener pitch, neither a sweeper, nor a gyro. I think those could be refined into two pitches (gyro and sweeper). He flashed a changeup with poor shape at 86. He’ll need to develop a lot to be successful, but there’s a hope for a No. 5 or No. 6 starter type if you really squint.
Justin Loer, LHP, 13th Round
Loer is a huge dude who throws from a low lefty slot that gets by throwing mostly sliders and changeups. The changeup is interesting as it gets 16 inches of fade, giving him at least one weapon against righties, though his 91 mph sinker will likely only be viable against lefties. Could be a lefty-one inning guy, but he’ll need to throw just the gyro slider and changeup to righties. If you can get a situational lefty in the 13th round, that’s a pretty good outcome.
Hunter Omlid, RHP, 20th Round
Omlid exceeds his expected IVB by 3-4 inches, allowing his 92-93 mph velocity to play up. It also has great spin at 2500 rpms, so there might be room for more with gains in spin efficiency. He has a 2850 rpm sweeper, that currently doesn’t get the 16 inches or more of sweep that makes them play up, but he’s not far off. If they can teach him to be more spin efficient with that pitch as well, he could have two plus pitches. That’s great value for a 20th round pick.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Jakob Wright, LHP, 4th Round
I must confess that when a pitcher is selected by the Dodgers, I expect to see sizzling data. So when I first glanced at Wright’s data, it didn’t immediately pop, mostly because he throws a hard cutter, rather than a traditional riding four-seam fastball. My data is from 2023, but he showed a low spin-efficiency four-seam fastball at 90-91 that I’d grade out as slightly below average. He showed the potential for a plus sweeper if he can be more spin efficient with the 2700 rpms he generates on the pitch.
Evan Shaw, LHP, 16th Round
Evan Shaw has two very distinct pitches, a huge sweeper with negative vert and a low-efficiency cut fastball at 90 mph. The sweeper is unusual as most sweepers get positive vert due to movement deviation, and I can see the Dodgers teaching him how to trade some bite for sweep (generally a good thing with sweepers) that will help it play up. The fastball is all over the place, and he’ll either need to go all-in on the low spin efficiency four-seam look, or throw a traditional high-efficiency four-seam fastball, or a true sinker. I think the sweeper is the calling card here, and the Dodgers will teach him two fastballs, giving him a chance to be a lefty specialist down the road.
San Diego Padres
Tyson Neighbors, RHP, 4th Round
Neighbors’ fastball ranks as one of the best in the draft class from a pure stuff perspective, right up there with Brock Moore (easily my favourite pick of the draft), Thatcher Hurd, Hagen Smith and Chase Burns. It’s easy to see why when we chart his pitches:
Every single fastball he throws is at least 2-3 inches above the expected line given his release characteristics and height, with the average pitch being closer to 4 inches of extra IVB. It’s good velocity at 95-96, with room for optimization if he learns to extend more than the 5.7 feet he currently gets. He pairs that with a 2900 rpm curveball with huge depth and great velocity at 84 mph, which looks like it will be a really good pitch, and a 2800 rpm gyro slider/cutter at a blistering 89 mph, which gives him a profile that looks a lot like Chase Burns from a pure stuff perspective, minus a few ticks of velocity, with less refined secondaries, and out of the bullpen where he can go max effort. He also has a track record of college dominance, striking out 160 batters over 95 innings.
I think Neighbors should absolutely be given a chance to start, as he has the makings of three plus pitches, and the more reps he can get, the better his command will get. I’m a big believer in not type-casting guys as “reliever only”, and that the potential difference-makers like Neighbors should be afforded the opportunity to falsify the relief-only premise. I absolutely love this pick for the Padres.
Clark Candiotti, RHP, 4C
Candiotti put together a decent final season in college as a starter, and has a big frame, listed at 6-foot-4, 237 pounds. It’s a solid arsenal with an average fastball in shape and velo, a gyro slider with plus potential and a hammer curve at 78 mph. He’ll likely need to develop a changeup, but the north-south arsenal should play well against both righties and lefties even if he doesn’t. As an older guy with little leverage, the Padres got a nice scoop here, saving about $440K of bonus pool room, which helped them land the mammoth Boston Bateman in the second round for an overslot deal. Candiotti has a shot to be a back-end starter, making this a nice win-win.
San Francisco Giants
Greg Farone, LHP, 7th Round
Data is from 2023. Farone is a 6-foot-6 lefty that throws from a very vertical slot, which makes his otherwise excellent 21 inches of IVB/flight play down somewhat, though it’s still a roughly average pitch despite the 89 mph velocity. He throws a hammer curve at 78 and a changeup without depth or fade. The velo will need to jump quite a bit for Farone to be be a viable prospect.
Tyler Switalski, 16th Round
Switalski has a below-average fastball with fringe-average shape, but subpar velo, a changeup with promising depth at 81-82 and a gyro slider that he’ll need to throw much harder than his current 78 mph. The gyro slider could give him three viable pitches if he can push the velo to 85 mph, which is asking a lot, but the fastball velo would indicate it’s possible.
Hunter Dryden, RHP, 17th Round
Dryden’s data are from the MLB Draft League, so we can be more confident that his stuff will translate to the minor leagues more directly, as they use the same ball there. His fastball is very inconsistent shape-wise, mostly due to not getting some more east-west spin rather than pure vertical backspin. The Giants will be looking to clean that up, which might help it get close to an average pitch shape wise. He combines that with a gyro slider at 81, with decent potential, and a changeup which he’ll need to refine. Dryden has the look of a guy who will benefit from pro development, however, he’ll need to make a big leap to become a major league pitcher.
