Rising Stock: Finding Uniqueness in College Arms
Daily Newsletter 9/100
Rising Stock: Finding Uniqueness in College Arms
This spring, I have been spending more time evaluating amateur players. There's obviously a million different ways to evaluate a pitcher, and everyone does it differently. The current state of baseball is pretty conducive to having high ceiling players reach college, which makes scouting the college game even more fun. Add this factor in with the transfer portal and the stockpile of talent at the power 5/major college program level is better than it's ever been before. The transfer portal has caused its own set of issues, but for better or worse, there have certainly been some positives coming from it.
When it comes to pitching, a pretty standard repertoire and delivery that succeeds simply because of raw power/talent is something that everyone can see. The Jack Leiters and Kumar Rockers aren't hard to find, leading to scouting swarming over them (deservedly so). Yet on the flip side, finding players who stand out for other reasons, or pitchers who have underlying traits that alter their developmental timeline can be gems that aren't always hidden but certainly aren't on display. There's a million ways to find positive underlying traits, but generally there are a few things that I tend to pay more attention to.
Unique release
Underexploited pitch shapes
Inexperience
Unique Release:
The release is being exploited more and more across most levels of baseball, and is something I touched on in a previous article HERE. One of the biggest trends in baseball across all levels is the exploitation of lower slot flat VAA pitchers who are able to create more swing and miss because of the angle at which they throw the ball.
Interestingly enough, a lot of pitchers with a lower slot release lean towards throwing a sinker, because the natural inclination is to throw a pitch with more movement. However, low slot pitchers who can create a little bit of ride are able to have devastating 4s fastballs despite what would seem to be a pretty boring movement profile on the fastball.
Under-exploited Pitch Shapes:
This one is much more simple, college teams rely on winning. They aren't there to prioritize development over the season, they want to win and win now. Coaches get paid a ton of money, and are always looking to put food on the table for their family. They dont get to work on things during games as much as they want to, and need to do what it takes to win.
This leads to a different dynamic than pro baseball, and generally ends up with college coaches calling pitches. This leads to them pitching games in certain ways that might not be completely optimized for the pitcher, and sometimes becomes a very fastball centric profile.
This can cause a plethora of issues for pitchers. Some pitchers don't have a very good fastball, and shouldn't throw it much. Some people have a really good fastball but can't locate it as well as other pitches so their walk rates go up. Some people have a really solid fastball but fastballs are just easier to hit than sliders, and it causes them to give up more hits and runs than they otherwise would.
Inexperience:
This can come in a lot of ways, injuries, other responsibilities on the team like being a 2 way player, or just an absurd amount of competition. If you are a great 2 way player, then you aren't going to get as many innings on the mound as you generally would otherwise. Obviously some people can excel at both (Ohtani), but in college that is incredibly rare.
Inexperience can lead you to have a stunted development timeline, you could be significantly less developed than you otherwise would be because of other responsibilities. This leads to the present product not being as sharp as it could be, but also means you could be “underrated” in terms of what your future capabilities could be.
What this does:
Both fortunately and unfortunately, people who fit this mold tend to have less than ideal college careers for a plethora of reasons. Most are not good at overcoming all of these traits, or dont know what they are dealing with to exploit them.
Oftentimes these players end up as relievers and underperform because of it. College coaches don't have the time to really build on the failures of their players, and need to win. So if these players struggle, they aren't often priority 1 when it comes to pitching in a game. It isn't the coaches fault, but rather just how college ball goes.
In fact, if evaluated properly this lack of college success can be to the benefit of pro scouts who are willing to do the digging or know what they are looking at. Oftentimes, it's an analyst that finds players like this, or you end up seeing them posted all over twitter by someone who spends their days doing analytical dives into college and amateur players.
John