UTK Special 7/30/24

The Kids Are Alright

I’ve talked about how for the last two years, injuries and circumstances have forced the Dodgers to bring up pitchers that they would rather have not. “Seasoning”. “Experience.” Things like that are always talked about, but it’s often been code for service time manipulation. I’m not talking about wunderkinds like Paul Skenes, but guys like Justin Wrobleski and Emmett Sheehan who weren’t expected to contend for the big league rotation, but here they are.

I spoke with two scouts and an announcer that is a former MLB pitcher and all three asked to be off the record with this. One scout, who largely watches upper level prospects, thinks the answer is the delta between pitchers and hitters in the current game. “They’re so far ahead that it might be a full level. The data guys at our team looked at this and I don’t know the full answer, but you can just look at league translations and see it.”

The other scout agreed largely, but thinks that the changes to the CBA as well as some internal thought shifts made this possible. “There’s no longer as big a reward for holding someone back to stay off Super Two and some incentives,” he said. “There’s still 40-man constraints, and the idea that you have to be right when you push someone onto the 40. If he fails, you fail.” That leads to a bit of risk aversion that’s rampant in baseball. Going along to get along and sticking with the status quo of stepwise, slow development is rewarded in ways that punish the fans.

Someone like Skenes, who comes fully formed and has a solid enough base could (and did) jump up. Someone like Ben Joyce, who has a monster fastball, can similarly skip levels and years, especially as a reliever or opener. The Phillies have seen mixed success with Orion Kerkering, known for his massive sweeper, who climbed from South Florida to the majors in just over a year. In 2023, he started in A-ball and ended it in the playoffs throwing leverage innings. His success in ‘24 has been mixed, but he has been healthy and at least occasionally effective, which isn’t bad for a fifth rounder. The Phillies turned another good sweeper pitcher, George Klassen, into an MLB closer via trade, giving up a guy with 98 strikeouts in 58 innings between A and High-A. Klassen could end up on the Angels sooner rather than later.

The announcer had a more subtle take. “I don’t think what the Dodgers did is anything other that reaction. Injuries and need, not a plan,” he explained. “They went to young guys because they had to go to young guys, two years in a row. The question is whether that’s breaking them. Sheehan’s the big one, but I worry more about someone like Wrobleski or[Gavin] Stone who are 23, 24 and haven’t put up bigger innings in the minors.”

He continued, “Which is another issue. You noted the other day that everyone last year in the Dodgers minors seemed to be at 100 innings. That’s everywhere. No one goes much more.” To double check, I checked the data. There were 22 pitchers in the International League over 100 innings pitched, but only a couple of those were considered real prospects. It’s very similar in the PCL. (Joe Sheehan noted this in a column from January, noting many of the same things.)

Going down to Double-A, it’s much the same - 18 over 100, though we see more highly considered prospects here. But looking in the area of 80-100, there’s many more ‘name prospects.’ Some of this is that prospects do change levels; teams like the Brewers that tend to leave players at one level for a year show up with more innings, natch. In fact, it’s more likely that a first-year pitcher from college will have more innings pitched in the previous year than a high-level organized pitcher.

So we’re clearly talking about a workload issue, but on a pure stuff basis, these guys compete. Going all the way back to Gary Huckabay’s original TINSTAAP, pitchers have often been stuff ahead of readiness. Today, it’s not clear that’s purely the case, despite the fact we’re seeing pitch design lead to more pitches for pitchers. Yu Darvish famously came to MLB with about ten pitches, which today would be called five or six with variations. Still, that was a lot. Pitchers were often limited to three, maybe four, even with changing definitions.

Pitchers today have every tool in the book, mostly focused on pitch design. They’re still volume limited, but we’re teaching (and enforcing the need for) a skill of touch and feel, as well as tying that to the data and results. If I went up to a pitcher in 2010 and asked them to make the ball spin faster, not many would be able to immediately do so, aside from making their hand stickier. Most wouldn’t even know what I was talking about with no real way to measure it.

Speaking with the first scout mentioned, we went through the list of prospects on MLB.com. There’s other good sources, but this was handy and Callis and Mayo are solid. With the caveat that the current incarnation doesn’t have a pitcher in the top ten, which feels rare, names that pop up in the Top 20 like Noah Schultz (CWS) and Jackson Jobe (DET) fit the theory. “Both of those guys could drop into a rotation right now, especially those teams and especially if [Tarik Skubal] is traded,” he said. It’s hard to disagree with either. Schultz is shoving in Double-A after a promotion at age-20, but likely won’t hit 100 innings on the season. That said, both scouts agree that Schultz might be the Sox’s best pitcher after Garrett Crochet right now.

There are others from the Pipeline list that fit as well. Andrew Painter would have made Philly’s rotation last year had he not been injured and is a shoo-in if he comes back from Tommy John well.

The Reds got some special notice, with Rhett Lowder at Double-A after being drafted first last year, then doubling down on Demon Deacons with Chase Burns in the 2 slot this year, which surprised many. “They have a type,” said the announcer. Again, both have the stuff and with the success of Skenes, both have similar collegiate resumes. With the Reds selling off Frankie Montas, we discussed the possibility of one or both of these being in the rotation this year, but there’s no incentive for the Reds to do so.

The interesting discussions came when we started mentioning whether or not Double-A is where to really look. The scouts seemed to waffle a bit, especially if it’s a high school draftee. “Not a pitcher, but Ethan Salas is as special a young prospect as I’ve ever seen and he wasn’t ready and still isn’t,” said the second scout. “He’s stagnated too, but still has the tools. I’d question whether someone he’s facing has the stuff or the maturity to handle going up.”

Which is not to say that I, or anyone, is suggesting that many Single-A pitchers could jump up, though that’s exactly what Wrobleski has done in less than a year. What’s changed for him in the course of 15 starts at Double- and Triple-A? “Nothing” appears to be the case. There’s no source I can find that shows his pitches changed, nor did he go to either level and dominate. Reports on him both inside and outside baseball said he was a possible 4, but years out and that he’d need to come fast because of his age. (He’s age-23 this year in baseball stat terms, but actually 24 now after a birthday a couple weeks back.)

Yet after being called up, against plan, Wrobleski’s not just held his own, but had better numbers than he did at Triple-A, small sample caveat in neon. I’m not sure it takes a top 50 prospect to be able to do that, but if we can show it can be done on an emergency basis, is there reason to think we couldn’t be better with a plan?

Most pitching coaches and coordinators that I spoke with wouldn’t discuss this in detail with me for any publication, even anonymously. The reason? They’re thinking about it. They’re planning. There’s not a pitching coach or development staff, let alone farm director that isn’t looking at the sheer number of injuries and wondering if his team is going to be next to have to dip down and if so, if the best youngster in Single-A is better than the guy at the back of the 40-man, repeating Triple-A for the third year.

Of course, the issue is whether or not injury risk is raised. While Emmett Sheehan is going to be example number one for everyone who thinks this is true and that the whole concept is bad, I’d note how many pitchers in the high minors are breaking down as well. If Sheehan pops his elbow in Tulsa, few notice. If he does it the spring after going to the World Series when he’s expected to be the guy in the rotation behind Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, more do.

The counter-example is right there as well, though I don’t mean to make this all about the Dodgers. Walker Buehler had his first Tommy John surgery just after signing in 2015, then his revision in 2022. In between, he burned through three levels in 2017 before debuting for the Dodgers in September. This wasn’t a huge surprise, given how highly touted he was coming out of Vanderbilt. For the next few years, he was an ace level starter. There’s an argument he was “rushed” but that even with the recent Tommy John, he put up seven good seasons of value for the Dodgers. His 12.7 WAR is theoretically worth $114.3 million, about $90 million more than he was paid during that period in real dollars, to say nothing of the hunk of metal he helped the team win.

At best, there is no evidence that rushing a player to the majors hurts them. To be fair, there is no evidence that it doesn’t either. We simply don’t know and even in the case of golden arms like Skenes, baseball as a whole and teams individually do not know what does or doesn’t keep a pitcher healthy. While I won’t argue with the need for some pitchers to develop, mature, and grow, I will argue that it’s not universal and that we have some indication that certain players could succeed much quicker than we currently allow. There’s certainly enough anecdotal data that in some cases, pitchers can come up quickly without increasing their risk of injury and with a chance of success. The sample is clearly cherry picked, but that’s the nature of sport!

Not every age-19 ace dominating in Asheville is ready for the show. I’m not asking teams to dump the development pathway that’s worked since Mr. Rickey walked this earth. I’m simply looking at how baseball might have changed, how the advantages that pitchers currently have could be leveraged, and how we might get to see better pitchers quicker. As much as I enjoyed seeing Skenes pitching here in Indianapolis where I live a couple times, it’s pretty clear now that he was ready from the time Rob Manfred said his name in Seattle. Let’s not lose any more great starts from great young pitchers.

I’ll be holding the next Under The Knife until after the trade deadline so I can discuss things like how confident the Dodgers had to be to trade for Tommy Edman, plus all the other deadline action.