November 26, 2014

Prospect Mechanics

NL Central

by Ryan Parker and Doug Thorburn

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Jesse Winker, OF, Cincinnati Reds

Rankings Summary (Reds Top 10):
Current Organizational Rank: 2^nd
Overall Future Potential: 6: first-division regular
Realistic Role: 5; average major leaguer

Jesse Winker has that smooth, lefty swing fans and scouts are quick to gush over. As pretty as it may be, the question is, is it be a movement pattern that will allow him to succeed at the highest level? For the most part, the answer is yes.

Winker’s first few movements with his lower half are easy to love. His stride is fluid and maintains an easy pace, with a very minor initial sway just to establish timing. Winker’s weight doesn’t shift too far back, so this move is perfectly acceptable. His first movement forward with his lower half is beautiful as he leads with his hip and sets himself up in a good position to launch his swing.

However, there is still room for improvement in his lower half. Presently, there isn’t much, if any, separation between his upper and lower half. Using Josh Hamilton as an example, we see that when he’s locked in he creates exceptional torque by coiling his hips as he goes forward. At the moment, Winker’s lower half starts off strong but isn’t being fully utilized throughout the entirety of the swing.

His upper half works pretty well, with the only spotted issue being a tendency for his back elbow to drop below his hands too early in his sequence. This move in and of itself isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it can affect movements later in his swing. You never want to see a hitter get their elbows too far in front of their hands prior to contact. Most guys’ elbows get a bit ahead, but Winker’s elbows are well in front of his hands as the bat is turning flat.

Most of the time, Winker’s hands end up where they’re needed; watch the flight of the ball off his bat and you can get a good idea if his hands have “caught up.” If he hits the ball and it stays on a straight line, he got everything lined up right, but if the ball is slicing or tailing, his bat was dragging, thanks to his hands being a bit late in getting where they need to be.

Winker’s swing is smooth, he repeats it very well, and most importantly he finds the barrel all the time. The issues in his swing are fixable and will allow him to turn those singles into doubles, and those doubles eventually should turn into homers. The Reds have a good hitter on their hands.

Jorge Soler, OF, Chicago Cubs

Rankings Summary (Cubs Top 10):
Current Organizational Rank: 3^rd
Overall Future Potential: High 6; first-division player/all-star
Realistic Role: High 5; above-average player

Jorge Soler is blessed with more tools than Home Depot. His physical gifts are evident in his swing with his head turning bat speed. Thank goodness for slow motion, otherwise it would be tough to get a look at what is really going on here.

The initial use of his lower body is hard to like. His stride pattern of getting the foot down super early to incorporate his lower body in a personal pet peeve, but it doesn’t preclude success. Anthony Rendon and Raimel Tapia both use this pattern and make it work. In Soler’s case, there are two things in his lower body which I’d like to see him clean up. His hips slide under him as he launches, watch how his hips “bounce” through his swing. It’s almost like he has a loose foundation in a house which creates a barrier to achieving consistency in his swing.

The other issue is another stability problem. Watch his back foot as it outwardly turns just a bit when he is starting his swing. If his swing is a Ferrari, then his feet are the tires spinning and kicking up dust before gripping the road and taking off. It’s hard to stay stable and properly time with this pattern. He’s still generating tons of energy with his lower body, but he could likely reduce his strikeouts just by finding a stable way to engage his lower body.

His upper body is pretty good except for how his hands work as his heel is dropping to the ground. His hands float higher as his foot gets closer to the ground and now they have to travel that much further to get to the baseball. Because of this extra distance, his hands have to push forward a bit rather than be taken forward by the bigger muscles. We can see how busy Soler’s hands look compared to Josh Donaldson, who launches the bat to near perfection.

Soler:

Donaldson:

Soler can get away with this movement pattern for now as his hands are so quick, and if he can begin to clean up his upper body, things might get downright scary. It’s not like these suggestions are impossible to put into action, they’re minor flaws that can be fixed, and Soler would feel improvement once he started moving correctly.

The Cubs are loaded with bats in their farm system. Perhaps not as hyped as the others, Soler’s more physically gifted at the plate than Kris Bryant and Addison Russell and doesn’t have the high maintenance swing of Javier Baez. This young hitter is going to be special. –Ryan Parker

Taylor Williams, RHP, Milwaukee Brewers

Rankings Summary (Brewers Top 10):
Current Organizational Rank: 4^th
Overall Future Potential: 6; no. 3 starter
Realistic Role: 5; late-inning reliever

The Brewers took a proactive approach to Williams' workload in 2014, alternating six-inning starts with four-inning appearances out of the bullpen. His ultimate destination is still up in the air, but his lack of a steady off-speed pitch and non-ideal size will likely hasten a move to relief unless he undergoes rapid development in the very near future.

Report Card

Williams displays the big momentum that is typical of undersized pitchers, with an early burst that translates to the stride phase of his delivery. The plus momentum enables him to overcome some of his physical shortcomings with an elongated stride while generating energy with his lower half. His momentum has 60-grade speed but a nearly ideal path of kinetic energy when he lines up the gears, with body following baseball after release, resulting in a 65 grade overall. The power technique is a double-edged sword from an evaluation standpoint, as the perceived effort that is associated with big momentum will cast further doubt as to his ability to endure a starting pitcher's workload.

The speed to the plate is part of a drop-n-drive delivery that hurts his balance grade in the vertical plane, but his lateral stability is solid during the high-energy motion. He has some late spine-tilt as he approaches release point but his posture is relatively strong, especially for a power delivery, and the above-average stability provides a baseline for his career K-to-walk ratio of nearly four-to-one. He sets up with a wide-open stance when pitching from the windup, but he strides with a closed angle that lines him up with the target at release point. Williams has the plus torque that one would expect from a guy who can touch the upper 90s, including an upper-body twist and effective hip rotation, but his electric arm speed is faster than the torque grade would predict on its own.

The right-hander repeats his delivery very well, particularly from the windup. He has a slight lean-back towards second base during his stride, but the rock-n-roll is more pronounced when pitching from the stretch, and he utilizes a slide step that interferes with his timing pattern. Repetition is typically the last thing to come around for any pitcher, and it is the toughest subject on a pitcher's report card, traits which help to put his 60 grade in perspective—it is quite rare for an A-ball pitcher to have plus repetition on a big-league scale.

Nick Kingham, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates

Rankings Summary (Pirates Top 10):
Current Organizational Rank: 5^th
Overall Future Potential: High 5; no. 3/4 starter
Realistic Role: 5; no. 4 starter

Kingham is the type of high-floor, low-ceiling pitcher that should be valuable in the back half of a big-league rotation, and he is a fine organizational complement to high-ceiling arms such as Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon. His performance projection defies the perception of his Ricky Vaughn haircut, and his mechanical underpinnings suggest a future as a command-and-control type whose role will be determined by the development of his arsenal.

Report Card

Kingham has a slow-yet-stable motion, and at peak he has excellent balance in all three planes, maintaining his head position above center-of-mass through most of the delivery. He does have late head movement to the glove side that dings his grade for posture, and the degree of spine-tilt can vary widely pitch-to-pitch while staying comfortably above average, ranging from 55 to 65 on the scale but more typically settling in with a 60 grade. The right-hander maintains a three-quarter arm slot and he has displayed a strong ability to hit targets on the bottom shelf of the strike zone.

He has a pedestrian pace to the plate along with an interesting timing mechanism, in which Kingham takes the baseball just out of the glove, then pounds the mitt again at max lift before initiating the next phase of his delivery, re-separating the hands as he kicks in the second gear of momentum. There's nothing wrong with the double-pump move and anything that helps him to coordinate the delivery is a worthwhile technique, though his spotty consistency when pitching from the stretch indicates that he still has a ways to go.

Kingham's torque is all in the hips, with a delayed trigger and minimal twist with the upper half, resulting in average hip-shoulder separation at peak. He has a very simple, compact delivery from the stretch, lowering his leg lift from letter-high to waist-high yet avoiding the stride-altering strategy of the slide step.

Alex Reyes, RHP, St. Louis Cardinals

Rankings Summary (Cardinals Top 10):
Current Organizational Rank: 3^rd
Overall Future Potential: 7; no. 2 starter
Realistic Role: High 5; no. 3/4 starter with late-inning fallback

Reyes represents a classic example of the trade-off between power and stability, with the raw ingredients to dominate opponents while lacking the foundation to do so on a consistent basis. Miles-per-hour are currency in the velocity-obsessed culture of modern day baseball, and in that sense Reyes is worth his weight in gold (that's $3.2 million, for those scoring at home).

Report Card

When things are going right, Reyes has a compact delivery that stays reasonably on-line to the target. There is always some glove-side veer in his delivery, but the degree to which he steers off course varies wildly from inning-to-inning and start-to-start. There are pitches with 40-grade balance because he starts leaning toward first base during leg lift, and others where he maintains plus stability through the stride phase, the net result of which is the 50 on his report card. There is a corresponding ripple effect on posture, with scores varying from 35 to 45 and a grade that reflects the mean.

In general, Reyes showed a positive trend of improved mechanics throughout the season. Check out the following example from his first start of the year:

April 6

This was actually a good pitch that came close to target, but Reyes was a mechanical mess in his first start, which in itself is not a concern as many pitchers are still building strength, flexibility, and stamina in the early spring. But the outing serves as an example of how things can go wrong when Reyes falls off track. Compare the above delivery with this pitch from mid-July:

July 16

He has an arm slot that is sensitive to posture, but he has a relatively high level of shoulder abduction, so he can get close to straight over-the-top when his head bails out to the glove side. There's spine-tilt on every delivery, but the earlier he starts the left-side lean the worse the tilt is at release point. Reyes gets huge torque with a combination of a generous upper-body load and a heavy delay of trunk rotation, fueling his upper-90s velocity. He does have a tendency to delay his trigger too long, which results in a late arm, missed targets, and the risk of elbow drag when his timing is really off-kilter.

The Reyes Lean will be a focal point in his development, as it is an in-game indicator of his mechanical efficiency. He tends to exaggerate the lean when pitching from the stretch or any time that he is fatigued, something that the coaching staff had under close watch during his starts. His overall grade on the report card incorporates some upside with a nod to his mechanical improvements during the year, giving him the benefit of the doubt that his biggest weaknesses can be addressed. –Doug Thorburn

Ryan Parker is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
Click here to see Ryan's other articles. You can contact Ryan by clicking here
Doug Thorburn is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @doug_thorburn
Click here to see Doug's other articles. You can contact Doug by clicking here