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BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2014		In terms of strikeout rate, Chris Resop is half the man he used to be, and he played the role of punching bag across two levels last season. With a dissipating fastball and vacating pitch command, his big-league opportunities could be numbered.
2013		After years spent as a sabermetrics cause célèbre with great peripherals and bad results, Resop posted worse component measures but had a good ERA. Go figure. This isn’t a case where a pitcher made the decision to swap strikeouts for weak contact; Resop allowed a similar number of hits and home runs as he had in prior seasons. There’s a risk that the strikeouts are gone for good and that Resop’s hittability issues will wash him out of the league. If they don’t, Resop is a good middle reliever to have around until he gets expensive. Then you go out and find a cheaper model. Lather, rinse, Resop.
2012		Meek’s absence bollixed the Pirates bullpen hierarchy and left Jose Veras and Resop as the team’s de facto set-up men. Resop’s gaudy strikeout rate (he fanned more than a quarter of the batters he faced) aside, he showed why the Braves were content to let the former sabermetrics cause célèbre go without real compensation. A reliever can get by allowing too many hits, issuing too many free passes, or even having a home run-allowing binge every now and again as long as he excels at two of the other three areas, but Resop’s season was a deadly sin cocktail. Need proof? He made consecutive appearances against the Astros early in the season and allowed five runs without recording an out. That counts as grounds for termination in most cities.
2011		Looking for fresh bodies to fill a depleted bullpen, the Pirates claimed Resop off waivers from the Braves in early August, and he turned out to be quite a find. Resop's fastball sat in the 94-mph range, helping to set up an outstanding curveball that froze right-handed hitters from a three-quarters arm angle. The Pirates don't have many certainties for the bullpen this season, but it's realistic to pencil Resop in just in front of Joel Hanrahan and Evan Meek, who will be the closer and set-up man, albeit not necessarily in that order. There is also an outside chance that the Pirates could look at Resop as a starter, since he dominated the International League in that role during the first half of last season.
2008		Coming to the Angels is a Catch-22 for young relief pitchers. The Angels tend to turn prospects into players, and pitching in Angel Stadium in front of a generally good defense helps you look good. On the other hand, opportunities can be hard to come by. Resop was picked up for Kevin Gregg a year ago and didn't pitch well enough at Triple-A to break out from the crowd. Keep in mind that he's a converted infielder who was mishandled badly by the Marlins; just 25, there's time for him to use his low-90s fastball and good curve to have a career.
2007		Resop used to try to hit spherical objects for a living, and when that didn`t work, he tried to throw them. The problem is that all he`s learned how to do is throw them really, really hard. He needs another pitch, but it`ll be the Angels` job to teach him one, as he was sent westward for Kevin Gregg.
2006		Chris Resop hit .193 in 269 pro at-bats, became a pitcher, and made the majors in less than three years. Discovering you possess an upper 90s fastball can wreak some dramatic changes in one`s life. His unceremonious thrashing at the major league level hints that he might need to do more than throw hard to succeed, like use his curve more effectively to keep hitters from sitting on the hard stuff. If he can do this, he might close some day.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, Chris Resop threw 3,483 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2007 and 2013, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2013, he relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (93mph) and Sinker (92mph), also mixing in a Change (83mph), Slider (88mph) and Curve (81mph).