Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch

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With the Twins having a severe need for pitching in the organization as well as six picks among the top 100, it is certain that more than one of those picks (and probably the second overall pick) will be used to draft a pitcher. To this respect, I am presenting profiles of the top 22 pitching prospects for the 2012 MLB draft.

I will be presenting these alphabetically, and at the end I will rank them. I will be doing about one a day and I will finish before the June 4th draft day. You can find all the profiles (in reverse alphabetical order) as they are presented here. I will start with RJ Alvarez and end with Kyle Zimmer. Each profile with contain a bit of background information and statistics, a mini scouting report and videos and photos.

Profile 9: Lucas Giolito

Profile/Stats:

Lucas Giolito is a senior at Harvard-Westlake High School in Encino, CA, like another top High School pitching prospect, Max Fried. Both Fried and Giolito have committed to play for the same College, UCLA. He is listed at 6'6" and 220 lbs. He was born on July 14, 1994. He throws right handed. He was shut down for most of 2012 with a strained UCL.

Mini Scouting Report:

His fastball is a plus plus pitch. It sits at 94-95 and occasionally jumps to 99-100 mph. It has good downward movement and he has very good control of it; however the command (especially on the lower part of the zone is developing). His curve ball is above average and potentially can be a plus pitch at 81-82 mph. He is working on his change up which is a work in progress. His delivery is somewhat slow and deliberate. Would need work to improve his time from wind up to the plate.

Videos/Photos:

Due to the difficulties in embedding videos here, please go to the original post to see 4 videos of Lucas Giolito pitching

http://www.perfectgame.org/images/profilepics/11SSWCB24.jpg

Is his slow delivery the only thing people see that he needs to work on, and is he going to drop in the draft with the injury he received?

He needs to work on his command as well. Some people have been critisizing his mechanics (they say that he is doing the "dreadful inverted W"). He needs to work on his change up big time as well as on his curve. So... lots of things as you would expect from a High School kid. The key is how fast a High School kid can learn. That is where gambling takes place in the draft

As far as dropping: I suspect that he will pitch for scouts some time soon (he has been throwing) and that there are medical records readily available to the teams. If all of those go well, I do not see him drop much. Regardless, I don's see him drop out of the top 20 picks. Whether he would sign at #20 or so, that's another question...