Improving College Arms: The Falvey Method?

[Matt Braun]

We are soon about to reach the fifth anniversary of Derek Falvey and Thad Levine joining the Twins. It was to be an intellectual super-team of sorts; Falvey had drawn praise for building the dominant Cleveland starting rotation, with Terry Francona describing him as a do-it-all “rising star.” Thad Levine, a crucial cog in keeping Texas’ front office together, helped orchestrate two popular World Series teams in Texas. Key to their vision was sustainability, long-term planning, and the “method—” whatever system could best improve a depleted Twins franchise. Are we seeing this process at this moment?

 

If you hadn’t been paying attention to the Twins’ minor leagues, you don’t read this site enough, which is a shame. Twins Daily has been covering the system, uhhh, daily, and there has been an apparent development so far in the season: college arms dominating. Cade Povich, Brent Headrick, Steve Hajjar, David Festa, Travis Adams, Matt Canterino, and Sawyer Gipson-Long have all performed well, especially in the context of a minor league system with less sheen after graduations and under-performance amongst the best prospects. Those names stand out.

I find K-BB% to be the best quick-and-dirty stat analysis for pitching prospects. It sums up just how dominant a pitcher is against his penchant for walking batters, and it completely removes poor minor league defense from the equation. It’s an incomplete picture for sure, but that’s how minor league stat-scouting goes.

How well are those arms performing in context with their peers? With a minimum of 30 innings pitched, here’s how they compare with pitchers in their division. Players ranked by rank relative to division:

*Hajjar has 29 innings pitched as of writing this, but he’s an essential piece of the story, so I included him anyway. 

Festa has pitched with both Fort Myers and Cedar Rapids in 2022, which makes his placement in the table messy—just know his K-BB% would be elite in either league.

The Twins have targeted college arms specifically for years now. Since 2017, their drafts have been 43%, 43%, 38%, and 45% college arms, respectively, with 2020 ignored as it should be for every topic. Bailey Ober, Cole Sands, and Josh Winder were college arms, and while they didn’t draft Joe Ryan, he came from the collegiate ranks as well. It took a few years of cleaning out the gutters, but the system is now overflowing with college arms.

This focus is nothing new for Derek Falvey; he coveted multiple collegiate arms during his time as a Cleveland executive. Corey Kluber, Trevor Bauer, Mike Clevinger, Shane Bieber, and Aaron Civale rose through the college ranks before joining Cleveland’s system and found varying levels of success in the majors. That’s three Cy Young winners for those keeping track.

An advantage to drafting college arms is their seasoning; those players have more time performing against high-level talent and require less time in the minors than their high school counterparts. Teams know this; it’s why the Angels, probably foolishly, drafted 19 college pitchers in 2021. The draft is 20 rounds. 

Another truism about drafting college pitchers is that, because their cement is more dry, taking one is less a game of projections and more a project of finding undervalued characteristics. High schoolers might as well be light-years away from the majors, and their development presents an immense risk. The Moneyball book perfectly represented the idea with Billy Beane’s anger at drafting Jeremy Bonderman, a projectable arm with a “clean delivery, and a body that looked as if it had been created to wear a baseball uniform.” Although, Bonderman had the last laugh when he pitched more than 1,200 innings in MLB over a nine-year career.

Is this simply just the game repeating itself; it’s meta-game moving full-circle back towards what was cutting edge thinking 20 years ago? Perhaps, perhaps not. If you looked carefully, you’d see that players like Povich and Hajjar found extra velocity ticks after joining the organization. The team could be identifying players with more data attached to them to target a fix or two and enjoy the benefits of a more realized player. After all, this is the landscape of Big Data in baseball, and the Twins might be using it to their advantage.

 

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[roger]

Great topic, Matt.

I think baseball is changing.  The draft used to be 50 rounds.  Now it is 20, or is it 25 this year?  Roughly 40 minor league teams were eliminated.  In football, nearly all players go to college for three or four years then step in and contribute immediately.  Doubt we will see that in baseball, but your point that the best college players spend several less years in the minors is so important.  Expect we will see all/most MLB teams slowly shifting to taking mostly college players in their draft.  The result will be more high schoolers going to college.

[USAFChief]

*TINSTAAPP

 

 

[Trov]

I think there is a lot of value in college pitchers later in drafts.  Pitching is one of the hardest positions to really project over a career.  So many little injuries can derail careers.  You see some guys dominate for 3 to 4 years winning cy young awards only to bounce from team to team after a huge drop off.  High school pitcher will put up big numbers in high school normally because they hardly face any top talent.  Yes, they will go on their show cases, but in those the hitters will normally have never seen the pitcher, or seen them maybe see them a few times over the years.  With college they will see same hitters a lot more often over their three year career. 

There is always such a fine line between good and great, and good and bad.  High school guys you normally are looking at velo and movement but need to teach them to pitch.  Sometimes they hit big, sometimes you miss big.  Not that college arms are safe or anything, but at least you have more of an idea. Many top college arms over years have been busts.  

[Mark G]

I have always believed that taking a college pitcher is better not only because of the seasoning he has, but because if a pitcher is injury prone it will usually show up in his younger years, either in the minors or in college.  If a pitcher shows durability as well as talent it would behoove an organization to invest time and money into that known commodity, or at least as known as it can be.  I also have always believed that when said organization tries to fiddle with the pitcher and try to add velo, as they say, that increases the chance of injury with each mph.  An injury free pitcher never seems to stay that way anymore, and there has to be a reason for that.  I don't remember if it was Falvey or Levine, but just recently they answered a question about the rash of injuries in pitchers saying today's pitcher is throwing between 96 and 100 miles an hour, which the human body isn't designed to do (slight paraphrasing, but close).  And yet we continue to coach it and expect it.  A good college pitcher who knows how to pitch (up/down, in/out, changing speeds constantly) doesn't need to throw 98 mph to make it in pro ball.  They need to build arm strength to go a much longer season, and find their role in the starting rotation or the BP and develop that role.  Doesn't mean you can't use a pick or two on a high school phenom, but overall I prefer a more seasoned arm.  

[mikelink45]

I have no doubt the college pitcher is the better choice 90% of the time.  Our bodies mature at very different rates and so do our minds.  I think the college pitcher has more coaching, better muscle memory and hopefully more maturity. 

[bunsen82]

This team is taking college pitchers that have had a lot of "seasoning"  and adding 5-8 mph on their pitches.   Going from college to the pro's where you focus on your craft completely will of course add something to your pitch ability.  The are finding arms as deep as round 15 and making them into useful arms either in the minor leagues or possibly even for the big leagues.   

I was actually surprised they drafted Chase Petty, and then they proceed to trade for 2 year of Sonny Gray who if he remains healthy is a better version of Berrios.   If you net the two trades together,  you get Gray, Martin and SWR for Berrios and Petty.  The Twins incrementally got better from those 2 trades although I felt the Jays slightly overpaid for Berrios.  

But this is a thread on drafting college prospects,  improving their mechanics to increase velocity and finding pitchers with an elite pitch they can begin to work off of.  Needless to say they have plenty of college arms in the minor leagues that are finding success and adding to our future pitching pipeline.  

[2wins87]

I looked a few years back from 2017 and it seems the Twins were taking about 30% college pitchers in the draft prior to the new regime.  I was actually surprised it was that big of a difference.  All teams take quite a few college arms these days, and all but a few probably shy away from high school arms for the most part too.  I don't think this is a particularly new trend.

I think the big difference for the front office is what they have been doing with the college arms they are drafting.  There weren't a whole lot of pitching draft and development successes for the prior regime, and mostly they were guys that ended up relievers.  Taylor Rogers (11th round of 2011) and Pat Neshek (6th round of 2002) are probably the most notable successes from the prior 15 years.

Already with the new regime we have seen Ober (12th round or 2017), who looks likely to continue holding down a mid rotation slot which will more than likely lead him to matching and surpassing Rogers' value.  Winder (7th round of 2018) looks ready to follow a similar, maybe even better path.

Clearly they know how to add velocity in the minors now, and most of the other orgs do too.  I think maybe a common trait among a lot of their early successes are big tall frames with decent control in college, maybe not caring as much about present velocity knowing they can get more especially with big-framed guys.  Ober, Winder, Headrick, and Gipson-Long I think certainly fit that profile, probably Cade Povich who I think is taller than his listed 6'3", and maybe Festa, though his control didn't seem great in college. I would think other orgs also probably like many aspects of that profile too, but The Twins seem to be getting their guys and doing well developing them lately.

 

[old nurse]

Your scouts have to have a good eye on HS pitchers. Berrios, Bungartner, Cole, Greinke, Thor, Wheeler were all HS pitchers when drafted. So was Bundy and a whole lot of others. Same holds true for college pitchers., 

[DocBauer]

I think going the college route more often is a combination of factors, many of them already mentioned here.

A top HS arm, much like a SS, (or a QB in football), tends to often  be the best athlete on the team. So trying to project how well their stuff plays and develops against a higher level of player on pro ball, much less any physical development, is just harder to accurately project. It doesn't mean there aren't really good 18yo arms that you don't pick, and that don't turn out, they're just much more of a wild card to accurately project.

College pitchers are at least a bit more physically developed. Many of them can/will still continue to fill out and gain strength, but it's easier to see a more finished body type. Additionally, they've had a higher level of competition and coaching to harness at least one non fastball pitch.

What the Twins have been doing, IMO, is recognize what pro coaching and career concentration can do for those college pitchers. Even better mechanics, greater repetition, a little more physical development, velocity can jump, control can be smoothed out, and unlike a HS pitcher, you're looking at adding a pitch and polishing the rest, vs a HS pitcher where you're probably trying to often develop 2 pitches, much less polish them.

Time will tell how successful they are going to be, but the early returns have been good so far, and I think optimism is warranted. I think Povich is a prime example. Decent length, but a rather lanky build, good control, at least one solid secondary offering. Now concentrating on his profession, he fills out physically a little more for velocity, and better, more polished mechanics add a tick or two as well. And those better mechanics make his secondary stuff, at least one pitch, more consistent. Now, again, you're working most on the 3rd or 4th pitch instead of working with the more blank canvass that a HS kid presents.

[Riverbrian]

13 hours ago, USAFChief said:

*TINSTAAPP

 

 

There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect. 

While it's clearly an overstatement, it is really hard to deny the accuracy of the implication.  

Injury rates with pitchers are rising to the point of injuries being actually expected, this has led to a change in usage to try and lessen the attenuation, which in turn lessens the value of those who stay somewhat healthy because the workload is managed. 

The combination of injuries, workload management and short windows of effectiveness means questionable success rates in comparison to hitters. 

Front offices need sure things with the early rounds, they can't afford to miss. Early round misses happen a lot and each time it happens it will set a franchise back.

Missing also can't be good for job security for the advisors or for the actual front office.

It's hard to blame anyone for retreating to the safety (safer) net of hitters who succeed at higher rates, there is simply too much at stake. 

I look at it a little differently... when you look at these numbers they say dial it down on drafting pitching but sometimes when the numbers look like they say dial it down... they are really saying dial it up.

The numbers are not saying you should avoid drafting pitching because it's hard, they only look like they do... the numbers are actually saying that drafting pitching is hard so you have to spend more energy on it to restore the balance. 

Yes... injuries have diminished the value of individual pitchers. Yes... Workload management (rest and pitch counts) has diminished the value of individual pitchers. Yes... the short shelf life, quick decline of effectiveness has diminished the value of individual pitchers. All this is true but the one thing that has not diminished, is the need for pitching. Every team still desperately needs it. You have to dial it up against the odds to increase the odds and restore the balance. 

Pitching is a numbers game. Draft a lot of it, acquire a lot of it and promote it quickly while there are still bullets in the gun. 

 

[bunsen82]

Add Paredes as another college late round draft pick to start to keep an eye on.  It seems like every week we have another pitcher pop up who is doing incredible things in the minor leagues.