The Official 2021 Los Angeles Angels Minor League Stats, Reports & Scouting Thread

[rafibomb]

 

 

 The arrival and success of Reid Detmer's slider sure is a nice development for his prospect stock..

Edited June 6, 2021 by rafibomb

[rafibomb]

 

Detmers' entire arsenal is filthy... As @Dochalomentioned before about his previous starts, he has gotten a strikeout on each one of his pitches: fastball, slider, curve and changeup. And the swings he's getting on all of those pitches aren't pretty.

Edited June 6, 2021 by rafibomb

[ScottM]

Good lord that curve

[rafibomb]

2 hours ago, ScottSted said:

Good lord that curve

[rafibomb]

Me waiting for the usuals of this thread to react to Detmer's start today

[Docwaukee]

1 hour ago, rafibomb said:

Me waiting for the usuals of this thread to react to Detmer's start today

I just don't see how you can peg someone with that type of filth as a future 4-5.  Those breaking pitches were just sick.  Scouts were dogging his curve a bit because it was more loopy and slow.  That was sharp break and depth.  And btw, that slider is new.  He's only been throwing it for a short period to professional hitters.   We didn't even see the change up which is still pretty damn good.  The most impressive thing is that every one of those pitches comes from the same arm slot and gets on hitters really quick.  

He's in AA, added velo and a new pitch.  I'm gonna grace him a few hiccups.  It's not like he's making A ball hitters look silly.  

[Docwaukee]

6 hours ago, jsnpritchett said:

 

He hits ball far.  At some point they're really not going to have a choice but to call him up.   I'd prefer it not happen just yet but damn.  

If I were a pitcher I'd throw him nothing to hit just to see if he's got the discipline to take it.  They've gotta start trying that don't they?

[Docwaukee]

2 hours ago, rafibomb said:

Detmers curve is sharper than that.  It's odd to say but it's true.  I've been waiting to comp him to Kersh for awhile but I'm always reluctant to comp anyone to a future HOFer.  

[rafibomb]

35 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

I just don't see how you can peg someone with that type of filth as a future 4-5.  Those breaking pitches were just sick.  Scouts were dogging his curve a bit because it was more loopy and slow.  That was sharp break and depth.  And btw, that slider is new.  He's only been throwing it for a short period to professional hitters.   We didn't even see the change up which is still pretty damn good.  The most impressive thing is that every one of those pitches comes from the same arm slot and gets on hitters really quick.  

He's in AA, added velo and a new pitch.  I'm gonna grace him a few hiccups.  It's not like he's making A ball hitters look silly.  

I want to say that his strikeout in the 4th was on his changeup. And it's nice to see most of his strikeouts coming when he's ahead of the count as well. The development of the slider is huge. I can't imagine being behind in the count and having to worry about the slider in the high 80's, curve in the mid 70's or changeup in the low 80's. There's legit so much separation in velocity between each pitch and like you said all coming from the same arm slot.

[Angel Oracle]

5 hours ago, Dochalo said:

Detmers curve is sharper than that.  It's odd to say but it's true.  I've been waiting to comp him to Kersh for awhile but I'm always reluctant to comp anyone to a future HOFer.  

Just for , he does have a similar thing to Kersh in that he raises his arms straight up before starting the delivery.

[Stradling]

Sometimes when they makes these recap videos it makes it seem as though the pitcher is better than he really is because they are highlights of his performance.  So I’ll ask this question, does he have command of all four pitches?  His draft bio talked about the curve ball and how close he was to major league ready.  I just want to know, does he throw strikes and can he get ahead of hitters.  If he commands all four then he’s in the rotation very early next season and if we crawl back into it maybe this season. 

[tdawg87]

In that video he definitely got away with a couple of those curves. Look at the third strikeout. That was a hanger.

But it's probable he can get away with that often because it's such a good pitch.

[Jeff Fletcher]

18 hours ago, Angelsjunky said:

Yep. I adjusted my last post while you were typing this to clarify.

I see you guys figured this out without me. 
 

There is no concrete (or even approximate) date when there is any tangible change to the Angels decision to bring him up, from a service time perspective. This is especially true because the CBA is expiring so the rules are not even known for sure beyond this year. 

[Jeff Fletcher]

7 hours ago, Dochalo said:

The most impressive thing is that every one of those pitches comes from the same arm slot

Isn’t this true of every pitch from every pitcher?

[Blarg]

I'd really like to see Thaiss cut down a little on his strikeouts but his current slash line is pretty healthy at .302/.423/.512/.935. The sooner he can replace Kurt Suzuki the better the Angels will be. 

[Docwaukee]

29 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

Isn’t this true of every pitch from every pitcher?

I don't think so at all Jeff and that's why there's been a lot of focus on tunneling.  There can be very subtle alterations in tilt where a hitter will target a very particular spot to start picking up the ball and if that changes even by a fraction of an inch then you have a split second clue that it's a different pitch.  

[Angels 1961]

9 minutes ago, Blarg said:

I'd really like to see Thaiss cut down a little on his strikeouts but his current slash line is pretty healthy at .302/.423/.512/.935. The sooner he can replace Kurt Suzuki the better the Angels will be. 

He has a very high obp with such a high K rate. I think he spends rest of year at AAA maybe September call up. Thassi would not play much with Stassi catching so more reps for him at AAA better for him.

[Jeff Fletcher]

1 minute ago, Dochalo said:

I don't think so at all Jeff and that's why there's been a lot of focus on tunneling.  There can be very subtle alterations in tilt where a hitter will target a very particular spot to start picking up the ball and if that changes even by a fraction of an inch then you have a split second clue that it's a different pitch.  

Tunneling is more about what the ball does after it leaves the hand. Does the slider break from the fastball trajectory at 55 feet or 52 feet?

The out of hand release point is the same for every pitch from every pitcher. Sure, there may be fraction-of-inch differences but we certainly can’t pick that up so it’s a meaningless thing to discuss, in my opinion. 

[Docwaukee]

1 minute ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

Tunneling is more about what the ball does after it leaves the hand. Does the slider break from the fastball trajectory at 55 feet or 52 feet?

The out of hand release point is the same for every pitch from every pitcher. Sure, there may be fraction-of-inch differences but we certainly can’t pick that up so it’s a meaningless thing to discuss, in my opinion. 

agree to disagree that mlb hitters can't pick that up.  It doesn't always correlate perfectly as to whether a pitcher might be successful on release point alone because obviously there's more to a pitch than just where it comes out.   Release point matters for the tunneling argument btw.  It's not just about what happens after the ball leaves the hand but the concept is about decision making time for the hitter.  

[Jeff Fletcher]

5 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

agree to disagree that mlb hitters can't pick that up.

I didn’t say MLB hitters couldn’t pick it up. I said you and I can’t pick it up. 
 

So, what is the basis for YOU saying “he throws all his pitches from the same release point”?

[tdawg87]

Me watching this discussion as someone who has no idea what any of it means:

[Docwaukee]

Just now, Jeff Fletcher said:

I didn’t say MLB hitters couldn’t pick it up. I said you and I can’t pick it up. 
 

So, what is the basis for YOU saying “he throws all his pitches from the same release point”?

I get what you're saying now.  I pause copies of the video at various points and put them side by side.  So while a hitter might have a fraction of a second to pick that up, I have as long as I want to try and figure that out.   I know that sounds nerdy but I've got a four monitor setup for my work and a couple of them are super high resolution.   I'm not eyeballing that shit real time or I'd have been a guy you write about.  

[Jeff Fletcher]

1 minute ago, Dochalo said:

I get what you're saying now.  I pause copies of the video at various points and put them side by side.  So while a hitter might have a fraction of a second to pick that up, I have as long as I want to try and figure that out.   I know that sounds nerdy but I've got a four monitor setup for my work and a couple of them are super high resolution.   I'm not eyeballing that shit real time or I'd have been a guy you write about.  

Ok. Then do that for a bunch of pitchers. I still contend that the differences will be minuscule. 
 

By the way, you can just look this up on baseball savant. No one’s release point stays exactly perfect, but the changes don’t really correlate to particular pitches. 

[Docwaukee]

4 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

Ok. Then do that for a bunch of pitchers. I still contend that the differences will be minuscule. 
 

By the way, you can just look this up on baseball savant. No one’s release point stays exactly perfect, but the changes don’t really correlate to particular pitches. 

they do vertically but not as much horizontally.  the differences are minor.  and I haven't seen the data for minor leaguers on savant so I do my own raw assessment with my half assed way.  but major leaguers can pick up the difference.  I don't do it for a bunch of pitchers.  Just some of the highlights from halos prospects on occasion and it stood out for Detmers to me.  

At the end of the day, I'm not a scout so ultimately it's just my opinion regardless of how much time I spend doing my own research.  People can choose to believe that some people might have an eye for picking up certain things based on years of experience even though they're a message board poster and don't sit in a press box.  Or don't put any value to my observations.  It's all good either way.    

[Docwaukee]

btw, another observation that I thought was interesting is that while I didn't see the release point change much, the arm angle for Detmers changes some between his fastball and off speed stuff.  A bit more horizontal on the fastball and slightly more vertical for the curve and slider but seemed similar for both breaking pitches.  I would be curious if anyone has heard of someone tracking that.