I find Kyle Drabek to be one of the most overrated prospects in baseball. I get that he’s got a nice fastball and curveball, and they indeed look good, but I don’t know why we’re getting worked up about a guy who had a 132/68 K/BB in 162 Double-A innings at age 22. Good stuff or not, you’d expect a real top prospect to either strike out more batters or walk fewer.
But I’ve already directly expounded upon my feelings about Drabek in other pieces. I don’t really need to rehash that here.
Rather, I want to take a bit of a different approach here. I’m not interested in yelling about Drabek for the third or fourth time–I’m more interested in the opposite side of the view. Why is Drabek a top prospect in many eyes? The short answer, I suppose, is “his stuff,” but let’s look a bit deeper at a question for which I don’t have many answers.
A much lesser-known prospect thank his fellow Kyle, the Brewers’ Kyle Heckathorn also boasts stuff. Baseball America rated him the ninth-best prospect in a moribund Milwaukee system, and part of the reason he’s even that high is his status as a former 47th overall pick (in 2009).
Let’s compare the scouting reports in this year’s Baseball America Prospect Handbook:
Fastball
Drabek: “90-96 mph…sitting comfortably in the low 90’s…good life…helping him to induce groundouts.”
Heckathorn: “90-94 mph…sinker…2.02 groundouts for every flyout…three homers in 124 innings.”
Breaking Ball
Drabek: “His curveball is his best pitch, a power offering with 12-6 action and low-80’s velocity.”
Heckathorn: “Slider in the mid-to-high-80’s.”
Changeup
Drabek: “Has shown depth and sink, but he’s still refining.”
Heckathorn: “Effective at times, and he commands it better than his fastball.”
So, here we have two pitchers with low-to-mid-90’s heaters with good movement, power breaking balls, and work-in-progress changeups with some potential. If you’d never heard of either pitcher before, and that was all you read about them, it’s unlikely you’d come away thinking that Drabek had far superior stuff.
Obviously, though, stuff is only part of the equation. What about production?
As I mentioned in the opening, of course, for a top prospect with great stuff, Kyle Drabek hasn’t done a whole lot in the way of phenomenal production in his career. In 1 1/2 years in Double-A, he’s got a 3.86 FIP, which is nice, but nothing to get all worked up about. Just for a matter of reference, top pitching prospect Julio Teheran had a 3.30 FIP in Double-A this year…and he’s three years younger than Drabek.
In particular, the biggest problem for Drabek has been his K/BB ratio, which stands at an average-ish 208/99 in his Double-A career. Furthermore, it declined from 76/31 in 2009 to 132/68 last season. He generally keeps the ball in the park–21 homers in 258 1/3 Double-A innings–but he needs to make serious gains from his Double-A K/BB to be an ace. That’s my big hangup on him.
The same situation crops up with Kyle Heckathorn. Despite his big frame, plus velocity, hard slider, and playable changeup, he’s struck out just 105 batters in 146 1/3 career innings. That’s made everyone rush to give him the “fourth starter” label.
However, Heckathorn actually has shown far better control than Drabek, walking just 37 batters in those 146 1/3 innings. Drabek has walked 3.4 batters per nine over his minor league career, while Heckathorn’s issued free passes at just a 2.3/9 rate. Drabek does make up for this somewhat by getting more strikeouts per nine–7.5 to 6.5–but with a walk rate 47% higher and a homer rate 75% higher, a strikeout rate 15% higher isn’t fantastic.
So what justification is there for arguing that Drabek is several echelons above Heckathorn as a prospect? If they have similar stuff and similarly underwhelming numbers, either they are both about to break out, or they are both destined to be mid-to-back-of-the-rotation starters.
One point in Drabek’s favor is that he’s just six months older than Heckathorn, yet he spent 2010 in Double-A and the big leagues while Heckathorn was in Low-A and High-A. Fair enough, but given his college background, you have to cut Heckathorn some slack, and he was just a level behind Drabek in August.
Each of the Kyles have points in their favor. Drabek is more proven, he has a better breaking ball, a bit more peak velocity, and a higher strikeout rate. Heckathorn is bigger and more durable, has a better changeup, and walks fewer batters.
I can see why someone would consider Drabek the better prospect–if they value his strengths and discount his weaknesses more than Heckathorn’s, it makes sense. But for just about every prospect evaluator to put hundreds of prospects between them in rankings? I just don’t get it. Either you buy the upside of the stuff of these guys, or you latch onto the mediocre strikeout numbers and peg them as back-of-the-rotation starters. It’s very strange that Drabek’s specific combination elicits so much praise, while Heckathorn’s earns a collective yawn.