The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: Scott Diamond
By Aaron Somers
Many popular opinions of pitching prospects are formed from general scouting reports. While these reports are invaluable resources, they can’t always be trusted. Hundreds of minor league hurlers are credited with “mid-90′s velocity,” but very few MLB starters actually have that grade of heat, for example. It’s incredibly frustrating to hear about a pitcher with “a mid-90′s heater and plus curve,” only to have him come up to the big leagues and show a fastball that averages 90.5 mph and a slider.
When a pitcher come up to the majors, we can finally get a foolproof reading on what exactly his arsenal is comprised of, thanks to the great Pitch F/X system. In this series, I analyze just that–the “stuff” of recently-promoted MLB pitchers. Now that they’ve achieved their big league dreams and thus factor directly into the MLB picture, it’s high time that we know exactly what these guys are providing.
This time, I’m taking a look at Twins starter Scott Diamond.
Acquired in a widely panned trade for minor league reliever Billy Bullock before the 2011 season, Scott Diamond has nonetheless become a regular rotation member for the Twins in the second half of this season.
Billed as a finesse lefty in the minors, the 25-year-old wasn’t considered to have much of a big league upside. Baseball America credited his fastball with “86-91 mph” velocity before the season, and this is one of the few cases where the pitcher’s actual velocity has matched the scouting reports–Diamond’s averaged 88.8 mph with the pitch this season.
Much like Brad Hand, who I looked at earlier this week, Diamond gets very little sink on his fastball because he utilizes an extremely high arm slot. In fact, he’s releasing the ball from nearly a straight overhand angle, which makes his fastball extremely straight, much like Josh Collmenter‘s (fun fact: Collmenter, known for his straight-over-the-top arm angle, has averaged 0.00 inches of horizontal movement on his fastball this year).
Throwing in the upper 80’s with no sink or run seems like a dangerous proposition, and indeed, Diamond’s not getting huge results from his fastball (62% strike rate, 3.9% whiff rate).
There’s one big positive with Diamond’s fastball, though, compared to Hand’s or even Collmenter’s. Watch their deliveries, and see if you can spot it:
While all three utilize high arm angles and back shoulder drops, Diamond is the only one of the trio who gets his lower half involved enough to create downward plane to the plate. That allows him to attack the bottom of the zone, which shows up in the statline:
Hand: 28.6% GB
Collmenter: 32.8% GB
Diamond: 50.0% GB
Given that his fastball has absolutely no groundball-inducing properties, that’s a pretty impressive grounder rate. It’s brought about by the steep downhill plane he’s throwing on from his high overhand angle, and a mild proclivity to locate his heater down in the zone:
Diamond throws two other pitches: a slurvy breaking ball and a changeup. It’s the breaking ball that got a lot of praise as his best offering in the minors, but I’m having a hard time understanding why. It’s basically the definition of a slurve, as it breaks bigger and slower than most sliders but much shorter and faster than most curveballs.
In spite of the pitch’s underwhelming raw attributes, Diamond has used the breaking ball to great effect, as Pitch Type Linear Weights says it’s been 2.9 runs above average per 100 pitches (small sample!). The Pitch F/X data backs this up: Exactly 3/4 of Diamond’s breaking balls have gone for strikes, a whopping total for any pitch, let alone a breaking ball. Only 9.8% of them have drawn whiffs, which reflects the unimpressive movement, but Diamond does a nice job of backdooring righthanders with the pitch:
Diamond works exclusively with the fastball and breaking ball to lefthanders, and neither one is particularly effective. The heater doesn’t run in on lefties like most southpaw fastballs would, thanks to his high arm slot, and the breaking ball doesn’t have the pure break to drop into the zone from behind their backs, nor the bite to get them to chase. That leaves Diamond with a (again, small sample) severe reverse platoon split (7.42 FIP to LHB, 3.92 FIP to RHB).
It might be surprising that a finesse lefty could be so tough on righties, but it’s rather easily explained by the fact that Diamond’s changeup is a legitimate plus pitch. Yes, it’s under 6 mph slower than his fastball, averaging 83.0 mph, but unlike the fastball, the changeup gets some filthy horizontal run away from righties. With that sort of a difference in movement, the lack of velocity separation actually plays in Diamond’s favor–his changeup looks like a fastball, then picks up six inches of screwball break as it nears the plate.
That’s pretty lethal, and Diamond gets whiffs on an incredible 19% of his changeups. Here’s a crazy statistic: Of his 63 changeups, he’s gotten 32 strikes; exactly one was a called strike. As you can imagine, that means he throws a lot in the dirt as chase pitches, but Diamond is also not afraid to put the offspeed pitch in the zone down and away:
Taken as a whole, Diamond’s solid performance against right-handed batters looks legitimate. He’s able to drive his fastball down into the zone, backdoor his breaking ball for called strikes, and get batters to come up empty against his changeup. The question is if he’ll be able to get lefties out with enough consistency, and I’m not sure I see enough here for him to be able to do that. He hasn’t thrown a single changeup to a lefthander all season, and given that’s the only pitch of his that moves right-to-left, he might want to think about throwing it to his fellow lefties to give them a different look. He could also use a harder, shorter breaking ball–more of a true slider–to give him a weapon to lefthanders, or at least decrease his predictability to them.
There are some things to like about Diamond, but he also has flaws, and the 25-year-old isn’t the sort of pitcher who seems to have too much left to optimize. That leaves him as a competent back-of-the-rotation starter; while he’s not an earth-shaker, he’s exceeded my expectations and those of many others as well.
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