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 Cardinals swingman Maikel Cleto.
Nobody in the major leagues in 2011 threw harder than Maikel Cleto, a 22-year-old righthanded minor league starter who made three relief apperances with St. Louis. Cleto, who saw time at three minor league levels and ranked as my #85 prospect on my postseason top 100, allowed five runs in his first inning of work in the big leagues before allowing just one over his next 3 1/3. Overall, he struck out six, walked four, and allowed two home runs in 4 1/3.
Cleto worked at 96-101 mph out of the big league bullpen, averaging a whopping 98.4 mph with his fastball–0.4 mph above Henry Rodriguez‘s second-place 98.0. As if that weren’t impressive enough, he also gets good life on the pitch, as it has some two-seam action on it even at its highest velocities.
Of course, Cleto likely wouldn’t be throwing 101 mph this regularly in the rotation, but it’s safe to assume that he’d sit in the 95-96 range even then–most pitchers pick up 1-3 mph moving from starting to relief, leaving 93-98 as Cleto’s “worst” case scenario.
The question with Cleto has always been how his command will be. He made it through High-A and Double-A with surprisingly low walk rates, but then walked 43 batters in 71 1/3 innings in Triple-A, something which will need to be tightened if he’s going to remain in the starting rotation long-term. Here’s where he put his fastball to righthanders in his brief big league tenure:
That’s competent enough–he kept the ball down decently and worked both sides of the plate to some extent. With Cleto’s velocity and movement, that’s good enough–64.5% of these went for strikes, and batters fouled the pitch off nearly twice as often as they put the ball in play. Against lefties, the story is different:
That’s a lot of balls, for one thing, at just a 56.8% strike rate. For another, Cleto doesn’t come inside on southpaws at all with the fastball. That’s not exactly an uncommon strategy, and it makes sense to use for a lot of pitchers. But this is a guy with as intimidating of a fastball as they come, and to me, he’s wasting the opportunity to make lefthanders feel uncomfortable by working them away. If they can turn around triple-digit heat on the inner half, make them prove they can. When they did make contact with the fastball, lefties put it in play more than they fouled it off, which is telling.
Even as an MLB reliever, Cleto made extensive use of his two secondary pitches: an 82-86 mph power curveball and 90-93 mph changeup. We can see that the curveball’s shape was very inconsistent:
Still, though, in the 28 breaking balls he threw, Cleto drew six swinging strikes (21.4%). The pitch can be devastating with its late, tight break when he stays on top of the ball, and improved consistency with the offering would make it a true plus pitch to go with the fastball.
Cleto’s changeup is thrown so hard that Pitch F/X classified it as a two-seam fastball (see the above graph). It has some huge run and sink on the pitch, making it a splitter-like weapon. He seemed to use it as an in-the-dirt-chase pitch exclusively:
The huge running action on the pitch actually got the one on the top left to be called a strike, and three of the other six were swung on–all three swings came up empty.
Clearly, this is a dynamic three-pitch mix for Cleto–the only question is going to be how often he can put it in the strike zone. Fastball command is going to be huge for him, because if he can reliably get ahead in the count with the heater, hitters are going to have no chance. With this sort of arsenal, Cleto has an absolutely huge ceiling, and we shouldn’t forget that he’s just 22 years old and has plenty of time to refine his command. His inconsistency in the minors has made him a rather well-kept secret, but he’s definitely a pitcher to keep an eye on.
For more on the Cardinals, check out Redbird Rants!
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