Astros’ Martes, Brewers’ Hader crack top 100 rankings
The Houston Astros and Milwaukee Brewers both have pitchers who broke into top prospect rankings before the 2016 season.
MLB.com came out with its new list of top 100 prospects a week ago, and I’ve been familiarizing myself with the list. Most of the top 100 are holdovers from the 2015 mid-season update, but there are a few new names on the list.
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Two such players, both of them pitchers, immediately caught my attention. One is Houston Astros prospect Francis Martes, while the other is the Brewers’ Josh Hader. Martes is crashing the rankings party after a breakout 2015 where he combined for a 2.04 ERA and 3.5 strikeout-to-walk-ratio in 101 2/3 innings between three levels. Hader had a similar emergence, although his move into the rankings wasn’t quite as dramatic—Hader sits at 61 in MLB.com’s rankings and isn’t on Baseball Prospectus’s list while Martes is No. 41 in MLB.com and No. 63 for BP. Hader had a combined 3.03 ERA and 3.4 K/BB in 104 innings between Advanced-A and Double A.
Martes has drawn comparisons to Astros rookie Lance McCullers for his performance at similar levels of the minors and to Luis Tiant and Johnny Cueto for the mechanics of his delivery. First, let’s address the McCullers comparison: Here are each pitcher’s career numbers through their first three minor league seasons (according to FanGraphs):
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And here are videos of Martes and Cueto for a visual comparison (it seems like the best looks are at 0:32 and 0:46 during the Cueto clip).
Hader was briefly mentioned in my post a few days ago concerning the state of the Brewers’ remodel plans. Hader used to pitch in the same farm system as Martes before the Astros dealt him to the Brewers as part of the Carlos Gomez trade. He didn’t jump as high into the rankings as Martes, but his body of work is no less impressive: He won the 2014 California League Pitcher of the Year, transitioned seamlessly to Double-A, has a career 2.95 ERA and he was one of five Brewers prospects in the top 100 KATOH projections by FanGraphs.
While Hader has only made seven starts in Double-A, MLB.com says “some scouts believe he could made an impact out of the bullpen as soon as 2016…” Hader has made 58 starts and 32 relief appearances as a minor leaguer, so there is a decent body of work from which to glean info on how he performs in each role:
[table id=26 /]
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Hader appears to be a steadier pitcher in the starter role and more of a high-risk-high-reward reliever. He has the skills to do both, but it’s fairly obvious that the Brewers are grooming him to be a starter. One explanation for all of those relief appearances is that the Brewers are trying to conserve innings on Hader’s young arm; another is that the Brewers are legitimately considering using him as reliever in the majors in 2016 and turning him into a starter further down the road, much like the White Sox did with Chris Sale.
Stats from FanGraphs.com and Baseball-Reference.com