Jul 10, 2016; San Diego, CA, USA; USA pitcher Phil Bickford throws a pitch during the All Star Game futures baseball game at PetCo Park. Mandatory Credit: Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports
The Milwaukee Brewers acquired RHP Phil Bickford from the San Francisco Giants in a deadline deal. What kind of pitcher did they get?
Who Is He?
Bickford was drafted out of high school in Virginia by the Toronto Blue Jays #10 overall in 2013, but he chose instead to go to Junior College at Southern Nevada and was selected as the #18 overall selection in the 2015 draft by the San Francisco Giants. The Giants sent the 19 year-old to their Arizona Rookie League team, and he made 10 starts, throwing 22 1/3 innings, sporting a 2.01 ERA, 0.85 WHIP, and 6/32 BB/K ratio. In spite of those gaudy numbers, none of the “big 3” services ranked Bickford in their top prospects in baseball. However, John Sickels at Minor League Ball rated Bickford #53 overall coming into the season.
The Giants started Bickford in full-season A-ball Augusta of the South Atlantic League this year. He was promoted to high-A San Jose in the Cal League before the trade to the Milwaukee Brewers where he’s joined their high-A club in Brevard County of the Florida State League. Overall on the season, he’s made 18 starts, throwing 97 2/3 innings, allowing a 2.76 ERA and 1.06 WHIP with a 29/110 BB/K ratio. In midseason rankings, Bickford had gotten some notoriety, moving all the way up to #50 on Baseball America’s list and #61 on MLB.com’s list.
Bickford is listed as 6’4 and 200 pounds. I’d say that’s pretty spot on, and he is probably mature in his frame as he is, due to being fairly long and wiry without a lot of room for extra weight on his frame.
One of the things I noted in each of the starts he had is that Bickford works his warmup pitches from the stretch after about 3-4 wind up throws, which is a rare thing. Bickford works from the first base side of the rubber with an easy motion that he coils his lead leg back just an extra tick to add extra explosion toward the plate.
He stays tall into his motion until he gets his landing leg down, which is when you see him really extend well. Bickford does very well keeping in line with his motion and, in the starts I saw, he rarely had issues with his landing leg getting off-line. At 6’4, he has long legs and arms, and he uses those both well to get good extension toward the plate, releasing the ball nearly right over his landing foot, which is a pretty remarkable push forward.
Bickford works from a 3/4 arm slot, and this was one thing I did notice early in the season was a bit of an issue. He struggled with dropping his arm slot a bit at times when he was trying to generate movement on all of his pitches early in the season. As the season has worn on, he’s done much better at maintaining his arm slot.
Pitches
Bickford has a three pitch mix. His primary pitch is a fastball that sits 89-93 and touches upper 90s in bullpen and short-inning usage. He has excellent control of the pitch, though at times his command of it can waver some. His habit is to miss into the zone, making the pitch more hittable. Multiple reports this spring have come out about Bickford’s reduced velocity, and he has seen a down tick to hovering around the 90 MPH level as a starter, but he uses location so well and gets such great extension in his delivery that the ball does seem to come at hitters faster, and it has a weight that you would expect more from a sinker than a true fastball.
Interestingly, one of the things I noted in the viewings I had of Bickford is that the fastball was his primary pitch early on in the season, and he was spotting it all around the zone. As the season has worn on and his other pitches have seemed to play up, he’s worked the fastball more and more low in the zone, spotting it up in the zone only for a change of eye level, but I’ve also noted the command of the pitch is much better low in the zone than it is from the belt line on up in the zone, though his control remains excellent throughout.
His breaking pitch of choice is a slider. It has a wide plane of velocity depending on whether or not he’s “on” with it. In his “bad” days, it sits more in the 79-81 range, but when he’s on, it’s more 82-84. This is something I caught in both of his off speed pitches – if you saw him early, you didn’t like his secondary stuff. If I were grading the slider in the two April starts I watched, I’d have graded him with a 35-40 present slider and perhaps a 50 future. However, in the starts I saw of Bickford in July and August, the slider had much more hard break in the bottom of the zone, and I’d give that slider a 45-50 present and 55-60 future grade.
One of the things to also understand in both the slider and in the change up that I’m about to review is that both have added break as the season has worn on. I can’t identify anything in his delivery that is different now than early in the season, and in pausing his video at various points and zooming in, I don’t really catch anything in the grip or twist of his hand in delivering the ball. It very well could be a pressure thing in how he’s holding the ball pressure-wise, or it could be as simple as the heat having an effect on the movement of his pitches. Whatever it is, it is notable that early on in the season, his control of the secondary stuff was spot on, and he was around the zone with it frequently, but as the break has increased, he’s missing the zone with both pitches more often, leading to higher walk totals, but I’m not concerned at all about those raw numbers once I saw how they were happening.
Last, but certainly not least, he has a changeup. He can get very good separation from the fastball in the upper 70s in velocity, but he has a habit of over throwing the pitch, resulting in more of an mid-80s MPH range giving a little bit of separation. Once again, if you saw the change early, you’d easily have him tagged as a future reliever and very possibly throw a pure 20 (or “unusable”) tag on the pitch. I wouldn’t say it’s a 50 present as the season’s worn on by any means, but what I was seeing in his July and August starts would be a solid 40, if not a 45 present pitch with a lot of ceiling to it.
His change breaks well to the arm side, and he does get good deception in arm speed with the pitch. He did have a tell early on in the season by my viewing on the change in that his extension was greater on his fastball and slider toward the plate, and when he pushed toward the plate with the change, he seemed to come up short in comparison, which is a tiny thing, but it’d be that tiny tell that could help a professional hitter identify what was coming. That was definitely gone in the later starts I saw, and the velocity had lowered quite a bit, sitting from 78-81 in the last game I saw, which gave him a solid 10 MPH separation from the fastball.
Bickford has a repertoire and approach reminiscent of one of my favorite pitchers, a guy very underappreciated in his own era (partially due to his poor fortune to play for Dusty Baker, but that’s another article on its own), Ryan Dempster. Dempster was a guy who went quickly from a workhorse starter with the Marlins to the Cubs’ closer, then into the Cubs’ rotation before finishing his career with the Red Sox (and abruptly retiring and leaving $13M+ on the table).
Dempster was a guy who did walk more than you’d like and probably more than you’d see Bickford doing, but similarly, he had control more than he had command, and while Bickford tends to miss his spots into the zone, Dempster would miss his just off the plate. While many might see that as a pretty low expectation for Bickford, but as Fangraphs so eloquently narrated when he retired, Dempster had a very, very good career that should not be overlooked by any means.
There are two things that click for me between Dempster and Bickford. First is the fastball. Bickford’s heavy fastball has the same sort of weight as Dempster’s always had. His fastball was absolutely Dempster’s best weapon in his career. The other is their demeanor on the mound. Some people like a guy to get fired up and go nuts on the mound. Others prefer a pitcher to be completely calm and manage all emotions. Dempster on the mound always gave the latter. Well, unless he was going after Alex Rodriguez, but that’s once again another article for another day. The Brewers should do back flips if they end up with a second coming of Dempster out of Bickford.
Bickford’s uptick in performance as the season has played on has really shown the variability in his simple three pitch mix. He could use an additional pitch or further refinement of his change up to take that next step. One consideration I would consider due to his extension toward the plate would be using either a split finger fastball or a true sinker. With his excellent drive toward the plate, he could get great drop on either pitch, and it would really compliment his other mix already in place.
