Milwaukee Brewers Scouting Report On RHP Phil Bickford
Scouting Report
Size/Stature/Delivery
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.
Video
Next: Future Outlook