Let’s be the 2023 Pirates at 1–1: Take the Best Collegiate Pitcher, or “It‘s Complicated!”
Having already outlined the simplest route of selecting the top collegiate position player on our draftboard we can now assess the feasibility of choosing our top collegiate pitcher instead. Once again we will rely on the FaBIO model and its 12 general plate appearance outcome types (BB+HBP, K, IFFB, Pull OFFB, Center OFFB, Oppo OFFB, Pull LD, Center LD, Oppo LD, Pull GB, Center GB, Oppo GB) to generate Ratings that express how well that pitcher avoided expected runs per batter faced (Overall Rating) or per batted ball (Batted Ball Profile Rating) and else collected favorable (IFFB, Pull GB,…) and avoided unfavorable outcomes (Pull OFFB, Pull LD, Center LD, Oppo LD, BB+HBP) per batted ball else plate appearance over various season samples (97th percentile amounts to plus plus, 84th is plus, 69th is half plus, 50th is average, 31st is half minus, 16th is minus, 3rd is minus minus).
There is little mystery that this pitcher is Paul Skenes of LSU.
Skenes’ college baseball career began in the spring of 2021 at Air Force where he was a two-player who caught semiregularly else pitched in relief averaging 6 batters per game. Over those 110 batters, the pitcher posted a mere 99 Overall Rating while already topping plus at all three of the core FaBIO fundamentals of Control (85 Ctl), Strikeouts (94 K), and Batted Ball Profile (93). That 93 Batted Ball Profile was earned via a groundball pathway (98 GB, 35 IFFB, 97 LD Avoid, 89 OFFB Avoid, 76 PullOFFB Avoid) which made sense what with Air Force’s ballpark situated at an altitude of about 7000 feet in the shadows of Pike’s Peak. Skenes would DH and pitch that summer in the Cape Cod Baseball League and post a more pedestrian 53 Overall 26 Ctl/67 K/48 Batted Ball Profile over 41 batters faced (BF) at 8 BF/G.
Skenes became a full-time starting pitcher in 2022 around else splitting almost full-time batting between designated hitting and catching (imagine the next time you put eyes on the hulking 6'6" 245+ pound Skenes that he caught 12 games in 2022). The FaBIO profile dipped slightly over 355 BF at 24 BF/G but Skenes would remain almost plus plus Overall (96) via a 62 Ctl/95 K/85 Batted Ball Profile route while still groundballing but not as much (82 GB, 72 IFFB, 69 LD Avoid, 91 OFFB Avoid, 80 Pull OFFB Avoid) as in 2021. Skenes trained that summer around a pair of scoreless four-frame mound starts domestically and abroad with the USA Collegiate National Team and eventually announced a transfer to LSU for the 2022–2023 academic year.
The rest of the story you know mostly. Skenes would enter the College World Series with a 100 Overall Rating that topped all other D1 SP qualifiers. Control Rating had spiked to 98 from its low of 62 in ’22. The (obvious) 100 K Rating is 4.4 standard deviations (quadruple to quintiple plus, which places him in the vicinity of a MLB RHSP that will turn up a few more times in the rest of this article) above average relative to SP peers who faced the same teams. Beyond the greater effectiveness of his slider at swamp level the otherworldy strikeout results were fueled by adopting more of a four-seams-up fastball approach as evidenced by 39 GB and 16 OFFB Avoid Ratings that starkly contrast with what preceded them at Air Force. The drop of Batted Ball Profile to 67 for the newly-flyballing righty is an offshoot of that he neither overly collected infielder flyballs (a “too low for that many flyballs in general” 56 IFFB is FaBIO’s detection of the “fastball shape concerns” that you’ll often see discussed on Twitter) nor overly avoided line drives (nearly plus 83 LD Avoid is what keeps his Batted Ball Profile safely north of 50) or pull-third outfield flyballs (44 Pull OFFB Avoid).
Skenes sports a favorable reverse-splits bias common to MLB’s top starters with 96 to 100 (x2) Oppo-Handed Batters Overall Ratings over three D1 seasons (that for the near term should quell any concerns over his lightly used changeup receiving fairly average grades) aside Same-Handed Overalls of 88, 85, and (most recently) 100 (that he’s never rated under plus against Same-Handers is still more auspicious).
The last college righthanded starter to top the D1 FaBIO Overall Rating scales and be drafted first among them was also-an-SECer Casey Mize in 2018. Mize indeed went 1–1 then and was bonused near 93% of slot ($7.5 million bonus versus $8.1 million slot). So let’s inspect the FaBIO lines from their draft years in the table below that also details how much physically larger Skenes is than Mize.
Against all comers each has the same Overall (100), Ctl (98), and K (100) Ratings and a Batted Ball Profile Rating in the average to half plus range. But 2018 Mize better resembles groundballing 2022 Air Force Skenes per his Path to Batted Ball Profile elements. Mize then heavily relied on a splitter that both biased his OFFB contact earlier and upped ISO risk. 2023 Skenes is more of a classic power righty who leans much more on a slider than changeups (or splitters) and that and his upper 90s velocity allows him to better bias OFFB away from the ISO-biased pull-third. But else Mize has to be the logical historical frame of reference when projecting Skenes into the 1–1 position.
The one area where Skenes very overachieved in his spectacular 2023 is in Rating 93 at (avoiding) ISO (extra bases) on Batted Balls while allowing relatively many outfield flyballs and pull-third outfield flyballs per batted ball (16 OFFB Avoid, 44 Pull OFFB Avoid). From the perspective that the four-seam is not ideally shaped for repeated use up in the zone I would argue that he is unnecessarily exposing himself to too much ISO risk now and his pro development would ideally restore a moderate (think half plus or so) groundball bias to the batted ball profile by sinking the baseball more often than trying to ride it. The also flame-throwing Jacob deGrom, too, has shifted over the years from a relative groundballing to flyballing bias and like Skenes might also be better served to manage aerial risk better and more so in the context of postseason than regular season play. In both cases the more complete and efficient version of the pitcher probably groundballs more and strikes out less.
It’s in the medicals where the evaluation of Paul Skenes as a 1–1 candidate gets complicated. Much of the local appeal lay in how difficult it is for us in an unsexier-to-outsiders Pittsburgh market to sign top-tier free agent starting pitchers. As a 1–1 candidate who is a collegiate pitcher Skenes is more likely to have preferences for where he plays professionally than a comparable collegiate position player would (whereas a prepper is disproportionately focused on the college versus pro decision). Among what we must assess is his relative interest in us beyond money.
Our first read on that is how cooperative he and his draft advisor are in easing our arm, and more specifically elbow, concerns ahead of the draft. Maybe mid-90s-fastballed Casey Mize’s elbow was an issue on two fronts in June 2018 in that he had a prior shutdown due to a right elbow-forearm flexor strain and relied so much on a splitter that could jeopardize survival of the elbow’s ulnar collateral ligament. As luck would have it Mize is now rehabbing from Tommy John (and back surgery in its aftermath) some five years later. In the case of Skenes, our own internal biomechanical assessment adds a delivery flag or two to upper 90s velocity as the known risk factors for Tommy John surgery. Above and beyond this preliminary internal assessment we must be granted access to recent imaging of Skenes’ elbow (we’d love to see the shoulder, too, but won’t go there for now if at all prior to the draft) if we are to make him a 1–1 offer. Perhaps more important than assessing the current status of the elbow we need to rule out the presence of any anomaly that could jeopardize the outcome of a future Tommy John surgery. If his camp is unwilling to supply these records, we simply move on under the assumption that their expert orthopaedic consultants have already seen something untoward and/or he prefers to sign elsewhere. Recent imaging deemed reviewable by us is most likely to hold our present valuation else raise it some (“Man, that UCL is even thicker than we would have guessed for a guy this big!”).
Ultimately we probably assume that Skenes would be available to serve as a starting pitcher for 5.5 to 6.0 years of the 7.0 years of MLB club control. And further that if he materializes into the kind of MLB starter we project (strikeout getter who also induces groundballs to minimize aerial risk; there are no guarantees as even the then strikeouts-via-splitters-mostly Mize was a weak-contact-first SP in his last full MLB season with a rather inverse ordering of his 2018 D1 Ctl/K/Batted Ball Profile trio), we will struggle to retain his services beyond those initial years of club control (are we trading him before then if not postseason-relevant? what free-agent-departure draft compensation might we receive based on that seasons’ collective bargaining agreement?).
Via a deGrom-ian “he’ll be so good and valuable when he does start that we won’t sweat any prolonged absence” logic we could assume a full year plus lost to Tommy John and still value Paul Skenes just above a 1–2 slot bonus of $9.0 million (we would exceed the 93% of slot that Mize got under the right circumstances). Should a bidding war erupt from that opening bid, we probably bow out once our competitive bidding has emptied a sizable volume from the bonus pool of whichever club behind us ultimately lands him. At that stage we just prefer signing our top collegiate position player and being able to keep him beyond the seven years of MLB club control or underslotting a prep position player at 1–1 in order to land 2 of the top 12 to 20 prospects on our magnetic whiteboard, knowing also that the 1–1 player will be an everyday regular who is highly unlikely to (ever) lose a full calendar year to Tommy John surgery or another injury.
Is There a Backup 1–1 Plan Involving a Collegiate Pitcher?
There are a few candidates worth vetting.
Tennessee’s Chase Dollander is a classic 4-seams up pitcher who has singly used his fastball that way as a collegian (includes a Georgia Southern freshman year) much like a classic power relief K specialist does. His best profile fundamental beyond the strikeout (98 K Rating in ’23 after a 100 in ’22) is control (84 Control Rating in ’23 after a 96 in ‘22). Dollander has the velocity to bias his OFFB late like Skenes and gets more IFFB than Skenes but not an overly high rate of them (unlike a Cristian Javier, say); Dollander might be relatively singles prone by extreme flyballer standards in that he has not avoided line drives all that well over his 3 seasons combined. To take him at 1–1 would require a more diverse fastball arsenal which produced a stouter batted ball profile (’23: 51 Batted Ball Profile, 85 IFFB, 42 LD Avoid, 41 Pull OFFB Avoid; 42 AVG & 28 ISO on Batted Balls).
Transfer Hurston Waldrep declined somewhat from a 100 Overall Southern Mississippi sophomore to a 97 Overall Florida junior. K Rating dipped but a single point from 100 to 99 but Control fell from half plus to average while Batted Ball Profile tumbled from double to half plus (AVG & ISO of Batted Balls were each just above average). The decline in Batted Ball Profile came with a shift from a groundball-flyball-neutral 2022 batted ball profile (45 GB, 44 OFFB Avoid) to groundball-heavy 2023 one (94 GB, 88 OFFB Avoid); while IFFB expectedly declined so too did LD Avoid and Pull OFFB Avoid despite far fewer batted balls with upward trajectories. Overuse of a splitter considered among the best in college baseball also raises some concerns beyond simply injury risk as that pitch stands to appear not nearly so foreign to major league batters as it does to collegiate ones. That choice seems still more questionable given that he can spin a breaker near 3300 rpm (about 1000 rpm above average). Coming off a season in which both the fastball arsenal and offspeed arsenal changed in ways deemed unfavorable by us casts Waldrep as more of a pro development project than we would prefer at 1–1, even at a sizeable underslot bonus.
Instead our backup collegiate pitcher at 1–1 will be Rhett Lowder of Wake Forest, who under the microscope of FaBIO would have to be this college draft class’ most complete starting pitcher. That distinction (and the 4th-highest 100 Overall Rating) was earned by being one of only four (of 788 total) D1 SP qualifiers to rate fully plus at all three of Control (93), K (98), and Batted Ball Profile (94) and comfortably so in his case.
The main hangup with Lowder at 1–1 is that he leans changeup over slider in terms of best offspeed pitch, and that has the righthander more of a fastball-reliant groundball-biased weak contact inducer (94 Batted Ball Profile) than whiff generator (86 K Rating) versus same-handed batters. His viability as a 1–1 candidate grows if we can collectively gain confidence in our farm system’s capacity to improve that above-average spinning (2500+ rpm) breaker into a superior RHB finisher that rates fully plus. Pick 1–6 ($6.6M slot) to 1–7 ($6.3M slot) is about as high as Lowder (who would require some measure of arm health study, too) could be bonused at slot so for us he gets offered just above $7.0M, netting us around $2.5M in savings to help steer a top prepper down to our 2–42 spot. The 1–1 candidacy of Lowder hinges on a combination of how our Skenes negotiations progress and similar underslot discussions play out with a variety of top prep favorites, as I will outline in the next part of this series.