Mauricio Cabrera: The Flamethrower Worth Looking Out For
Hint: he could be the next closer for the Atlanta Braves.
When you go to Statcast.com and search for all of the fastest pitches thrown in a given year, there’s an option to keep all of the Aroldis Chapman pitches visible or filter them out of the search. When you filter Chapman’s pitches out, you might think that Statcast ought to add a second filter.
Chapman’s average pitch speed in 2016 came out at 100.9 miles per hour. Second on the list: Mauricio Cabrera at 100.6 mph.
Cabrera is just 23 years old and pitched in 38.1 innings last year with the Atlanta Braves. In 2015, Cabrera coasted through the rookie league, made 23 cameo appearances in High-A, then finished the year in Double-A. After his 38th career game with the Mississippi Braves, Cabrera leapfrogged Triple-A and held a steady role with the Braves from late June of 2016 until the end of the season. Without getting major attention, Cabrera struck out 32 batters, walked 19, out-performed his FIP of 3.04 with an ERA of 2.82 and didn’t allow a home run.
Jim Johnson was recently knighted with the closer role, giving Cabrera de facto eighth-inning duties. Johnson, with a better K/9 rate than Cabrera (Johnson 9.46, Cabrera 7.51), was the closer last year for the Braves, ending the year with 20 saves. This is going to be, at least, the situation for the Braves to start the year. Going forward, it all depends on how much value Cabrera presents and how the Braves plan to maximize that value.
Something other than Cabrera’s really fast fastballs that makes him an amusing name is his range of pitches. The speed of his sinker also gets up into the triple-digits, his changeup averages into the low-90s and his slider sits in the mid-80s. It’s hard to tell if he actually throws a curve, too, but his slider moves like a curve anyways.
But you didn’t come here to read about those, did you? You’re here for the cheese. Let’s just focus on the stinky limburger for a moment.
According to BrooksBaseball.net, Cabrera threw his four-seamer 319 times and his sinker 137 times for a total of 457 hard-thrown pitches. In missing bats, he got 13 of his strikeouts by getting guys to reach, fish or golf their way into swinging at should-have-been balls on two-strike counts.
Out of Cabrera’s 644 pitches thrown with the Braves, 397 clocked at a minimum 100 mph, or 61.6 percent of his pitches. The fastest one was fired in at 103.5. Theoretically, knowing that most of his pitches hits triple digits with breaking stuff traveling nearly 20 mph slower should do some damage.
Here’s the one big problem with Cabrera: he issues too many walks.
On hard-thrown pitches alone, 277 finished outside of the zone and 180 in the zone. On all pitches, 389 finished outside of the zone with 250 thrown for strikes.
Last year with the Braves, Cabrera’s BB/9 rate was at 4.46 with 19 total walks on the year, 16 on the cheese. The percentage of walks given up per batter faced was 11.7 percent last year, a big improvement from his days in Double-A.
Cabrera’s statistics for walks are his best since rookie ball, but he didn’t compensate enough with the strikeouts.
Being the team’s closer, rightfully, is something baseball enjoyers roll their eyes at. The thing to look out for this year and the many years of Cabrera to come, isn’t what inning he pitches in, but what responsibilities he’ll have whenever he’s assigned to come in and get guys out.
Again, Cabrera is 23. He’ll be 24 in September. The Braves aren’t going to win many games this year, but they’ll give young players their big-league and minor-league reps to be better for 2018 and 2019. This pitcher is learning how to be effective in the majors and could be one less unanswered question moving forward. Something he’ll have to learn how to do is to throw pitches in the zone and get batters to swing and miss, especially with the heater.
