Brandon Beachy Impressing
May 1, 2011 at 4:44 am by Ben Duronio under Atlanta Braves, Site News
Note: I’m very pleased and excited to announce that Ben Duronio is going to be contributing to CAC regularly. You’ve probably read something Ben has written even if you don’t know it, he’s contributed to several online outlets over the past few years. Most recently he worked for ESPN Stats and Info Group. I’m confident you’ll enjoy his work and it’s great to have another excellent writer aboard. You can read more about Ben at the bottom of this page.
Note about the note: We’re still working on getting his email address operational, I’ll let you know when that occurs.
Brandon Beachy has looked a lot better than most expected. Each of the team’s starters has pitched very well, but Beachy’s performance has probably been the most surprising – depending on what exactly you think of Jair Jurrjens.
The notion that his stuff is ordinary or marginally better than that has been, more-or-less, disproven. He currently has the hardest average fastball of any starter on the team. Not that the Braves are full of flame throwing starters, but this is a relatively surprising number. Despite averaging close to 92 mph with his four-seamer, the placement and command of the pitch is probably the biggest reason for his success to date. The combination of four-seam command and power, as well as being able to control his secondary offerings, are rare attributes for a starter with as little experience as Brandon has.
His mound presence, maturity, and pitching intelligence all seem to be positive qualities as well. These are intangible assets, but are assets that good pitchers often have.
In terms of tangible assets, he has also graded out well. A 36-10 K/BB ratio is astounding and unexpected. Typically, a 2-1 ratio is solid. In all but one start, Beachy has struck out at least twice as many batters as he has walked. Expanding on that number, he has walked more than two batters in only one appearance. This is through six starts over 36.1 innings, which is roughly 20% of his expected innings total. This does not seem to be the product of a small sample size.
Of the other four qualified rookie starters, Michael Pineda, Zach Britton, Kyle Drabek, and Jeremy Hellickson, Beachy’s 3.60 K/BB ratio is by far the best. All of those pitchers, aside from Beachy, were ranked as top 30 overall prospects by Baseball America entering the season. His ERA is a far cry from Pineda’s 2.01 mark or Britton’s 2.84, but if he is able to sustain similar strikeout and walk rates, he would be more likely to sustain a high level of success than the other aforementioned pitchers – all things being equal.
One worry is the amount of home runs he has allowed. In four of the six starts he has made, a homer has been hit. However, Buster Posey, Rickie Weeks, and Gaby Sanchez are all quality hitters – Brian Schneider hit the other and he most certainly is not. Beachy had no home run problems at any minor league stop – his next home run allowed will tie him for most in any season – so more experience at this level may be the easiest way to cure the only weakness that has been apparent in his short Major League tenure.
Surprisingly, he has performed as well as any of the top rookie pitchers in baseball. Aside from a small expected rise in his balls in play average, a large regression is not foreseeable.
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“His mound presence, maturity, and pitching intelligence all seem to be positive qualities as well. These are intangible assets, but are assets that good pitchers often have.”
So very true. In my observation, guys who come up from this team’s system tend to have that set of attributes a bit more than most other teams. It seems to be something the organization works to cultivate.
Ben: welcome! I’ve enjoyed your comments, so it’s nice to see that you’ve joined the crew!
Based on your post, are you thinking Beachy might be better than earlier projections (#4 type starter) and would you view him as a potential “keeper” (rather than trade bait) as some of the arms in the minors begin arriving?
congrats ben. Glad to be regularly reading fuller contributions from you.
@2
I think you have to make the decision of return v. what you think you Beachy will provide long term. I think the reason Beachy probably is now less trade bait than before is not necessarily because he’s playing better, but because it seems like other teams probably don’t value him as highly as the Braves do, who have seen him more than any other team.
I will say that after this last start, I finally have Beachy ever so slightly edging out Minor in my pitching rankings. He had been steadily inching closer and closer to Minor and the last start finally pulled him ahead of Minor as a long term and short term prospect, IMHO.
The Braves haven’t even over 500. since they were 3-2 all the way back on April 5th, the Braves are losing right now, and yet they’re still perfoming totally light out pitching by giving up just 3 or less in so many of their games and I’ m totally 100% sure they will flip that switch after the All-Star break and especially August.GO BRAVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BRAVESNATION4EVER,
I’m happy that you’re alive.
BD,
Welcome aboard, sir. You write good, lucid stuff, and I look forward to seeing more of it.
I second Jeff H.’s questions as well, despite fjrabon’s apposite remarks. If he’s a legit 2 or 3, why not keep him? A 2013 front four of Teheran, Delgado, Beachy, and Minor sounds sweet to my ears. Knowing nothing of their individual characters, perhaps they’d ‘buy in’ Phillies style and embrace coming up together and pitching together on a ‘superstaff.’ We could buy bats rather than pitchers for a while, yadda, yadda. A boy can dream, right?
Finally, is it too soon to worry about Kimbrel?
Everyone was totally worried about Tommy Hanson and so much for those totally meaningless worries, especially when he destroyed those San Diego Padres 7-0 in his last start- not to mention we will be getting back Kris Medlen in August from Tommy John surgery all the way from last August. GO BRAVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tom Brady and Matt Cassel weren’t projected to have high ceilings, but they ended up being very productive players. I am not saying Beachy will ever be on Brady’s level, but a player with such little experience and such good results could end up at any end of the spectrum.
I don’t think anyone can pinpoint exactly what Beachy’s ceiling is just yet. This is why I would not trade him, at least not for a while. There is a very good chance that whatever is brought back in return could be less than equal value in the long run.
The important thing is that a decision on whether to trade him does not need to be made for quite some time. This will all work itself out eventually. If he keeps pitching as he has, the Braves would probably like to hold on to him.
And no, there is not a reason to worry about Kimbrel. He is a great pitcher and has still maintained solid command so far. If that starts to disappear and his strikeouts are not coming as high as they were at the end of last year or start to this year, then there may be reason to worry.
He was due to have some hits land. His BABIP was .222 two days ago and now it is .308.
The league is adjusting to Kimbrel and will adjust to Beachy. Let’s see how those two adjust back.
To me, Beachy seems homer prone and Kimbrel too lovey dovey with the fastball.
If George Sherrill is only trusted to pitch to pitchers, then he shouldn’t be on the roster.
The Cardinals had 2 LHBs up in the top of the 7th and Sherrill had thrown only 3 pitches.
That move did not make sense to me either. No reason to have someone on a roster who was brought in to face lefties but is taken out with two lefties due up. Not that Sherrill is ineffective, because he does have his uses against left-handed hitters, but he is redundant due to EOF and Venters.
Braves best win it in the ninth – Kimbrel on a third straight day and Martinez (who hasn’t pitched since Tuesday) is all we got left in the BP.
Roger McDowell stays! http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6460840
Beachy is going to be a good 4th starter. He is doing so well now because nobody is familiar with him. His fastball is straight as an arrow, and he will give up lots of HRs. His success with depend on not walking guys so those HRs only cost him 1 run rather than 2-3 runs.
IMO, he is the ideal sell high candidate. If some other team values him as a 2-3 starter, then trade him this offseason along with JJ.
If other teams only value him as a back of the rotation starter, then hold on to him at least until he starts to get expensive through arbitration. Cheap #4 starters are still valuable things to keep around.