It doesn’t have to be one extreme or the other with Julio Teheran
January 30, 2013 at 11:01 am by Franklin Rabon under Atlanta Braves
One of the fallouts from the Braves’ blockbuster acquisition of Justin Upton has been that the spotlight, and pressure, seems to fall even more squarely on the shoulders of Julio Teheran. With the dealing of Randall Delgado in the package to Arizona, if the season started tomorrow, Teheran would basically be given the fifth starter position at least for the beginning of the year, as Brandon Beachy recovers from surgery. This increased spotlight has revealed a certain rift around those that follow the team. Many view Teheran as either a borderline bust or a premium prospect who has finally proven himself and ready to assume his rightful spot in the rotation.
Let’s first address the ‘bust’ angle. Julio Teheran just turned 22 years old a couple of days ago. The current darling prospect amongst many Braves fans, Evan Gattis, for example is four and a half years older than him. Had Gattis lived in Colombia at the time, he very well could have baby-sat Teheran. Yet, many Braves fans are perfectly fine with Gattis not being ready for MLB quite yet, but Teheran is a bust? It’s important to remember that Julio Teheran entered the Braves system at the age of seventeen. An age when many players are entering their junior year of high school. Due to the fact that Teheran has been talked about as a top prospect since the days when he still had to worry about outbreaks of acne, and hadn’t evan began to fathom shaving, prospect fatigue has set in for many casual observers. It’s important to remember that Stephen Strasburg is two years older than Julio Teheran.
On the other side of the debate, the notion that Teheran should just be given the spot is maybe equally absurd. Again, he’s young, and obviously still developing. Yes, he’s thrown a lot of innings in AAA already, but overall, they haven’t been terribly effective innings. In his two years in Gwinnett his strikeout to walk ratio has been a very middling 2.4. Last year his strikeouts per nine was more Jair Jurrjens than Clayton Kershaw, and he saw his homerun rate spike as well. All of these worrisome developments led to an ERA north of FIVE over the course of 26 starts, in AAA. Maybe he was bored with AAA, but is boredom an excuse for being pounded by hitters who are supposedly inferior to your talent level?
As has been well-documented, much of Teheran’s struggles last year came when he got into trouble he tried to overthrow, which led to what pitching mechanics gurus like Ethan call ‘dropping and driving’. Essentially you really stride hard forward and really drive off your legs, but this causes the plane you throw from to flatten out, resulting in a fastball with little movement, that may be a couple of mph faster, but is much more hittable and prone to running out over the middle of the plate. Much of this appeared to be ironed out by the time Braves scouts viewed him in the Dominican Winter League. But, I still think it’s a stretch to say that such a performance in the DWL has earned him much of anything. Teheran, if he wants to be the 5th starter, will have to carry that performance over into spring.
So, if Teheran hasn’t necessarily earned his spot yet, what are the Braves to do if he falls on his face again in spring training? Right now the options would be JR Graham, Sean Gilmartin and little known Daniel Rodriguez. The first two are generally considered to not quite yet be ready for MLB and the latter is a bit of an unknown former Mexican League pitcher who is already 28. None are exactly enticing options, as you’d like for Graham and Gilmartin to continue to develop at a natural pace, and we had hoped that depending on older former Mexican league pitchers had ended with tenure of Jorge Campillo.
One of the few upsides of including Martin Prado in the trade for Justin Upton (outside, of course, of getting Justin Upton) was that the Braves do have a bit more financial wiggle room than a prospects only trade for Upton would have afforded them. Thus the Braves could be in position to sign a guy like Javy Vazquez. The Nationals have shown interest in Vazquez already, and that was even before the idea that Gio Gonzalez could possibly face a 50 game suspension in the Miami PED scandal came to light. However, it doesn’t necessarily have to be Vazquez. It’s not terribly difficult to find fifth starters willing to prove themselves for a couple million in early spring training, and I’m sure Frank Wren has his ear to the ground. I don’t necessarily think that Teheran must have somebody to compete with him for the job, so to speak, but I do think the Braves need to have contingency plans that don’t involve JR Graham or Sean Gilmartin, and preferably not a 28 year old former Mexican League pitcher. I don’t believe that Teheran really needs competition to get motivated, because I think his past couple of years probably provide all the motivation he would need. If he ever did feel entitled to a rotation spot, struggling to get AAA hitters out likely washed much of that away.
Obviously the best case scenario is that Teheran comes in during spring training and is lights out and earns the fifth spot and even makes Maholm expendable at the trade deadline when Beachy returns. However, I don’t think that’s anywhere close to a given, and the Braves need to be fully prepared to deal with the possibility that such a dream scenario won’t play out. Luckily, they have the financial flexibility to do that, and those are the sorts of moves Frank Wren has always been pretty good at. Let’s be clear about one thing though, Teheran is absolutely not ‘behind schedule’ development wise, even if he spent another entire year at AAA, 23 year olds in AAA are pretty common. There is absolutely no reason to assume that Teheran won’t eventually put it all together and be the dominating 1-2 starter he has the potential to be, we just shouldn’t freak out if it is or isn’t this year.
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Teheran DOB: 1/27/1991
Gattis DOB: 8/18/1986
4.5 years age difference
that’s so weird, because I thought it was like 5 and then looked it up, just to make sure, haha. Thanks for the catch. Guess I did the math wrong or just looked at baseball reference wrong.
well, it’s easy to turn 4.5 into 5.5 just by reversing the months in your head (thinking that it’s the younger player with the August birthday and the older player with the Jan one)
that’s prolly what you did after tweet janking the hell out of people all night
Excellent article. It’s funny how so many people seem to have written off Julio Teheran as a “bust” at age 21. Even MLB.com dropped him to the #31 in the annual prospect rankings. I fully expect Teheran to come to ST ready to assume the job as the #5 starter. He’s my sleeper candidate for NL ROY this season.
everything else I dig
Franklin, any concern abou throwing Medlen out there for a full season?
Sure, there’s concern. But that’s one of those things where you just gotta do it and see what happens.
Could Christian Martinez start?
he probably ‘could’. However, I don’t see any scenario where he’s more than a 1-2 start emergency solution. If it came to that, Wren would make a move.
The most important thing for Teheran is understanding that he has a brilliant bullpen behind him. If he can just go get us 5 solid innings, he has done his job. Hopefully he can avoid the HR and the ‘big inning’ that seemed to plague Delgado and Minor, which I’d expect if the improvements on his fastball movement are real. He is a kid that has seen so much in just a small amount of time. Minor was thrown to the wolves, and he put it all together, probably learning more from all of his mistakes than his successes. I’d expect for Teheran to do the same.
Is there any credence to the rumor that his mechanical changes were a result of the Braves’ coaching staff attempting to smooth out his delivery in order to make him less injury prone? Suposedly, after achieving subpar results, near the end of the season they gave up and let him use his natural motion. This coincides with when his stats started to look a little better and his good performance carried over into the Dominican League. It would not be the first time the Braves have attempted to correct injury inducing mechanics. See generally J. Jurrjens, T. Hanson.
You weren’t shaving at age 17? I think that’s about when I traded in the fuzzstache for the crustache.
Why dump on Gattis to make a point?
It’s not dumping on Gattis. Gattis is old for his level. This is a fact, not dumping. I didn’t say Gattis was bad, I didn’t say Gattis has no future. I pointed out that Teheran is 4.5 years younger than him. Age is incredibly important when it comes to prospect evaluation.
So were Allen Craig and David Freese, making MLB debuts at 26. Craig career OPS: .863, Freese .809.
Age is important, but old for minor league level only applies to the Joe Thurston’s and Buddy Carlyle’s of the world.
yes, but every year their are literally hundreds of guys putting up big numbers who are old for their level and then they turn out to be nothing but a product of being old for their level. In baseball a trememdous amount of development happens from ages 18-24, and being able to play against players even a couple years younger than you is a tremendous advantage.
There are a few exceptions, but they are exactly that, exceptions. Sure, Gattis could turn out to be an exception, but it just isn’t likely (hence why it would be an exception). It’s not that I want him to turn out to be nothing more than a marginal bench bat, its just that any objective analysis of him simply points to that. I’d be a homer if I predicted otherwise, and people don’t come to this site for blind homerism. That’s my honest appraisal based on everything I know about scouting, age curves and age/level performance.
The whole premise of the article is that it doesn’t have to be boom or bust with Teheran, but then it only references him “falling on his face” or being “lights out” in ST. About how bad would he have to be to not get the 5th slot (given the apparent lack of competition) – even if he’s not great in ST, it might be a good idea to let him take some lumps and hope he gets it going? I’m thinking of Minor, where we went through some ups and downs (and some real bad sucking) but he seems to have figured it out a bit.
Minor also was excellent in spring, and did in fact earn his spot, and then had a rough patch in the majors, which is to be expected. If Julio is back to trying to overthrow and seeing his pitches float back over the middle of the plate with little movement, you just CANNOT let him be a MLB pitcher. He had a 5 ERA in AAA last year. That would likely translate to something like a 7+ ERA in MLB. Further, when Julio has seen bad results, in the past he’s only dug himself in deeper holes, as he attempted to just throw his way out of them. The Braves need to see that change against MLB, or at least AAA, caliber hitters.
The point with brining up falling on his face in ST is to point out that the Braves can’t just blindly hope he has it together. They’re too good of a team to give starts away if he’s clearly not ready. If he pitches decently enough, but not outstanding, then sure, he’ll probably be there until Beachy gets back and then head back to AAA.
The not boom or bust is referring to the idea that Julio doesn’t have to be the greatest or worst pitcher in the world right now, and this isn’t make or break for him. He could fail this year and still be a great pitcher going forward. He’s not ‘getting old’ and risking losing his edge.
Franklin, I was actually going to make the same suggestion as constructive criticism.
Just for the sake of helping your development as a writer, the title leads the reader along looking for this middle ground on Teheran. The first 3-4 paragraphs detail those two extremes, and you criticize either of those, suggesting neither is really a fair expectation. So far, so good. The problem is that because of the title, the reader is then expecting a further development of that idea, maybe a projection based on similar pitchers or something. When the reader sees a detailing of two extreme scenarios for spring training, it seems very opposite what he’s expecting. That’s probably why it jumped out at me and the other commenter.
You could consider a title change or a transition between the first and second sections. I apologize if this seems pedantic, but I think you write very well and could benefit from some global structure.
I sort of get what you’re saying, and perhaps I should have made clearer what I meant with the title. The two extremes aren’t about how JT will perform in ST this year. As far as how he performs in ST, it could very well be the case that its one or the other. His stuff is so dominating that if he’s right, he will dominate, especially in spring, when pitchers are usually ahead of hitters. BUt if he’s still dropping and driving, he will get crushed, even in ST.
The two extremes are on evaluations of JT as a prospect. People who follow the Braves tend to view him as either being ready to step up as the next pedro martinez this year, or a total bum. My point is that he’s probably not either one, and that’s okay. Even if he’s not ready right now, he can still be a great prospect with an incredibly bright future. Sure, I hope he’s ready, but I also don’t think it’s reasonable to bank on it.
Remember that one of the ‘extremes’ I am pointing to is the idea that he should just be given the fifth spot, not how he will actually perform in it. I don’t view him falling on his face in spring as ‘an extreme’. 22 year olds fall on their face all the time in spring. It would be disappointing, but not outside of the reasonable realm of possibility.
I think you mean “the latter,” not “former,” in the case of Daniel Rodriguez.
Can we please put a moratorium on correcting small points of grammar and all? Come on people, we all know what we mean.
I’m fine with pointing stuff like that out, just as long as people aren’t rude about it. We don’t have editors, and no matter how much a person proofreads their own writing, stuff like that can slip through. I don’t mind that at all. I know how much reading that Shanks interview with Wren pained me, so I appreciate when people courteously point stuff like that out.
“Dropping and driving” is not how it is described in this article. As a pitcher you want to drive hard with your legs. That’s where you get your velocity from. That said you want to “stay tall on the backside” when you’re pushing off the rubber rather than fully bending the knee and “dropping”. This creates a downward plane that will keep pitches low and can help create a rising/tailing action on a fastball if properly executed.
That’s what I said? This results when you drive too hard off your knee in an attempt to gain velocity. Most pitchers develop a case of the drop and drives in an attempt to overthrow.
Great read…I think Julio will be just fine as a 5th starter. Although I am nervous about his mechanics and his numbers in AAA, I agree that just like Minor he can work through some of his issues at the major league level. Hopefully this season he will get Hanson-esque run support.
As for ROtY is Andrelton still eligible? I know he had a lot of games last season but I didn’t know if the time off from his injury would keep him under the limit.
andrelton used his rookie eligibility up last year.
Unfortunately Simmons is no longer eligible for ROTY. The maximum number of a at-bats a guy can have and retain his ROTY eligible for the next season is 149. Anything over 150 and you’re no longer considered a rookie. Simmons had 166 at-bats last season.
For pitches the limit is 50 innings.
If we could assure we could get the 2009 Vazquez I would be all for signing him. But that’s not assured and none of the other options out there really entice me.
Gotta wonder why Kyle Lohse has had such a hard time finding a job though. He’s not a great pitcher but he’s extremely effective. You think teams would be lining up to get a pitcher like that.
He’s tied to draft pick compensation. He’s a useful pitcher, but no one is going to give up a first rounder for ‘useful.’ If Bourn can’t find a job because of draft pick comp, I imagine Lohse will have a much harder time.
Vazquez would be a low risk fall back option. If there was even a chance we got 2009 Vazquez, we’d be paying 10 mill for him and he’d actually have already been signed, instead he’d probably cost less than a million and might even be had for a minor league deal. Javy is just somebody who you could be relatively okay with as a fall back plan, more than somebody who is your first option. Julio is still the first option. We’re all hoping he brings the stuff he pitched with in the DWL into spring and sews up a spot. I’m just saying that we can’t just have blind hope on that, we have to be aware that its possible Julio won’t be ready. And also realize that even if Julio isn’t ready, that’s still fine.
Yeah, in a way, I’d actually hate to get ’09 Javy. While I’d love to have those results, he’d block Julio from getting any ML experience this year, and next year we’d be left with either trying to fit 2 rookies in at the end of the rotation or signing a vet who might block some of our younger pitchers. I’d like for Teheran to have every chance at the 5th starter spot this year, but with an backup plan that doesn’t leave us high and dry if Teheran struggles.
Plus, as we’ve discussed before, it’d be good if the rotation is at least 6 deep to start the season because we’ll probably need someone to fill in for a starter at some point, plus it could allow us to ease Beachy back instead of possibly rushing him back to the rotation because we need help.
What are the options left on the trash heap for a possible minor league contract / invite to spring training? Kevin Millwood? Chien-Ming Wang? Livan? My vote is still for Buddy Carlyle in the 5 spot.
Of those names you mentioned I would take Kevin Millwood. Actually seeing a few of his starts last season I thought he outpitched his numbers. I actually was calling for the Braves to trade for him before they ended up with Sheets and Maholm.
Avilan was a starter in the minors. Maybe he and C Mart could do some sort of piggy back for a few turns through the rotation if Teheran is not ready? Could compensate by carrying another bullpen arm instead of a fifth starter.
as stated, we’re going to play 20 games in 20 days pretty early in the schedule. The fifth starter will actually see a pretty decent amount of work. A piggy back avilan/c-mart combo wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it should be left as that, like a very last option solution.
Excellent post, Franklin. I checked the Braves schedule and they will want to have that #5 slot figured out right out of the gate. The #5 starter could get skipped a couple of times in April but the Braves play 20 in a row from late April into early May.
The idea of a FA SP signing sounds good to me.
Good article. My only comment or concern with your points is the idea that Teheran could make Maholm expendable. Without him we are left with only one starting LP (Minor) so I don’t think we could dump Maholm even if Teheran proved effective. Just my two cents.
having more than one LH starting pitcher isn’t particularly important to most teams. You care about having a certain number of LH and RH relievers in your bullpen, but in the rotation, you mostly just want the 5 best guys you can get.
I think it would be foolish to use a “let him take his lumps” strategy and agree that just giving him a spot and then comparing him to Mike Minor is wishful thinking.
Minor had a pretty strong pedigree, pitching for with success at Vanderbilt (not to mention the fact that he attended Vandy), for the US National Team, earning a spot in ST, and having some success in the Bigs before he stumbled. Julio though filled with potential, has not shared those kinds of successes just yet.
And I would much prefer seeing Julio pitch another year in AAA before earning a spot in the rotation than give up on him and then see him flourish somewhere else when a little patience may be all that is required.
Really nice read Franklin. Obviously it is all guess work , but my suspicion is that Teheran may have a season similar to the one that Minor had last year (in terms of ups and downs). All in all, if that is the case I’d think the Braves would be pretty happy with production out of their fifth starter.
DBags got Prado for 4 years/40 mil. Still love the trade.
I agree, especially after Prado’s career best year last year and Upton’s “down” year only produced a difference of .012 OPS.