By Kiley McDaniel
The Florida State League was loaded last year, especially with top-end pitching and I saw most of the top prospects that came through the league. I’ll be going to the Rays home opener tonight, but before I leave, I wanted to give a look at another high-profile prospect from the 2007 FSL.
Carlos Carrasco is atop many prospect lists for the Phillies organization and has been for a few years. He shows a wide repertoire, some feel for his craft, and an ability to win without his best stuff. Pitching in nearby Clearwater, I was able to see him multiple times and got a pretty good impression. The full report is after the jump…
(Carlos Carrasco photo credit: Getty Images)
I didn’t take video of the guys I saw last year and couldn’t find any video after poking around some, so you’ll just have to take my word for it—luckily I saw him four times.
See the Scouting Tutorial for a rundown on some of the terms in this report
Carlos Carrasco, RHP, Clearwater Threshers (Philadelphia)
Pitch - Present/Future Grade
Fastball - 50/50
Slider -45/50
Changeup - 50/60
Command - 45/50
Physical Description -Medium frame, thick legs and trunk, solid upper body build, limited projection. Workhorse body type, resembles Jeremy Bonderman.
Fastball - Depending on the outing, have seen him sit anywhere from 88-93 and has touched some 94s and 95s. Relatively straight fastball with average life and movement, just a pitch to set the table to use his changeup, works primarily off of the fastball and tends to nibble and get in trouble this way. Uses a two and four seamer on the corners, will flatten it out and leave the ball up at times when his backside collapses, but generally hits his spots. Not really a swing-and-miss pitch, but obviously conserves velocity with the 94-95 sometimes coming in the 9th and the 88 coming the first time through the lineup. I gave a 50/50 grade, but there’s another tick in there, up to 55, and I suspect mechanics are to blame.
Slider - This pitch is inconsistent and the thing that will decide what you ultimately think about Carrasco. The first time I saw him it was a 70-72 soft slurve that was only effective as a show-pitch and was hammered otherwise. The next few times it was a 77-80 harder 3/4 slurve that needed to be tightened to be a weapon at the MLB level; it was a fringy current pitch with some upside. He had trouble locating it and didn’t throw it too much. In the 8th inning of the last outing I saw him in, about the 400th pitch I saw him throw last season, he threw an 83 mph hellacious two-plane slider. It was an easy 60-65 pitch and is exactly what he needed. All the scouts looked at each other and wondered what that was, and in the next 15 pitches a few were breaking balls—slurves back in the high 70’s. I’ll grade the pitch he showed 99% of the time, 45/50, but there’s a 60/65 pitch he’s capable of in there.
Changeup - This is his bread and butter out-pitch that flashes anywhere from 50 to 60 depending on how his stuff is that day, ranging from 81-83 mph, and with late fade and sink. When he didn’t have his stuff, he still used it the same and still had his location. He battles, uses it against anyone, but smartly keeps it away most of the time, as it tends to hang. I later realized his best changeups, like with the slider, are at a high velocity when he uses full-arm speed. It can be a big league out pitch at it’s best.
Mechanics - Can be problematic at times. In the windup, he uses a quick move from set position to get his arms over his head, almost jarringly quick. He slows down a bit in the rest of his motion, but is definitely on the fast side, would fall off to first base pretty frequently. Wouldn’t be surprised if the organization slows him down a bit as this appeared to be the cause of him losing his balance and timing, thus his command. As mentioned above, he can elevate his pitches when his backside collapses and flatten out his stuff. Some say he’s an above-average command guy, and he showed flashes of that too, but I didn’t really see that consistently enough to project it, much like the fastball and slider.
Summary - Carrasco was certainly frustrating to watch in 2007. He showed flashes of brillance, sitting at 91-94 at time with life with a plus changeup and solid command. Other times he’s be 88-91 and flat with a solid-average changeup and lacking command and downward plane. He will be a flyball pitcher at higher levels until these mechanical problems (most likely) are fixed. The fact that his changeup and slider jump up a grade or two with simply more armspeed on them wasn’t evident until through a few games and would change his upside from back-end starter to #2 starter, hence the differing opinions of him by many prospect analysts (huge potential, good stuff, low K rate). I suspect the armspeed issue on offspeed stuff would’ve been fixed by now if it was simple, it’s just a head game that he plays on himself. He is not comfortable using his 90 mph+ fastball armspeed on a slider, and does it only half the time on his changeup. If he does (maybe the bullpen will allow him to let loose) he has enormous upside and frustration potential—3 of the 4 grades (FB, SL, CMD) could all go up a tick with a good season and the slider could jump a lot with some adjustments. I’ll call him a D group fringe starter/solid long man in the big leagues now, and it appears he’ll either be a steady mid-rotation stalwart or a somewhat disappointing back-end guy, I’ll go with #4 starter.
Adjusted Overall Future Potential: 54
Present Group: D, Future Group: C+
Projected Role: #4 starter with some flashes of better
ETA: AA and some AAA in 2008, MLB as soon as mid-2009
Overall Comparison: Kyle Lohse is lower-end and my projection, Freddy Garcia is the higher-end.
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12 responses so far ↓
1 mike // Apr 8, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Off topic but what do you think Jordan Schafer’s 50 game suspension for the use of HGH. I think his prospect rating should tumble with this.
2 Chase // Apr 8, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Oddly enough, one of my other favorite prospect sites did an analysis of Carrasco here: http://www.baseball-intellect.com/Articles/scouting-carlos-carrasco.html
There seems to be some discrepancies in your grading and his overall stuff (does he have a curveball or slider?). Is this a common thing to have happen among scouts or is this just a once-in-a-while case?
3 fpiliere44 // Apr 8, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I don’t really know much about Baseball Intellect, but are his reports first hand? Often there is quite a difference between stuff you hear about a player and what you see first hand.
4 Carlos Carrasco Profile « Phuture Phillies // Apr 9, 2008 at 11:28 am
[…] America Q/A [9/7/06] Article on his 2A Debut Rotoworld’s NL East Prospects Feature Saberscouting Report Baseball-Intellect scouting […]
5 Breaking Balls ยป Reasonable people may disagree // Apr 9, 2008 at 11:46 am
[…] relatively new scouting-oriented blogs weigh in on top Phillies prospect Carlos Carrasco. Saber Scouting thinks he needs to refine his hard slider into a true out pitch to achieve his potential. Baseball […]
6 kileymcd // Apr 9, 2008 at 12:02 pm
The slider/curve thing is semantic, his low 70’s thing was a curve, once he settled in with the high 70’s one most would call it a slurve, then he flashed the low 80’s slider, so I just called all the breaking balls a slider.
The grading discrepancies, well that’s what you get with two different approaches. This writer (appears) to be grading the video from behind Carrasco from the Futures Game. A valiant effort, and not that far off from what I saw in his assessment, but a flawed source to scout from.
Not only is he grading video, but from a bad angle, and from a game where he only threw an inning or two. The Futures Game is a prospect showacase in the middle of the season with each pitcher going no more than 3-4 outs. Each guy is going 100% the whole stint (starters never can in a real game, and that’s actually the source of Carrasco’s problems) and in the middle of the season, their stuff is at it’s best since they haven’t faded yet and have already hit their stride. To me, it’s very sketchy to make scouting conclusions based on that video.
7 Chase // Apr 9, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Thanks guys. I didn’t mean to offend or accuse either blog, just curious about the differences. In any case, I appreciate the feedback and keep doin’ what you’re doin’!
8 fpiliere44 // Apr 9, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Absolutely, Chase. This is why the comments section is awesome. If there is something conflicting or something that could spark discussion, ALWAYS bring it forward. It gives us something to talk about, lol
9 Alex Eisenberg // Apr 10, 2008 at 2:10 am
Hey guys, I’m the author of the Baseball Intellect article.
To clear up a couple things:
1. The scouting report is based off what I saw of his Future’s Game outing, so there is definitely a small sample size to work with and that is certainly acknowledged. But I do use second-hand sources to verify I saw something that was not out of the norm with him and I use different sources to supplement what I see from those videos.
A scouting report like the one above is more in-depth and can go into much more detail than one based on just one inning of work, obviously, but the video report can still give you a general feel for his mechanics and stuff…the one advantage I would have is the ability to go back and look more closely at his mechanics by seeing Carrasco in slow motion. The video did have a couple pitches that gave me a side view as well.
2. The curveball/slider thing I agree is completely semantics. When I researched Fautino de los Santos for the article I did on him, I saw his plus breaking pitch classified as both a curve and a slider.
3. The overall scouting reports seem roughly similar. I was a bit more optimistic on the fastball partly because I believe he has the ability to pick up a couple of mphs.
The change-up and breaking ball breakdowns are mostly the same though…he shows flashes, but overall is inconsistent and arm speed is a factor there.
I think he needs minor mechanical adjustments but he absolutely has to refine all his pitches and part of that comes with fixing his mechanical problems.
The one part I disagree with is about the speed of his wind-up. He could still technically rush through his delivery, but his tempo is actually on the slow side out of the wind-up. He comes in around 28 or 29 frames from the point his knee reaches his upper most point and release.
However, Carrasco is much faster out of the stretch and probably more susceptible to rushing through his delivery. He had problems last year out of both the wind-up and the stretch, but his numbers have been pretty horrid from the stretch over his entire career.
But the overall conclusion of both scouting reports is roughly the same.
I peg his upside as a #2 with a #3/4 label being more likely. Basically the same as Kiley, though his view is more pessimistic (and I suppose rightly so given the track record of pitching prospects).
In any case, I thought I would offer my perspective. Keep up the great work!!
10 kileymcd // Apr 10, 2008 at 3:41 am
Thanks for stopping by, Alex. Sounds like our differences just amount to you getting a little more video to work with and me going through old notes from full speed about 150 ft away. I re-read my comment and it comes across more harsh than I meant, but I guess this sort of thing is pretty opinionated and that tends to happen.
Going back to Carrasco, I’m just not seeing what the year-end report types are saying about him and the FSL stats back me up on it. Then, of course they see him touch 96 in the Futures Game and think all is well. The whole groupthink prospect ranking game has me a bit jaded, hence the 31st team’s area scout approach I’m taking to the FSL this year.
11 Alex Eisenberg // Apr 10, 2008 at 5:23 am
Oh, no need to apologize or anything. I didn’t view them as harsh at all.
The thing I thought was interesting was as I read your scouting report and then went back to compare it with mine and my feeling was that the reports were remarkably similar minus a couple small points…scouting/mechanical talk I think is extremely subjective so I thought too much was being made out of what were small differences. The style was different of course with two different perspectives, but the conclusions were mostly the same.
And I agree completely about the reports Carrasco. Too optimistic in my view. I did a little analysis on Henry Sosa, and I remember reading from BA a long while back how hyped up he was about the Future’s Game and wanting to show his best stuff, so I do realize the flaws in using that one game (or any individual game in general).
I personally wasn’t that impressed by Carrasco during the Futures…it was de los Santos, Sosa, and Frankllin Morales (especially) that really caught my eye. But he does have a lot to work with.
Anyway, I love the different perspective on this kind of topic…there are relatively few sites that do this, so I’m looking forward to the content you put out in the future.
12 Chase // Apr 10, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Well look at me… Bringing forces together. Its like I’m creating a justice league or something! haha
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