I’ve developed something of an obsession with our relief prospects as of late. It’s to the point that I’m going to come out hard and fast against (virtually) any free agent relief signing in the next few seasons. There’s just too many good relievers at the upper levels of the system to continue dumping money on mediocre middle relief for the veteraness.
This isn’t a stats post and it’s meant to be more fun and help to draw comparisons and contrasts between the relievers. If someone wants to argue any of the rankings, there are several I could be persuaded on. The table that follows has 5 different ratings: Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, Great. You could probably read those as fringe, marginal, average, above-average and plus if you wanted terms that sound more baseballee.
| Level | Groundball | Strikeout | Command | Velocity | Breaking Pitch | Offspeed Pitch | |
| Perez | AA/AAA | Fair | Great | Poor | Very Good | Slider – Very Good | None |
| Motte | A+/AA | Fair | Great | Fair | Great | Slider – Poor | None |
| McClellan | A+/AA | Good | Good | Very Good | Good | Slider & Curve – Good | Changeup – Good |
| Worrell | AAA | Fair | Good | Good | Good | Slider – Fair | Changeup – Poor |
| Scherer | AA | Good | Good | Good | Good | Slider(?) – Good | None |
| Gregerson | A+ | Great | Very Good | Very Good | Good | Slider – Very Good | None |
| Maiques | A | Very Good | Very Good | Good | Good | Slider – Very Good | None |
I don’t think Perez and Motte are ever going to be heavy groundball pitchers. Neither do I imagine either featuring great command. They’ll both strikeout a ton of guys and hand out more walks than you’d like. I still don’t believe the Chris Kline article over at BA that said Motte’s slider could be a plus offering — I don’t think it’s anything more than a fringe pitch. Perez has two strikeout pitches with his slider being a very good secondary offering.
I can’t say I’ve really every understood the love for McClellan. Yes, he features 4 decent pitches. Yes he used to be a starter. Yes, he’s from the STL area but I’m just not as high on him as other seem to be.
Worrell is the only pitcher that doesn’t look as good on this chart as I think he could be. That’s primarily because there’s no area for deception or weird delivery. That’s really going to be the difference between him carving out a consistent career in middle relief and being a bust.
Matthew Scherer is a name you don’t hear very often but he looked good statistically last year. He doesn’t really profile as more than a middle reliever.
Gregerson featured tremendous groundball rates last year and after watching him in the Arizona Fall League game, I was impressed with his command even if it didn’t show up in his walk rate as superb. It will be interesting to track him throw the upper levels next year as I’d expect him to be the closer at AA.
Maiques was a starter before the draft and there’s been mentions dropped here and there so it’s possible the Cardinals will give him a go in the rotation. I was impressed with his pure stuff when I saw him so he’s another one that will be fun to track through the upper minors. If he stays as a reliever, I’d like to see the Cardinals challenge him and move him up to AA.
Future Redbirds 
i don’t know if it’s my computer but i can’t see the whole chart
I think thats because AZ uses IE and the rest of us in 2008 run Firefox.
But other than that nice chart. I think you should have included Josh Dew, but he is new so maybe thats why you didn’t.
yeah, now that i’m at work with IE i can see it. that’s odd..
‘Preciate the overview. Two things about Gregerson I like: no homers surrendered as a professional in nearly 100 IP, and when called up to AA last year he fanned 3 men per inning.
A few mundane observations. No lefties here so that may be an area where we have to look at free agents or trade. I think that Worrell projects as kind of a ROOGY which isn’t really bad as long as we have a LOOGY or two around. This bunch not only looks good but several guys are intriguing. Motte’s arm and inexperience at pitching makes you wonder if his potential may dwarf the others despite his age. Maiques and Mclellan have returned from injuries so we may also not have a good read on their ultimate potential either. Gregerson has been so good in the low minors that he intrigues me a lot. There are a lot of relievers who do well without any stuff in the low minors but your analysis and others give Gregerson at least average grades in that respect. Question: I was under the impression that Maiques was kind of a fire baller but you rate his velocity as just “good”. Can you elaborate? Thanks.
when i saw maiques he routinely throwing 94, i wasn’t too sure about that assessment, either. then again, stadium guns can exaggerate
Shhh/erik — I’m in Firefox (I don’t know how anyone can stand IE) but the table resizes without a problem. I’ve tried changing the font size without avail in the html code but I’ll look into that for next time.
easy – Maiques fastball sits in the low-90s (90-92) without breaking 95. Chris Perez was at the next level as his fastball sits a little higher (92-94) and will touch 96 at times.
Thanks.
I’ve been very intrigued by Maiques. I asked Derrick Goold about him a few months back and he suggested a move to starting isn’t all that likely. Cited an organizational belief that his makeup is well suited to bullpen work and mentioned the prior arm issues.
That kinda bummed me because I’d like to see how he performed if given the chance to start. Even so I’m optimistic his stuff will translate well at higher levels. I too would like to see him aggressively moved up this year.
i thought that is where perez’s velocity sat as well, but they have the milb.tv games for free now over on milb.com and i was watching perez the other day and announcers from several different parks said he was hitting high-90’s. i was watching one in memphis where the announcer said he was hitting 96-97 on the stadium gun there and that it tended to be a tad slower than the guns the team used. he said that both teams had perez touching 98 when they were charting pitches a few days earlier in iowa.
a couple of guys that also deserve mention are mike sillman and adam reifer. it appeared last spring that sillman had moved ahead of worrell on the organizational depth chart, and i believe if he is healthy this year he could be the better righty specialist. i know reifer hasn’t thrown a professional pitch yet, but he has probably the third best arm on the list. he is another guy that can hit the mid-90’s and he has a pretty good breaking ball as well.
jess todd is another guy that a lot of people are projecting as a reliever. hopefully he can remain a starter, but he has a 92-94 mph fastball and a devastating slider.
FGC –
I thought about including Dew, Todd, Reifer and a few others below A-ball but I held off to avoid making too many assumptions.
Sillman is someone that could be in play. He’s got a good track record but injuries derailed him last year. It’ll be interesting to see how he bounces back.
Also, I’m not sure whether to say thank you or curse you but I’m probably going to be watching milb.tv games for the next few days. . . . .
if you do watch some of those games, i really liked the post on the AFL with Motte, Gregerson and Pomeranz. like to see something like that again, that was great stuff
It seems like Maiques doesn’t really have enough offspeed stuff to be a starter, but I would like to see McClellan switch back to that role, given his arsenal of pitches. I doubt either will happen given their past arm issues, though.
I think it is a pipe dream to think the Cards won´t spend on middle relievers as long as LaRussa is here. He´ll want a veteran. That will go double if they try to go with Carpenter as an inexperienced closer.
What I noticed about the table is that I can’t see all of it on my smaller monitor but on my bigger widescreen it is fine. Both in firefox. I can shrink the font to tiny but that makes it unreadable.
i’ve got a longshot question/prediction….any chance the cards try to duplicate david carpenter into a motte clone. numerous reports indicate carpenter has a gun but can’t hit a lick. any takers?? also wouldn’t be suprised to see haberer or norrick switch to the pen, it just seems they don’t have enough to stick in the rotation long term. just my predictions though.
haberer was a closer in college and a lot of people said he would be in the big leagues in no time if converted to relief. i think this could be the year as rotation slots are getting hard to come by in the cardinals’ system.
Ah. Organizational depth. Such a delightful problem to have.