Jose Fernandez Continues Backwards Pitching Revolution

A couple months ago we looked at Angels pitcher Garrett Richards and his new unorthodox approach to pitching. It’s been a quiet time for this new strategy, but last night it struck again thanks to Marlins rookie phenom Jose Fernandez. No, it wasn’t the eight innings of scoreless pitching that got our attention. It wasn’t the 10 strikeouts either. It wasn’t even this absurdly nasty slider that caused Carlos Quentin to quit baseball.

What made Jose Fernandez’s outing Monday night so special was this one pitch to Chase Headley in the seventh inning…

Continue reading

Baseball America 2013 Best Tools Compilation: The Pitchers

Dylan Bundy

There are an endless number of sites devoted to baseball prospects, and while I think it’s safe to say our personal favorite here at CFB is Baseball Prospectus, the other giant in the internet world of prospecting, Baseball America, does something extremely fascinating every year to go along with their Top 10 lists. They take 15 tools, from Best Hit Tool to Best Outfield Arm, and assign one player from each organization one of these distinctions. Over the past few months, I’ve been compiling them in a spreadsheet as the team lists have come out. They concluded with the San Francisco Giants last week, so all the Best Tools have been handed out. It should be noted that some of these lists came out before certain trades, so you will see some players (new Marlin Justin Nicolino, for example) on teams that they no longer play for. However, I think a general compilation of these tools is helpful and interesting to look at.

We’ve seen the offense and the defense, so let’s take a look at the pitchers.

A breakdown by handedness:

Best Fastball: 29 RHP’s and 1 LHP

Best Curveball: 24 RHP’s and 6 LHP’s

Best Slider: 24 RHP’s and 6 LHP’s

Best Changeup: 17 RHP’s and 13 LHP’s

Best Control: 21 RHP’s and 9 LHP’s

AL EAST

AL east pitching

AL CENTRAL

AL central pitching

AL WEST

AL west pitching

NL EAST

NL east pitching

NL CENTRAL

NL central pitching

NL WEST

NL west pitching