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Originally Posted by BigRedChief
I remember the same shit being said about wainwright. remember??? The Cardinals were stupis to be calling up a minor leaguer underperforming instead of trading for a more telented reliever. Remember.....
I disagree with your assesment. Almost every great pitcher goes through this in the minors. They are still maturing, making high school mistakes. They have been coodled all their lives and now they have to listen to authority and change. It's not easy. Maybe he never listens and changes. Thats what happened to Reyes.
But, if he gets his act together according to the majority of scouts his upside goes all the way to Cy Young level. Why would you trade that possibility for a rental?
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Not almost every great pitcher loses 4 mph off their fastball. The pitchers that lose 4 mph from their fastball AND lose command of it are usually hiding an injury....if they're lucky. The alternative is that they just start to degrade faster than some.
Oh, and put that CY crap in your pocket. You keep going to that well and it's absurd. The landscape is absolutely littered with players that dominated AA and then could never learn to harness their secondary pitches and ended up little more than a back of the rotation starter.
The 'majority of scouts' loved his velocity at 18 years old. He was throwing an easy 98 and could cruise at 94. Now he's lucky to hit 94 and is working in the 91 range. He has dominated the lower levels with his fastball so his secondary offerings are still seen as 'raw' to the point that he's been ordered not to shake off his catcher.
If he's a 22 year old kid with 94 mph heat and unrefined off-speed stuff, that makes him the same level prospect as Trevor Rosenthal and Joe Kelly. And history shows us that most kids that lose velocity in their early 20s don't just regain it.
He's struggled for half a season now and it's not just been the results. The stuff isn't there. He's not getting beat because this level is able to turn on his heat. He's getting beat because his heat just isn't that great anymore. And when your entire hype is built on being a power pitcher, not having that power to go to makes you destined for the back of a rotation or long-relief.
There's a 50/50 shot that he's a 12 months away from being a fading asset. We have 4 guys in the high minors that are considered premium pitching prospects (Miller, Rosenthal, Martinez and Jenkins); 2 of them
will fail. The math doesn't lie. Those 4 pitchers are not all going to be what we thought they would be.
Oh, and as to Wainwright, I'm not buying your recollection. Wainwright destroyed the world in Spring Training and made the team out of camp. I think you're making shit up here to fit your narrative. Wainwright was seen by most as a young kid that simply stole a spot on the team and proceeded to dominate from the moment he hit the ground. He most assuredly wasn't a callup that struggled in AAA that people were ringing their hands over.