Harvesting Opinion: Cleveland Indians Pitching Prospects

Harvesting Opinion is a regular feature on Seedlings to Stars. Each week, six of FanSided’s team blogs send S2S a question relating to their team’s minor league system, and we answer them in this space–each question gets one article devoted to answering it. In this way, we make sure we regularly get to discuss hot-button issues relating to the systems of every team, as these go on a five-week cycle. 

Please note that any statistics used may be a day or two out of date, as we prepare our answers over the course of a week.

In this edition, we tackle a question sent to us from our Cleveland Indians site Deep Left Field:

Now that Drew Pomeranz and Alex White are gone, who are the top starting pitchers in the Indians farm system?

Nathaniel says: There’s no doubt that the loss of Pomeranz and White removes the obvious choices for “top starting prospect” in the Cleveland system.

Unfortunately, many of the Indians’ most talented minor league starting pitchers are dealing with injury issues. Righty Jason Knapp missed most of last year and all of this season with shoulder problems–few pitchers in the entire minors can match his stuff, but the odds of Knapp ever being a big league starting pitcher are quite slim. Lefty Giovanni Soto has also missed much of the season with neuritis in his pitching elbow, which is a shame, since he was pitching well in High-A just after turning 20. Even Triple-A lefty Scott Barnes, who was turning in a nice season with over a strikeout per inning, is out for this year and possibly part of next season after he tore his ACL last month.

As far as actual healthy pitchers go, the guy that excites me is righthander Felix Sterling, an 18-year-old who’s holding his own at Low-A Lake County and has pitched very well in Rookie ball in the past. That said, betting on such a young, raw kid as any short of thing is extremely foolish; while he’s definitely a pitcher to watch, he’ll need to get a full season of pitching in before we can accurately project him.

Beyond that, Double-A lefthander Matt Packer is a guy who throws a ton of strikes and could wind up as a back-of-the-rotation starter. Triple-A righty Zach McAllister, who briefly made it to Cleveland this year, could contribute in the majors as well. There are a couple of other guys in the system who could potentially start in the bigs at some point, but most of them are very young guys in Rookie ball who have a lot to prove.

There’s no question that, taken as a whole, that’s underwhelming. But the Indians drafted potential impact arms with three of their first five draft picks this year: Dillon Howard, Jake Sisco, and Will Roberts. Along with Sterling, that trio of 2011 picks could make for a nice pack of low-minors arms. If Knapp, Soto, and Barnes can come back strong from their injuries, all of a sudden this looks like some nice depth. Also of note is that the Indians have one of the deepest crops of relief arms in the minors.

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Wally says:

Let’s not forget that along with the departures of White (#2) and Pomeranz (#4), the Tribe also sent RHP Joe Gardner (#9) to Colorado in the Ubaldo Jimenez deal. Heading into the 2011 season Baseball America had 5 pitchers in Cleveland’s top-10 list, now in the aftermath of the U-trade the only ones that remain are Knapp and Nick Hagadone (#10).

As Nathaniel mentions above Knapp has been battling shoulder problems for parts of 3 years now. He’s only pitched 156.1 professional innings since being drafted by the Phillies in 2008 (2nd round) and he hasn’t advanced beyond A-ball.

Hagadone, who was acquired from the Red Sox in the 2009 Victor Martinez trade was a starter heading into 2011, but he’s pitched exclusively out of the bullpen between Akron (AA) and Columbus (AAA) this season. Hagadone is a Tommy John survivor and and has battled other arm ailments in his young career so while it is feasible he could re-emerge as a rotation candidate next season, it appears he’s adapted well to a relief role and is probably better suited there in the long term.

The next pitcher in their pre-season top-30 is RHP Kyle Blair (#11), the team’s 4th round pick in the 2010 draft. By most accounts he has the potential to be a middle of the rotation guy but he’s been scuffling through most of his first professional season in the Midwest League (A) and has recently been coming out of the bullpen for Lake County. It’s foolish to ever write a guy off based on what he does in his first minor league season but the 5.76 ERA, 1.60 WHIP and 5.1 BB/9 as a 22-year old are certainly going to lessen his status as a prospect.

After Blair we have Sterling (#13), LHP T.J. House (#14) and Hector Rondon (#15). Nathaniel touched on Sterling in the above and I basically agree with his assessment that he’s an interesting guy to keep an eye on but he has a lot of work to do. House, selected 16th overall in 2008, had a solid minor league debut in with Lake County (A) in 2009. He survived the jump to Kinston (A+) last season but didn’t do anything special. This year he’s back in Kinston and all of his statistical measurables are going the wrong way. Finally we have Rondon who underwent Tommy John surgery in August of last year and hasn’t pitched in 2011. He has 106.0 innings of Triple-A experience to his credit already, but he’s struggled in that time and needs to come up with viable off-speed offerings to remain a viable rotation candidate. Given the lack of secondary stuff and the recovery from his elbow surgery he remains a wildcard going into 2012.

The rest of the pitching prospects in Cleveland’s top-30 are all relievers except for LHP Kelvin De La Cruz (#24) and RHP Corey Kluber (#26) who have been mediocre-to-bad in AA and AAA respectively.

As you can see there really isn’t a good answer to the question. You either have to pick a pitcher coming off injury, a 2011 draft pick who hasn’t really suceeded or failed as a professional or you can roll the dice with a talented but raw pitcher like Felix Sterling. By default someone has to be their “best” starting prospect but I really don’t see a viable option to put my name on at this point.

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For more on the Cleveland Indians, check out Deep Left Field

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