The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: Brad Peacock

Many popular opinions of pitching prospects are formed from general scouting reports. While these reports are invaluable resources, they can’t always be trusted. Hundreds of minor league hurlers are credited with “mid-90′s velocity,” but very few MLB starters actually have that grade of heat, for example. It’s incredibly frustrating to hear about a pitcher with “a mid-90′s heater and plus curve,” only to have him come up to the big leagues and show a fastball that averages 90.5 mph and a slider.

When a pitcher come up to the majors, we can finally get a foolproof reading on what exactly his arsenal is comprised of, thanks to the great Pitch F/X system. In this series, I analyze just that–the “stuff” of recently-promoted MLB pitchers. Now that they’ve achieved their big league dreams and thus factor directly into the MLB picture, it’s high time that we know exactly what these guys are providing.

This time, I’m taking a look at Nationals starter Brad Peacock.

Along with Tom Milone, who I’ve already looked at in this series (and come away rather impressed), Brad Peacock is part of a duo of rookies Nationals pitchers who could team with the already-established Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmerman to give the nation’s capital four dynamic young starters in the rotation next year.

Peacock is the more highly-touted of the pair, and that’s not surprisingly due in large part to the fact that he throws nearly 5 mph harder than Milone and snaps off a better breaking ball.

Peacock was absolutely dominant in Double-A in the first half of the season, with a 129/23 K/BB in 98 2/3 innings. He hit something of a wall in Triple-A (48/24 K/BB in 48 IP), but I’m not concerned about that, statistically; he had an even more severe dropoff when promoted from High-A to Double-A late in 2010, and obviously recovered from that just fine.

In the big leagues, Peacock’s made two starts and one relief appearance, covering 12 innings and 201 pitches. He’s inspired optimism among even the most present-minded fans by allowing just seven hits and one earned run, although he’s walked six batters and struck out just four, so we shouldn’t be anointing him an excellent MLB starter just yet.

Peacock relies fairly heavily on his fastball, using it over 60% of the time. He touched 96 mph in his relief appearance, but as a starting pitcher, he’s worked mostly from 90-94 mph with the pitch, averaging 92.1 mph.

Against righthanders, Peacock attacks the entire strike zone very aggressively with the heater:

Facing batters from the opposite side, however, Peacock elects to work the outer half almost exclusively with the fastball:

A relatively short pitcher with a fairly high arm angle, Peacock doesn’t get a whole lot of lateral movement on his fastball, which means that any heaters inside to lefties would be coming in straight, as opposed to starting off the inside corner and snapping back over. Thus, while it’s regrettable that he’s somewhat predictable with his location to them, it’s probably a wise decision on his part to simply keep the ball away from them and not let lefties pull his fastballs toward the right field bleachers.

Peacock backs his fastball up with a changeup and curveball–as a starter, he’s thrown 60.7% fastballs, 25.2% changeups, and 14.1% curves. The changeup comes in at 80-84 mph, roughly 10 mph slower than the righthander’s fastball, and features good fade away from lefties. Not surprisingly, he leans especially heavily on the pitch (28.6%) against southpaws; however,  he’s also unafraid to throw it to righties, unlike many pitchers who simply go fastball/breaking ball to same-side hitters. The pitch’s results haven’t been great–as a starter, 23 of his 41 changeups have gone for strikes, and just two of those have been on whiffs. Yet, his Pitch Type Linear Weights value (extremely small sample aside) of 4.37 runs above average per 100 pitches is quite encouraging. A look at what he does with it to lefties explains why:

Sure, a lot of these are going to go for balls, and the low strike rate with the pitch confirms this, but it’s also tough to see a hitter driving these pitches–a lefty would have to get some serious arm extension and poke the ball down the left field line. As a result, Peacock’s changeups rarely get bad results–yes, there are some wasted pitches, but given that he’s usually using the pitch when he’s ahead in the count, those small negatives are even further minimized.

While it’s just 13 pitches, Peacock’s changeups to righties show he’s not only willing to throw the pitch to them, but also challenge them with it on the inner part of the plate:

Time will tell how this approach works; the idea is probably to use the changeup’s extra horizontal movement to run in on righthanders. For what it’s worth, all of the changeups in the strike zone except for the one on the top-right were swung at and hit (foul or fair).

While the changeup shows some promise, it’s the curveball that stands out more from a scouting perspective. He’s thrown it 20% of the time to righties and 10.2% to lefties. Since we’re just talking about 12 innings, though, that means Peacock’s only thrown 23 curveballs.

That’s enough to establish that it’s a 73-76 mph pitch (average of 74.7) with a ton of break. Peacock’s deceptive short-arm action also makes the break tough to pick up. Here’s what he’s done with the pitch:

Just 10 of 23 of the curves have gone for strikes, but clearly, a lot of these pitches are very close, and he’s not simply burying the pitch in the dirt all the time, nor is he having trouble controlling the huge break and leaving pitches all over the place. As with the changeup, he’s avoiding the middle of the plate. That means that when he gets ahead in the count with the fastball, he’s very tough, because he’s not going to hang a curve or leave a changeup out over the plate.

The downside of Peacock’s keeping the curve and changeup out of the middle of the plate is that the waste pitches can add up and then leave him behind in the count, which does explain the six walks in twelve innings. But the tradeoff between nibbling and attacking is the sort of nuance that we shouldn’t expect a pitcher of Peacock’s inexperience to have mastered at this point, so I’m not particularly concerned.

Clearly, he’s got three solid pitches and an idea of how to use them–the rest simply boils down to what sort of refinements he’ll be able to make. The one area of concern is that his fastball is fairly flat, so he’s an extreme flyball pitcher who’s going to give up some home runs. As a result, if he’s going to be a #1 or #2 starter, Peacock will need to post some excellent K/BB ratios, along the lines of somebody like Dan Haren.

We can at least pencil him in as a useful MLB starter in 2012 and beyond; how high he’ll rise beyond that is wide-open to debate. But, like Milone, Peacock is a guy for Nationals fans to get excited about, as he should contribute several years of quality pitching at bargain prices.

For more on the Nationals, check out District On Deck.

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