The Seedlings To Stars 2012 Top 100 Prospects, #84: Mike Montgomery

Name: Mike Montgomery
DOB: 7/1/89
Organization: Royals
Position: Pitcher
Notable 2011 Stats: 5.32 ERA, 4.30 FIP, 15 HRA, 69 BB, 129 K, 50% GB% in 150 2/3 IP with Omaha (AAA)

Why He’s This High: Montgomery boasts plus stuff, with a good low-90’s fastball and a curve and changeup that flash plus at times. At 6’4″ and with a lanky, projectable frame, he could grow into more velocity, and he could end up with three plus offerings–after all, he just turned 22 in July.

Statistically, Montgomery doesn’t have a whole lot left to prove in the minors after being a mid-rotation workhorse for Triple-A Omaha last season. After he missed significant time in 2010, getting through 150+ innings this season was a big step for the lefthander, and better still, he improved as the year went on. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was just 65/46 through the end of June, but was nearly twice as good thereafter, at 64/23.

Montgomery has always put up good groundball numbers and projects to excel in that area at the MLB level as well.

Why He’s This Low: Statistically, Montgomery hasn’t really excelled that much in his minor league career. He had one dominant stretch of four starts in High-A to start 2010, and his one-homer-in-110 innings performance in 2009 was pretty neat, but he hasn’t shown the ability to get elite strikeout numbers with any consistency. His K/BB numbers from Double-A and Triple-A leave a lot to be desired, and while he did make strides in that area down the stretch in 2011, there still has to be some lingering doubt about how consistent he’s going to be.

Montgomery missed significant time in 2010 with elbow problems, as I mentioned above, and his mechanics are a bit quirky, leading some to wonder if he will wind up with a more costly injury in the future. He tends to be overly straight-up-and-down in his delivery, which gives him excellent plane to the plate (hence the groundball rate) but puts some additional stress on his elbow. His landing also is somewhat inconsistent, which could be a driver of his elevated walk rates.

Injury issues, of course, are often merely speculation, and the more philosophical issue at hand is what sort of upside Montgomery has. If you squint, you can imagine him coming up with three plus offerings, filling out and becoming durable, and correcting his flaws with time, and turning into a Jon Lester-style lefty ace. If you don’t buy those improvements all coalescing for the young lefty, perhaps you see him turning into an inconsistent but useful back-of-the-rotation lefthander with more stuff than many pitchers of that ilk–like, say, Twins-era Eric Milton.

Conclusions: Most likely, Montgomery turns into something between Milton and Lester. Seasons like C.J. Wilson‘s 2010–which is a near-exact match for Montgomery’s AAA campaign in the BB/9, K/9, and GB% numbers–are probably the most likely scenario for his peak. That’s not too shabby, as Wilson was a 4.6 WAR pitcher that year.

Really, the question with Montgomery is which of his skills are going to round into form, which will fail to materialize, and which will show up but fail to gain consistency. He’s got three pitches that could be plus, but none of them are plus right now. He might strike out a well-above-average number of guys, and he might have a great walk rate, but he hasn’t been consistent in either department in the minors, let alone the majors. There’s no “signature skill” to hang your hat on here, nothing that you can look at and say “I know he’ll do ______ really well in the majors.” The closest thing is probably his groundball ability, which is a plus, but that’s not the sort of attribute that puts guys at the top of prospect lists.

That uncertainty aside, this is a 22-year-old with a number of potentially excellent qualities, and a pitcher who’s probably just a dozen Triple-A starts away from being ready for a shot at a big-league rotation. While it’s easy to focus on the underwhelming stats or the lack of one bigtime attribute to fall in love with, we shouldn’t overlook all the positives that allowed Montgomery to ascend this far this fast. There are more question marks here than there are for most big prospects with a full year of Triple-A experience, but Montgomery still holds plenty of intrigue and potential, and even if he meets his (healthy) downside, he should contribute as an innings-eater.

Check out all of the Seedlings To Stars 2012 Top 100 Prospects here!

For more on the Royals, check out Kings of Kauffman!

Follow us on Twitter: Nathaniel (@stoltz_baseball), Wally (@thebaseballfish) and James (@JAYRC_MCB). You can also keep up to date with all things S2S by liking our Facebook page.