The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: Neil Wagner

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 Athletics reliever Neil Wagner.

Neil Wagner was one of the more anonymous pitchers to debut in 2011. A 27-year-old who was acquired from the Indians in mid-2010 for basically nothing, the short righthander wasn’t seen as more than an organizational guy despite some nice numbers at times. But he put up a 1.49 FIP in Double-A this year, with 53 strikeouts in 37 1/3 innings, and that got him a look in Triple-A, where he whiffed another 34 in 29 frames.

Wagner was a late-season call-up who threw five innings with the A’s. He struck out four, walked three, and allowed seven runs (four earned).

It wasn’t the most incredible debut, but Wagner did show a bigtime heater, as he averaged 95.3 mph with his fastball, working at 94-97 mph. You’d expect a 6’0″ pitcher throwing that hard to have a max-effort delivery, but Wagner has surprisingly easy, clean mechanics. I get a bit of a Keith Foulke vibe from his motion, actually.

Given that grade of heat, it’s surprising that Wagner was such an afterthought in both the Cleveland and Oakland organizations–it’s not like his numbers were always lagging behind his performance.

Furthermore, a whopping 37 of Wagner’s 45 fastballs went for strikes. Batters swung at 30 of them and wound up fouling off 18 and whiffing at five, putting just seven into play. Those are some pretty stellar initial returns, but small sample caveats obviously apply. He does throw his fastball up in the zone:

He doesn’t get much plane in his delivery, and his fastball is fairly straight, so I wouldn’t be surprised if his flyball and home run rates wind up somewhat elevated. Historically, that wasn’t a problem in the minors, though, so perhaps there’s something else going on that gets him more grounders than this analysis would indicate.

Wagner throws both an 83-88 mph power slider and an 82-84 mph sinking changeup. Both have the movement to miss some bats, and Wagner isn’t afraid to break them out, as the offspeed offerings comprised about 1/3 of his MLB pitches. Still, though, they stood in stark contrast to his fastball by only going for strikes 11 of 26 times. In particular, he used the changeup basically like a splitter:

Well, that helps clear up how he gets ground balls. He keeps the slider down as well:

Ultimately, then, his fastball may have a very high flyball rate, but his other pitches counteract it–remember, just seven of his 45 heaters were put in play, despite 30 being swung at, so the pitch didn’t make up the majority of his balls in play in the big leagues.

Wagner’s got three pitches that all have some big attributes–the fastball has velocity, the slider has tilt, and the changeup has sink and velocity separation. That should be enough to get some pretty nice strikeout rates as a short reliever; it remains to be seen, however, where his walk rate will be. Wagner had some periodic problems in the minors with free passes, and he didn’t throw his offspeed stuff for strikes in the bigs, so it’s possible that the walks will compromise his strikeout ability enough to make him a poor candidate for high-leverage work.

Still, Wagner was a very nice find for the A’s, and he should be a solid bullpen arm in 2012. If he can master pitch and location sequencing in the majors, he could be a shutdown power arm.

For more on the Athletics, check out Swingin’ A’s!

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