The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: Danny Farquhar
By Aaron Somers
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 Blue Jays reliever Danny Farquhar.
Danny Farquhar was always seen as something of a curiosity as a prospect; a pitcher who threw from multiple arm angles with reasonable velocity, but who wasn’t consistent enough with his location to necessarily project as much of an asset. He was traded from the Blue Jays to the A’s and then back to the Blue Jays in the past year, and then ultimately wound up with Toronto in September for two garbage-time innings.
The “multiple arm angles” part of that narrative appears to have been dropped, as all of Farquhar’s 43 MLB pitches were thrown from basically a sidearm release:
As you might expect from that, Farquhar’s fastball has all kinds of movement, as it has about ten inches more drop and six inches more arm-side run than the average fastball. He worked in the 89-92 range in the big leagues, as well, so we’re not talking about a Brad Ziegler/Chad Bradford-style soft-tossing sinkerballer.
As with most sidearmers, Farquhar’s second pitch is a slider–a pitch that, strangely enough, has less sink than his fastball. It doesn’t have the big sweep of a lot of sidearm “Frisbee” sliders, but at 80-84 mph, it comes in as hard as the fastball of a guy like Ziegler, so the shorter, tighter break shouldn’t come as a surprise.
That’s about all there is to Farquhar, really. Since he now works from the low angle just about exclusively (or so it seems, anyway), he’s vulnerable to lefthanders, who had a 16/12 K/BB ratio against him in Triple-A (righthanders had a 27/6 ratio).
With his moving fastball and usable slider, Farquhar is tough on righthanders, so as long as he can keep the pitches from running out of the zone on him, he should experience success in a limited situational role. While he did close games in the minors, it would be foolish to expect him to get similarly high-leverage looks in the big leagues if there’s much of a chance of him facing a lefthanded batter. His skillset would probably play better in the matchup-heavy National League.
While he’s an interesting pitcher to watch, we shouldn’t place big expectations on Farquhar, who turns 25 in February. Given the typical constraints of a sidearmer, he pretty much is what he is.
For more on the Blue Jays, check out Jays Journal.
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