Phillies’ Diekman Dominating in Spring

Eight strikeouts in four innings.

It’s a heck of a small sample, and spring training games obviously aren’t the best barometer of ability in the first place, but it’s eye-catching nonetheless. And that’s exactly what Phillies prospect Jake Diekman has done this spring. His full statline: 4 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 8 K.

You’re probably asking yourself: Who the heck is Jake Diekman? A fair question–I honestly hadn’t come across him myself until I was researching for our Phillies prospect list last month (a list he didn’t make, at that). And as it turns out, his spring training performance is not the only interesting thing about this lefthander.

For one thing, Diekman struck out 83 batters in 65 innings in Double-A last year, good for 11.5 K/9. That helps put his spring performance into a bit more context–this isn’t a total fluke, and the guy really can rack up the strikeouts. However, Diekman issued far too many walks last year, with 44 in those 65 innings–6.1 BB/9.

You see numbers like that, and you conjure up the image of this guy going out and throwing 97 mph heat all over the place, but such thoughts are entirely disconnected from the reality of Diekman’s pitching–he’s a sidearmer.

Utilizing a delivery that is somewhere in between Randy Johnson‘s and Kelly Wunsch‘s, Diekman gets surprisingly good leverage to the plate for a guy with such a low arm slot. He steps far toward first base and comes back around his right leg in his delivery, which is usually a red flag, but he is able to maintain a smooth motion in spite of this, and it adds deception.

As you might expect, Diekman gets a lot of sink on the baseball coming from such a low angle, but what’s more surprising is that he consistently gets the ball into the 90s, sitting at 91-92 mph and touching 93-94 on occasion. He also throws a big-breaking slider in the upper 70s.

Diekman gets the expected results from this profile–he gets a lot of strikeouts and grounders (50.6% GB rate), but the ball moves out of the zone on him too much. He’s especially tough on lefties (62.7% GB, 5.40 BB/9, 12.71 K/9 in 2011), and given that he’s a low arm-slot guy in an NL organization, that’s good, because he’d probably get used in a LOOGY role whether he was especially well-designed for one or not.

Diekman was added to the Phillies’ 40-man roster over the offseason, and given his strong impression in camp, he could be wearing a Philadelphia uniform in meaningful games sooner rather than later. Don’t expect miracles, but he could turn into a shutdown lefty reliever in a bullpen that’s about to get a nice youth injection from the likes of Justin De Fratus and Phillippe Aumont.

For more on the Phillies, check out That Balls Outta Here.

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