Photo courtesy of Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune
Son of a Big Leaguer, Freshman Phenom, Tommy John survivor, Top 10 pick, and under-performing prospect, Cal Quantrill’s career has been a roller-coaster ride of emotions. After varying results over the last season and a half, the former Stanford standout, received the call to the big leagues. Let’s dig into the scouting reports from the pre-season industry ranks and see how they compare with the pitcher we see tonight versus the Atlanta Braves.
Scouting Report: An advanced college arm that missed most of his sophomore campaign and all of his junior season at Stanford following Tommy John surgery. The Padres selected him with the seventh pick in the 2016 draft and signed him for an at slot bonus of $4 million. Despite his poor results in 2018, there’s still some upside in his prototypical pitchers build, four-pitch mix, and track record of durability in the professional ranks.
Pitch Mix: The reports are headlined by the inconsistency of his stuff from start to start. At times his fastball is said to sit 93-95 with good command, while other games he sits low 90s with a fastball that lacks movement. His changeup is his lead secondary, and his effectiveness wanes on this pitch much like the fastball. At their best they’re a solid pairing leading to ground balls and swing and misses. His breaking balls are average to below, with his mid 80s slider the better of the two. He features a slower curveball, but it’s a below-average pitch and not frequently used.
Health: Despite a checkered medical history as an amateur, Quantrill’s proven to be durable since being drafted. He’s thrown a total of 289 innings over 55 starts dating back to 2017. His ability to be a backend of the rotation innings eater makes him a more attractive prospect, even of the stuff is just mediocre.
Outcomes: The consensus seems to be pretty heavily in the camp of backend rotation arm. There’s still some optimism around a mid-rotation ceiling, but the consistency of his lead pitches, and the quality of his breaking balls need to bump up.
First Inning: It wouldn’t be a major league debut without a guy throwing from his shoes in the first inning. The fastball is sitting 95-96 in the first with solid movement. Some rise up in the zone, and downhill plane and drop on his sinker. There’s definitely a couple of fastball grips. Other things to note, Braves lineup is lefty heavy, and as should be expected the changeup is getting a lot of work early.
Albies leads the game off with a triple, the second baseman took a low fastball before tattooing a ball middle in. Dansby Swanson is in the two hole, and as one of the few right-handed batters in the lineup we see the slider on the third pitch of the at bat and it sweeps way off the plate. Swanson holds up but hits the next pitch a low inside fastball to right field. Albies scores on the sacrifice and it’s 1-0 Braves. Freddie Freeman steps up, looks at a fastball sandwiched between a pair of changeups and hits the next fastball he sees and tees off for a double. Markakis steps up next, hitting in the cleanup spot, and he watches two ugly curveballs miss the zone wide before hitting a middle in fastball to left. Quantrill gets Johan Camargo to groundout to the third baseman and Ty France makes the throw to end the inning.
Second Inning: Quantrill throws just eight total pitches in this inning, six of them strikes, including a four-pitch strikeout with some ugly hacks from Charlie Culberson.
Third Inning: Another efficient frame, as Quantrill strikes out the opposing pitch Max Fried, before retiring both Albies and Swanson. His velocity is holding to this point as he’s still 95-96, but he’s starting to run his fastball up a little too high, and he’s missed the zone on a couple of easy takes.
Fourth Inning: Freddie Freeman leads off the inning and makes easy work of the second pitch hitting a high fastball for a single. Quantrill follows by walking Nick Markakis on four consecutive pitches. Worth noting, he missed with three fastballs high against Markakis. An eight-pitch battle ends with Johan Camargo, when he grounds a high fastball into a fielder’s choice. Quantrill goes right after McCann with a variety a changeup and a round of fastballs, eventually getting the catcher to hit into an inning ending 6-4-3. Strong and composed inning from the rookie. I have to say his mound presence and sequencing has been better than I anticipated.
Fifth Inning: Charlie Culberson is lost in the sauce and he swings on a fastball in, and changeup low, and a slider before walking back to the dug out. After surrendering a double to Ender Inciarte, Quantrill retires Fried, before allowing a RBI double to Albies on a changeup that hung up on the outer-half of the plate. A loud out for Dansby Swanson ends the inning, but Quantrill’s stuff is waning. His fastball velocity is down to 93-94, and it’s losing its early command.
Sixth Inning: Coming into the inning Quantrill has thrown just 73 pitches, so there’s a strong possibility he gets out of the frame before his night ends. That however is not the case as he gets a fly out to left from Freeman, before yielding a double to Markakis. After a flyout from Carmargo, Quantrill’s night is over on 87 pitches.
Conclusion: I have to say this was better than expected. His fastball was inconsistent, but the velocity range was good as he sat mid 90s all night long. His changeup is a plus pitch. Really good movement and his arm speed doesn’t vary from his fastball. The slider saw limited usage due to so few righties in the Braves lineup, but it did look like a weapon in same-side matchups. By no means is it plus, but I’m comfortable putting an average grade on it, with some ceiling for more. Need to see him use it against more big league caliber right-handed bats. His curveball is there, but it looked like he had zero command in its trio of appearances.
Clean mechanically, good arm action, and the body of an innings eater, Quantrill looks the part. His demeanor and cool-and-collected body language spoke volumes. I have to say he looked like he’s ready to contribute this season. The four-pitch mix is really three, and a variation of his fastball that shows dart and dive. There’s been no mention of a two-seamer in reports, but the Pitch FX on FanGraphs picked up the same thing. While it’s by no means set in stone, there’s more mid-rotation upside than expected.