The Arms Index
June SP Ranks
Memorial Day is in the rear view and we welcome summer baseball. The dog days are still a little bit ahead, but they are coming. It’s time to get serious about the standings, and even if we have a nice lead, the pedal has to be pushed. I am attempting more brevity than typical with this intro, as I spent a massive chunk of time fine tuning and fleshing out the precise ranking slots, corresponding tiers and the write ups. Please consider coming abroad as a paid subscriber or sharing my stuff with others that might appreciate the work put into this. Let’s get right into the June Top 150 update, and as always feel free to follow up with any questions.
LR denotes last rank in the Index and PL denotes prospect list
also an * after rank denotes an injury at publication time
Paul Skenes/PIT (LR #1)
Jacob Misiorowski/MIL (LR #19)
Cristopher Sanchez/PHI (LR #5)
Chris Sale/ATL (LR #4)
Cam Schlittler/NYY (LR #8)
T1— I decided to break the tier here, but I feel the top 3 are a little ahead moving forward. I’ve already written plenty about the Miz jump, and it’s only been reinforced. I gave serious consideration to making him the outright top overall SP, as the only thing left for him to do is keep it up for a slightly larger sample. He is the best arm in baseball and made every stride one could towards becoming a total pitcher. Sanchez continues to look amazing, totally shaking off all the early season doubters. Sale simply needs some decent health fortune and he will continue this run. Schlittler gets a small bump, but the subscribers know I’ve been in front on him, and he’s done nothing but deliver with amazing consistency thus far.
Zach Wheeler/PHI (LR #15)
Bryan Woo/SEA (LR #6)
Yoshinobu Yamamoto/LAD (LR #5)
Shohei Ohtani/LAD (LR #9)
Joe Ryan/MIN (LR #18)
Chase Burns/CIN (LR #27)
Gerrit Cole/NYY (LR IL)
Jacob deGrom/TEX (LR #10)
Logan Gilbert/SEA (LR #11)
Jesus Luzardo/PHI (LR #16)
T2— We have the second class of the legitimate SP1s. Wheeler continues to gain incremental strength as he shakes off the rust and the video simply looks vintage. Burns is an undeniable talent, but slightly over his skis after seeing his regression completely flip from last year. The main issue is the change up, which showed small sample flashes last year, but has backed up this year, even though some poor luck might be the culprit. Joe Ryan has absolutely shoved since another injury scare. That remains in the back of my brain, but the video isn’t showing a guy suffering from anything diminished. Cole was pretty impressive in his return, and added some wrinkles to the mix. His arm angle was down slightly and it gave the FA extra arm side action while maintaining the solid IVB. The breakers had different/better shapes, too. We can reasonably expect the command to incrementally boost and the bat missing should show up more frequently with this sort of stuff. This might be too aggressive without the data sample I prefer, but the video sure looked a lot like the guy we know. I wrote all that prior to Cole’s second start and proceeded to adjust him from #19 up to #12 in the ranks. It’s a risk, but I think he’s back-back.
In last month’s edition I warned of deGrom possibly running into a HR issue due to a poor PullAir% rate and fortunate strand rate, which has, in fact, occurred. The stuff is omnipresent, but there could be slightly more turbulence as things stabilize. I haven’t liked a lot of the Gilbert work yet this season, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt one more month. He needs to halt all the tinkering and dial in more with the efficiency. Luzardo has worked through some harsh variance and all the metrics remain sterling. I think he’s ready to get back to some dominant turns.
Parker Messick/CLE (LR #33)
Gavin Williams/CLE (LR #24)
Braxton Ashcraft/PIT (LR #36)
Kyle Harrison/MIL (LR #39)
Michael King/SD (LR #30)
Trey Yesavage/TOR (LR #37)
Nolan McLean/NYM (LR #14)
George Kirby/SEA (LR #22)
Jose Soriano/LAA (LR #23)
T3— It’s a solid grouping here, we have a mix of fresh faces and some vets that still have upside. Messick has simply upped his game, his stuff has never been stronger and the command/locations continue to impress. As I said last month, he just knows how to deal and the deception only adds to the overall appeal. While this may seem bold, I really like the elevated floor/ceiling mix. Nearly everything I said about Gavin has come to fruition, and despite a small results waylay, he’s once again hitting big rig status. Experts were so concerned about his command, but he was never missing his spots by very much, making it easy to spot, if they had looked. Ashcraft continues to thrive, but also mix up his secondaries, ramping up the slider usage and making it difficult for lineups to establish a true book. The combination of plus stuff and strong locations give this excellent sticking power. Harrison has transformed himself under the tutelage of the Brewers pitching machine, and it all looks very real. He attacks the edges of the zone and the raised arm angle of his FA is overwhelming hitters in the upper quadrant. King has looked mostly great and flashed the stuff that made him a fixture in this area of the ranks last year. Yesavage is still rounding into form after no Spring Training, but is already showing great command feel. He’s going to continue increasing that slider usage and it should propel him towards a strong summer.
McLean is going through it a bit right now, it’s a little a bit of a combination of some poor batted ball luck, shoddy defense and being pressed into too many fastball counts. He’s over relied on it some too, so he can make those adjustments and get this back on the rails. The slight concern is that his arm angle has meandered down a little too much of late. Do not abandon ship now, you have to let these guys figure it out. Soriano is plenty fine going forward, he’s just battling both regression and slight command issues lately. All the stuff and bat missing is still there, so I expect him to find his way back from this, even if the schedule is a bit challenging.
