Atlanta Braves Righty Brandon Barker Scouting Report

Atlanta Braves Right Hander Brandon Barker

Who Is He?

Barker was a 16th round selection by the Braves from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia in the 2014 draft. The Braves sent the 21 year-old to advanced-rookie Danville of the Appalachian League for just two games before promoting him directly to A-ball and Rome. He finished the season as a swing man for the R-Braves, pitching in 12 games, and starting 5 of them. Overall, he had 36 1/3 innings pitched in 2014 with a 3.72 ERA and 1.46 WHIP. He also posted a 12/34 BB/K ratio.

Next: Barker's scouting report

Barker was moved full-time to the rotation to start 2015 in Rome, and he didn’t do anything remarkable, but he was simply incredibly steady, earning his way to a midseason promotion to high-A Carolina, and even making a pair of fill-in starts for AAA Gwinnett. He had 27 starts on the season, throwing 146 2/3 innings with a 3.25 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, and 41/109 BB/K ratio across the three levels.

Brandon Barker Scouting Report

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Just to be weird, I chose 5 starts closest to the 25th of the month, starting in April. It worked out to be two starts in Rome, two starts with Carolina, and then I left one start from Carolina to include his final start with Gwinnett. In those 5 starts, he had a pretty impressive line: 3-1, 30 innings pitched, 1.80 ERA, 0.87 WHIP, 5/24 BB/K.

Barker is listed at 6’3″ and 200 lbs., and I’d say that’s fairly accurate. Interestingly, he has fairly long legs for a guy who’s 6’3″, so that allows him to really have good control over his mechanics because he bases his pitches from his legs in his motion. Barker uses a three-pitch mix with a fastball that sits in the 89-93 range, touching 94 at its absolute peak, along with a change-up and a curve ball. He’s actually added roughly 5 MPH since he came into the Braves organization, which certainly doesn’t hurt his success he’s had.

Along with long legs, Barker also has long arms, and you notice this in his motion. He’s in good control of his body throughout his motion, but the length and relative lean-ness of his limbs make them seem quite quizzical as he moves through his motion. He has a steady motion that results in an over-the-top delivery with a high leg kick to finish each pitch. In spite of that high kick, Barker finishes the kick quickly and is in good fielding position by the time the ball is to the plate.

Barker can get hit hard when he misses with his pitches, so his location is absolutely key. He missed in one game on three pitches in a row on a fairly innocuous hitter, and the guy hit the first two foul, but even a poor hitter in the minors can do something with pitches of Barker’s velocity when he misses, and the third miss ended up one-hopping the wall for a double. He does get strikeouts by using his fastball up in the zone in the midst of pounding the zone low, especially when pounding the zone low with a number of change ups and fastballs and getting the hitter looking down in the zone. Barker also plays his fastball to change-up extremely well.

The curve ball is the real wild card. It has a 12-6 motion to it, but when it’s really on, he can snap it off starting at a hitter’s chest and finishing at his mid-shin, which is simply unhittable. Typically, though, it’s more of a single plane movement, frequently being a pitch he can throw high in the zone to adjust a batter’s eyes, with a movement from the chest to belt line, which with his excellent location, he does a good job of keeping away from the center of the plate. What’s really interesting is that he showed a pitch a few times that moved different, and it was only thrown maybe a handful of times each game at most, but that pitch dove down and away from righties and down and in on lefties, and it hung over the middle of the zone in its path just long enough for a hitter to think he had a chance, but I don’t recall it once being hit. It behaved like a 1-7 curve, but it also had a bit more zip than his usual curve as well. If he can sequence his good blend of fastball/change-up with two different moving curve balls, he’s really got something to work with.

Next: 2016 outlook

I’m not sure there’s much more velocity there, but Barker’s really shown a proficiency for pounding the low part of the zone to encourage ground balls. He does a good job with his pitch sequencing, keeping hitters off base by never throwing the same pitch sequence twice to the same hitter (and I actually tracked this in the August start to be sure!). His spray chart on MLBfarm.com shows the results of hitters against him, and the heat zones around the infield shows all you need to know about Barker’s work on the mound.