Atlanta Braves Top 100 Prospect – #43 Steve Janas Scouting Report
Atlanta Braves Right Hander Steve Janas
Who Is He?
Janas was a 6th round selection in the 2013 draft by the Braves out of Kennesaw State. Janas is a Georgia guy through and through, having grown up in Marietta, Georgia, and then attending Kennesaw State in Kennesaw, Georgia. The Braves sent Janas to Danville in the Appalachian League in his draft season, and though it was only 2 starts and 4 2/3 innings, the results were not pretty with a 5.79 ERA, 2.79 WHIP, and 4/3 BB/K ratio.
Janas spent the entire 2014 season with Rome in the South Atlantic League, making 18 appearances, 17 of them starts, throwing 97 2/3 innings. He tallied a 4.52 ERA, 1.40 WHIP, and 29/61 BB/K in his time in Rome, nothing to be terribly excited about, really.
Then came 2015’s time in Carolina. Janas opened the season in the Braves high-A affiliate in the Carolina League, and his numbers were simply ridiculous in that time, going 5-0 with a 0.49 ERA, 0.60 WHIP, and 4/24 BB/K in 37 innings over 6 starts. He missed nearly two months after the bus crash in Carolina this year, making his last start before the crash on May 6th and his first start back after the crash on June 27th. He was promoted soon after to AA Mississippi, but his excellence certainly didn’t follow with him from Carolina.
Next: Janas's scouting report
Janas made 13 starts for Mississippi and threw 68 1/3 innings, pitching to a 4.87 ERA and 1.51 WHIP with a 20/33 BB/K. Combined between Carolina and Mississippi, Janas went 7-8 over 19 starts and 105 1/3 innings, posting a 3.33 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, and 24/57 BB/K ratio. To put the difference in perspective, he walked 5 times more hitters in roughly 30 more innings in Mississippi than he had in Carolina.
Steve Janas Scouting Report
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I took a look at Janas’s last two starts in Carolina and his last three of the season in Mississippi. In those 5 starts, he went 2-3 over 26 1/3 innings, allowing a 2.39 ERA and 1.06 WHIP with a 8/9 BB/K.
Janas is listed at 6’5 and 200 pounds on Baseball-Reference, but I found different sites that listed him anywhere from 6’4 to 6’6. I do think the 200ish appears accurate for a weight. Janas stays tall in his delivery, throwing the ball from an overhand delivery, which really allows him to get a tremendous downward plane on the ball.
Janas was drafted with a solid four-pitch mix, with an upper-80s fastball, sinker, a curve ball, and a change up coming off of Tommy John surgery. He’s since added velocity and this season, he added a cutter to his mix. He now has mostly scrapped his “straight” fastball in favor of just throwing the sinker, cutter, curve, and change mix, which means everything moves, and moreover, it all moves late. Janas has added velocity, running his sinker and cutter both from 90-94, mixing in a very rare straight fastball that can touch 95-96 at its absolute peak. The sinker has very good run to the arm side, making it near-impossible for a right-handed hitter to do anything with it. The cutter tends to sit more in the middle in the zone from about mid-thigh to the belt, and it moves almost exclusively horizontally to the arm side. This is very effective on lefties, who end up rolling over the pitch constantly to the opposite side of the infield.
The change runs in the low 80s, peaking at 84 in the games I saw, and when it is on, it may be the most effective change in the entire system. His arm motion is perfectly similar to his fastball, and he likes to throw it belt high where it gets great late dip, seemingly moving right to the bottom of the barrel of hitters, as they roll it over to the shortstop over and over. The curve is the wild card pitch. When he was on fire in Carolina, Janas’ curve was a pure 12-6 curve that would drop from belt high and nearly brush the catcher’s shoe laces. The thing that was very noticeable in his struggles in command in Mississippi was that he could not seem to get that pure vertical movement in the curve, seeing a lot of glove-side “slurve” motion to the pitch, having it start from 12, but end up about 7:30.
Janas quite simply does not have a strikeout mentality nor a strikeout arsenal. His pitches don’t blow by anyone or move so much that they completely miss a bat, but everything moves just a little bit to get off the heart of the bat and create weak contact. Janas pounds the zone when he’s on, and his easy, repeatable motion would allow him to rack up a ton of innings and save the bullpen.
Next: 2016 outlook
One very interesting observation in my views on Janas was based on getting to see by far his best game of the season, his start May 6th against Lynchburg, when he took a perfect game into the final 7th inning of a double-header-shortened game before giving up a crazy hop single. It was arguably the best pitching performance in the Braves minor league system all game, perhaps the major league system as well. He was absolutely dominating all game long, even though he was not getting strikeouts, and Lynchburg was not your average high-A lineup. This was a lineup that had Bradley Zimmer and Clint Frazier, two guys who will certainly be top-100 prospects this season, batting back-to-back.
In that game, Janas nearly never missed the zone. Even his wasted pitches were wasted very, very near the zone trying to get a swing. Lynchburg hitters had to protect the zone all night long, and the ball was simply breaking sharp all game long. That was the last game Janas pitched before the Carolina bus crash. He missed nearly two months after that crash, making his next start on June 27th. When I started watching the starts after his return, it was evident that Janas simply didn’t have that same exact pinpoint control as he did in that game. Now, of course, expecting that level of control each game would be ridiculous, but Janas had different breaks even on his pitches in his games after the crash. With the very hush-hush manner in which any of the injuries from the crash have been handled, we really don’t know exactly what the injury was for Janas. I honestly wonder if it may have been something with his hand, wrist, or fingers based on the change in how his pitches moved after the crash. Just to be sure it wasn’t a one-game bias, I went back and watched pieces of two more starts before the crash, and his breaks on his pitches were exactly as I saw in the Lynchburg game, so I’m left wondering if something may have been off with his ability to grip/throw his stuff to get the same movement as before.
Steve Janas 2016 Outlook
Janas is no spring chicken, turning 24 at the end of April this season. He’s also not a strikeout guy, so he’s not a guy that stands out to prospect evaluators. He’s not an ideal build, standing with more of a long, lean build than an athletic, muscular build. He doesn’t throw over 95 or have a wicked pitch that breaks across multiple planes.
However, what Janas does is pitch. He pitches every game and keeps his team in the ball game every game by (typically) not putting unneeded guys on base, keeping the ball in the park, and moving quickly while on the mound so his hitters don’t spend too much time in the field. Janas is the type of guy that we have seen a lot of value in recently at the back of major league rotations. Heck, the guy I compared Janas to in the October top prospect series, Mike Pelfrey, got 2 years at $8M per season from the Detroit Tigers this offseason, so major league teams are definitely valuing what Janas brings to the table.
Next: Braves Top 100 Prospects Updated
Janas will likely start the season at AA Mississippi, but he could move quickly if he can get that same movement back on his pitches. He’s got the chance to become a very valuable piece at the back of a rotation, whether that’s for Atlanta or as part of a trade and working for another team.