Atlanta Braves Top 100 Prospect – #8 Tyrell Jenkins Scouting Report
Atlanta Braves Right Hander Tyrell Jenkins
Who Is He?
Jenkins was a high school draft pick in the compensatory 1st round in 2010 by the St. Louis Cardinals out of Henderson High School in Texas. The Cardinals sent the new draftee to their Appalachian League team in Johnson City where he made two appearances, throwing 3 scoreless innings, allowing 2 hits and 2 walks while striking out 2.
The Cardinals returned Jenkins to Johnson City for 2011, and he made 11 starts, throwing 56 innings with a 3.86 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, and 13/55 K/BB. While he gave up quite a few hits, his control and strikeout ability were definitely noticed by scouts, and he made the only Baseball America top-100 list of his career that offseason at #94.
Still just 19, Jenkins spent his 2012 in full-season ball with low-A Quad Cities in the Midwest League for the Cardinals. He flashed much of the same as his performance in 2011, but the results were drastically different, as he posted a 5.14 ERA, 1.46 WHIP, and a 36/80 BB/K ratio in 82 1/3 innings over 19 starts. In spite of those numbers, Jenkins made his only appearance on a Baseball Prospectus top prospects list that offseason, appearing at #94.
Jenkins returned to the Midwest League in 2013 at the Cardinals new affiliate in Peoria and had just earned a bump up to high-A Palm Beach of the Florida State League when he went down with surgery, not on his elbow, but on his shoulder. Combined between the two levels, Jenkins posted a 4.70 ERA over 13 starts and 59 1/3 innings with a 1.50 WHIP and 25/40 BB/K ratio.
He returned to Palm Beach after his surgery recovery and really pitched well in 2014, posting a 3.28 ERA in 13 starts and 74 innings with a 1.31 WHIP and 23/41 BB/K. The Cardinals sent him to the Arizona Fall League, and he put up very solid numbers, making 6 starts and throwing 24 1/3 innings, posting a 2.22 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, and 10/18 BB/K ratio. In the offseason, he was part of the Jason Heyward trade, bringing him to the Braves organization.
Next: Jenkins' scouting report
The Braves started Jenkins at AA Mississippi in 2015, and while his walk rates weren’t great, his other numbers were very solid, earning a late-season promotion to AAA Gwinnett. Overall on the season, he made 25 starts, throwing 138 1/3 innings with a 3.19 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, and 61/88 BB/K ratio.
Tyrell Jenkins Scouting Report
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I wanted to get a good look at Jenkins, so I took a look at a half dozen of his starts, 4 with AA Mississippi and two with AAA Gwinnett. I didn’t hand-choose any starts here. I ended up picking 6 straight starts in the middle of Jenkins season, and interestingly, I caught a good mix of excellent starts and a few struggles as well. Overall, in those six starts, Jenkins went 2-2 with 35 innings pitched, a 2.83 ERA, 1.40 WHIP, and 14/24 BB/K ratio.
Jenkins is listed at 6’4 and 180 pounds, and you’d immediately think he’s a string bean by reading that line, but he was labeled as 212 in the July 4th start that I watched, so he’s at least 30 pounds heavier than that number, but certainly not in bad weight. He has very long legs and quite broad shoulders, which add some unique characteristics to his delivery. Jenkins is incredibly athletic on the mound, moving extremely well off of the mound. In fact, of all the pitchers I watched in 2015, I would rate Jenkins as having the best athleticism in the Braves system.
Jenkins has a trademark high leg kick from the wind up, but a more traditional knee lift that breaks just above the waist from the stretch. From either, he stands tall in his delivery, holding back his lead shoulder for just a hair longer than you’d expect before lunging forward with a huge stride and high arm delivery that sits between 3/4 and over the top. When Jenkins is closer to over the top, his plane is rough to handle and produces a ton of ground balls. When he lets it get more toward 3/4 in the release point, he tends to flatten out and lose the downward motion on his pitches.
Jenkins has a Fastball that sits 93-95 and tops out at 97, a sinker that sits 91-93 and tops out at 95, a change up that sits at 83-85 and a curve ball that runs at 80-83 in the games I saw. Jenkins’ fastball runs with good arm side movement and a touch of sink. His sinker, on the other hand, tends to run more from the middle of the plate to glove side, which is a pretty impressive movement to get on a sinker from a righty. His curve has a solid 12-6 movement, but he tends to have a lot more success with it when he starts it about belly button high and let it fall just below the knees, but his curve was the pitch that seemingly had the most variety in results, primarily in the depth of the pitch. The most frequent curve would start about belt high and end up at the toes, being a great pitch to induce ground balls. When he was really snapping the first curve I mentioned, however, Jenkins got a significant amount of swinging strikes on it. Jenkins plays his change off of his sinker more than off of his fastball, using it in location of his sinker, but it doesn’t have the late drop of the sinker, so batters often end up swinging under the change, creating swing and miss or weak infield pop ups.
Out of his wind up, Jenkins is near impossible to drive a ball on. He simply gets on top of everything, and when he runs a fastball letter high, guys are swinging like fools at it. If someone does get good wood on the ball, about the only way to drive the ball is to get a bloop single that breaks a bat. The curve from the wind up has a lot more break as well.
From the stretch, you’d assume you see where Jenkins’ control issues came from, but, interestingly, Jenkins walked 10.11% of hitters with the bases empty in 2015 and 9.4% of hitters with runners on. Jenkins really didn’t have any set issue that contributed to his walks. His biggest issue really was feel on his pitches.
Next: 2016 outlook
Adam Wainwright has talked about how in the first season following major surgery or major injury, you regain your velocity and regain the feel of your pitches in your hand. The second full season is when your control comes back, with command following after that. Jenkins has never been a guy who has struck out a ton of guys, topping out at 22.4% in rookie ball in 2011, where he also had his lowest walk rate of a full season at 5.5%. Jenkins has the curve ball to create that 20% level of strike out rate, though I don’t think you’ll ever see him be a guy to get to a 25%+ level like some of the more elite pitchers. That may keep him lower on some prospect lists, but when he flashed good control/command in 2015, the evidence was there that he could be a monster pitcher for the Braves.
On a side note, Jenkins uses his tremendous athleticism to create arguably the best pick off move in the Braves organization, and that includes Julio Teheran, who is considered to have the best pick off move among right handed pitchers. He’s yet to have 10 steals even attempted on him in a minor league season, let alone be successful. It’s not tracked well, but from what I could gather in game logs, he’s accumulated 10 pick offs over 83 starts. For comparison’s sake, Teheran’s accumulated only 20 in his major league career, with 8 of those coming in one season before word seemed to get out about him and guys stayed closer to the bag.
Tyrell Jenkins 2016 Outlook
When he was going right in 2015, you could see where Jenkins could have a very similar path to success as Yordano Ventura, and in fact, Jenkins has very similar stuff minus about 1-3 mph on each pitch. I’d wager that Jenkins may have even more natural movement on his four-seam fastball than Ventura, who does his fastball work with the four-seam primarily due to his triple-digit velocity.
Next: Braves Top 100 Prospects Updated
Jenkins will certainly be given plenty of opportunity this spring to earn a position in the rotation, but it is quite likely that, outside of an outstanding spring that forces the Braves’ hand, Jenkins will return to Gwinnett, where he finished 2015, and I am very interested to see if he can continue to gain back that control and command of his pitch selection, because with more control of the pitches and then command within the zone once he establishes his control, Jenkins could be a dominant force against hitters, perhaps never being a guy who tallies up major K/9 numbers, but a guy who can give you 200+ innings year-in and year-out while keeping runners grinding balls into the dirt.