Atlanta Braves Top 100 Prospect – #8 Tyrell Jenkins Scouting Report

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.