Atlanta Braves Top 100 Prospects: #99 Evan Phillips

Scouting Report

Phillips is listed by Baseball Reference at 6’2 and 215 pounds. He’s got a big, sturdy build to him, looking like a guy who could put on some pads and play some football just as quickly as he could throw pitches. He pitches exclusively out of the stretch, starting his move to the plate with a very slight leg pickup, then a huge lunge forward with his front leg. He has a very solid over-the-top motion with a big leg kick.

Phillips works with a three-pitch mix, featuring a fastball in the 91-94 range, touching as high as 96 in his time in the pen for Rome. He also features a hard slider and a hard curve, both in the mid-80s in velocity. The fastball has some good arm side fade when he can keep it from the knees on down, but he struggles with the pitch straightening out when he throws it up in the zone, especially arm side up in the zone. The curve doesn’t have a ton of depth to it, but it’s typically the third pitch. When it’s on, it’s a strikeout pitch, and you can track his game logs and pretty much tell when the curve was really snapping well.

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The combination of the curve snapping well and his high-velocity fastball leads to a ton of strikeouts. Add in the slider, which has very good arm side tumble, nearly hitting a batter’s shoelaces on one particularly biting slider. The slider is what he seems to have the most control issues with, however, and he can have issues hanging the pitch in the zone when he gets off as we’ll discuss below.

The big troubles you see with Phillips have been with his control, which leads to his ball being off the catcher’s target, not necessarily out of the zone. He had a reputation for issues with his control in college, but moving to the bullpen seems to have sharpened the control, allowing Phillips to keep the ball in the zone, but his fast lunge forward with the minimal leg kick sometimes leads to his foot seemingly landing early, which then throws off his command, meaning he doesn’t hit his catcher’s spot. When the landing spot gets REALLY off, he will lose control on top of the command, but from the reports of his college performance, he was drastically more in control during his relief appearances I was able to view.

Next: 2016 outlook

2016 Outlook

The Braves have been known in recent years for taking college relievers and turning them into effective starters, but in Phillips’ case, they’ve seemingly done the opposite. I saw 96 this year, and that was the reported top end during his draft season, but from reports I got, the move to the bullpen allowed Phillips to reach as high as 98 on some guns, and he can put even more effort into his hard-breaking curve in short stints.

Next: Braves Top 100 Prospects Updated

Phillips could return to Rome to start 2016 due to his limited time in Rome (16 1/3 innings over 12 games), but if the Braves are comfortable with the work he put in, he could certainly move up to Carolina, and there is some definite room for him to move quickly if he can keep performing well as there’s really not a lot of resistance to a strong relief prospect moving up the system right now the same way that there’s a lot of big starting prospects in the upper minors. It will be fun to watch how Phillips keeps growing.