Atlanta Braves Top 100 Prospects: #69 Caleb Beech

Atlanta Braves Right Hander Caleb Beech

Who Is He?

The Braves drafted Beech out of Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in the 13th round of the 2014 draft. The Braves sent him to their GCL team and he made only 4 appearances, all in relief. The results were not pretty, pitching only 5 innings, sporting a 14.40 ERA, 2.80 WHIP, and 3/1 BB/K ratio, but obviously that was a very limited sample size.

Beech was sent to Rome this season, and he made 11 appearances, 10 of them starts, collecting 62 2/3 innings. He posted a 2.87 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, and he added a 17/43 BB/K ratio in his time with Rome this year. He made his last start on June 19th due to injury, but all reports say he will be good for 2016.

Next: Beech's scouting report

Scouting Report

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To get a good view on Beech, I watched 7 of his starts. Over those starts, he threw 44 1/3 innings, with a 1.63 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, and 8/31 BB/K ratio. One of the difficulties is that his “bad” starts of 2015 were in games that were not on milb.tv, so I didn’t get a ton of looks at Beech struggling, but then again, he didn’t really struggle in 2015 before his season ended!

Beech is listed at 6’4 and 215 pounds. He is definitely all of that, and perhaps more as he is a sizable presence on the mound. Beech stays tall from the windup, with a big over-the-top arm slot to finish. While Beech is 6’4, he appears to be built more from the hips up, with a tall trunk. He doesn’t get great step toward the plate, but his high arm angle creates the same downward plane that those guys with longer legs do with their long strides.

Beech has a solid four-pitch mix, utilizing a four-seam and two-seam fastball, a change up, and a curve ball. He works all lower in the zone, and one of the struggles with Beech’s starts were they were early in the season, when for some reason, Rome’s broadcasters rarely, if ever, mentioned velocity of a pitch. Seeing guys later in the summer allowed you to get more of an idea of where their velocity was sitting throughout the game. From the one game I could get velocity, it seemed like the fastballs sat in the low-90s, touching mid-90s, with the change coming in at the low 80s and the curve ranging in the low- to mid-70s.

Beech works low in the zone with everything. His bread and butter combo is his sinking two-seamer along with his curve. The two-seamer has good sink toward the arm side. He’s able to spot his curve throughout the zone, and it’s a 12-6 movement that he typically starts around belt high and the catcher gloves off his shoe tops. His four-seam fastball has some late sink to it as well, but nowhere near the depth of the sinker. The change is not often used, but it does get some interesting movement, with Beech typically locating it around mid-thigh to knee level and getting some solid arm-side run.

Beech had been a college reliever and was moved to the rotation in 2015. Whether the Braves pushed him too hard is to be seen, as he ended up having a streak of 6 games completing at least six full innings starting with only his 3rd start of his pro career. The injury he suffered hasn’t been widely reported, though it has been stated that he’ll be ready to open 2016, so it’s not viewed as serious. His ground-pounding repertoire produced a 54.4% ground ball rate in 2015, so he’s got an opportunity to develop as a mid-rotation inning eater that can keep guys from hurting him by limiting balls leaving the park.

Next: 2016 outlook