May 10, 2016; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Major league baseball gloves rest on the railing before the game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Mets at Dodger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
May 10, 2016; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Major league baseball gloves rest on the railing before the game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Mets at Dodger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports /
The Atlanta Braves grabbed Matt Withrow just a month after acquiring his brother in trade from the Dodgers. Can Matt be the better pitcher for the Braves?
Who Is He?
On May 27, 2015, the Atlanta Braves acquired Chris Withrow from the Los Angeles Dodgers along with Juan Uribe. On June 9th, they drafted Matt Withrow, Chris’ brother, from Texas Tech in the 6th round of the draft. He had originally been drafted out of high school by his home state Texas Rangers in the 37th round, but he chose to go to college instead. After signing on June 22nd, he was assigned to Danville. Withrow made 13 starts and was hard luck in those starts, collecting an 0-4 record, but going 48 innings with a 3.45 ERA and 1.33 WHIP with a 16/35 BB/K ratio.
The Braves saw enough to send Withrow straight past low-A Rome to high-A Carolina for his first full-season assignment in 2016. He spent the entire season in the Carolina rotation and was my selection for the Mudcats pitcher of the year. On the season he made 25 appearances, throwing 120 2/3 innings, with a 3.80 ERA, 1.39 WHIP, and a 68/131 BB/K ratio. Withrow had a lengthy arm injury history in college, but he’s not experienced any such issues in pro ball at this point.
Next: ' scouting report
Matt Withrow dealing for Carolina tonight 6.2IP 5H ER 3BB 7K August 27IP 14H 4ER 16BB 33K Finishing strong pic.twitter.com/GDxr823GiE
Withrow is listed at 6’5 and 235 pounds. He certainly looks every ounce of that, striking an imposing look on the mound as he pulls his hat down over the top of his eyes, giving him a very focused look on the mound.
Withrow works from a pretty standard motion, bringing his left knee about chest high before taking a big push forward and coming to the plate with a high 3/4 arm slot.
Withrow has a lot of leg drive to generate his velocity and movement in his drive, and he generates a lot of that leg drive from the top of his motion with his left leg raised. He doesn’t explode fast in speed toward the plate, per se, but when you watch him, you can simply sense the power he’s generating from his push to the plate. However, that power can lead to some control/command issues as he can find himself pushing either a bit too far to his glove side with his landing leg or getting too much down force in his motion, leading to landing his foot early and leaving his ball high in the zone.
Pitches
Withrow has a fastball that sits 91-94 and can touch 96. The fastball is incredibly heavy, and he gets a ton of weak contact on the pitch in the lower part of the zone. When he brings the fastball up in the zone, he struggles more with command, but he does get more swing and miss as he climbs the ladder due to the weight of the pitch and hitters expecting the ball to fall, so the swing right under it. He doesn’t get a ton of lateral movement on the pitch, but it does get good sink. He really improved his command to both sides of the plate lower in the zone over the course of the season, adding to the effectiveness of the pitch as a ground ball generator when low in the zone and really affecting the hitter’s eye when he climbs the ladder with it.
The most effective offspeed pitch is a slider that had reports from upper 70s all the way to the mid-80s in velocity. He gets a similar look on all three of his pitches coming out of the hand, and that helps to hide the slider. Withrow’s slider has very good depth, however, he struggles with controlling the break on the pitch at times. He threw the pitch with very good control the lower in the zone he went.
His change is a work in progress, but when the change is on, it looks a lot like the slider, and it’s not a ton off of the slider in velocity, sitting in the low-80s. The change does get depth as well, but more of a hump than true straight line depth. The very interesting part is that it plays similar to the slider low in the zone and similar to the fastball up in the zone.
Withrow threw a number of pitches in starts that I swear he’s using a curve more than a slider, but he still had minimal horizontal movement on the pitch, but it was more looping and had more depth than the slider. From the reports in game, those pitches were high-70s in velocity, which would be a hard curve, and the behavior of the pitch is that of a hard curve, so he’s either getting a hard curve action on his slider when he takes a tick off, or he’s using a fourth pitch by using a hard curve and it’s not been noted by anyone else I can find out there!
Withrow’s heavy fastball along with his excellent slider paired with his size make me think of a young Jason Hammel when he came up with the Rays. Hammel is 6’6, 225, so the size compares well, and he has a four pitch mix that is similar in velocity to what Withrow offers. Hammel made his first appearance in the majors at 23, and he bounced between the rotation and bullpen in the majors until he was 26.
Withrow has great stuff that could play well in the rotation as a 4/5 inning eater type that plays up to a high-end 3 at his best, akin to Hammel, but his stuff would be very high-end in the bullpen if the team chooses to take that path.
Withrow will get the test of upper minors hitters in 2017. He’ll likely start at AA Mississippi in their rotation in what should be an excellent rotation. From there it will be a matter of how his stuff progresses in 2017 to where his ultimate destination is as he will be pitching 2017 at 23 years old, so he’s in that time where the team cannot exactly wait long on development for him, but with his arm health history from college, they don’t want to push him too hard either.
