Atlanta Braves Scouting Report on RHP Wes Parsons

Scouting Report

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Size/Delivery

Parsons is long and wiry, listed at 6’5 and 190 pounds. He may be 10-15 pounds more than that, but not much more, with very long arms and legs in his 6’5 frame.

Parsons works from the first base side of the rubber. He uses a high knee lift, bringing his knee up to his chest as part of his motion. He then kicks toward the plate with long legs and long arms, letting him get much closer to the plate in his delivery and allowing his stuff to play up.

Parsons releases the ball from a low 3/4 delivery point, and this gives his slider a very solid break plane. His extension to the plate from this arm slot is fairly rare, and it does seem to throw off hitters for at least the first time through the order if not twice.

Parsons has very lanky frame, and that’s both a blessing in the extension he gets toward home plate and a curse in the fact that his long legs can seemingly get in their own way, throwing off his balance in his stride toward the plate, and he ends up short-stepping, which doesn’t allow his hips to open up, and he ends up putting all of the pitch onto his arm.

Pitches

Parsons works with a low-90s fastball generally, sitting in the 89-93 range, touching 95. He was touching 96 and sitting more consistent around the 93 range out of the bullpen this season. He shows very good control of the fastball, and he commands the pitch better than any other pitch he throws. He can spot the pitch up and down in the zone. He tends to get more of a flat movement from the pitch up in the zone, but when he works in the lower part of the zone, he gets some arm side tail.

His slider is a very effective pitch, sitting in the 82-84 range in the games I viewed on Parsons, but I’ve seen reports with a few MPH either side of that range. His slider velocity did stay more consistent regardless of whether he was in the bullpen or in the rotation. The slider has a sharp break that seems to come late in the trajectory of the pitch, allowing it to really be an excellent pitch to generate swing and miss or weak contact as the ball dips under the bat head.

His change will be the key to his future role. In 2014, his change was a pitch that was getting nearly no movement and was picked up easily out of his hand. Whether he changed grips or anything with the pitch itself I do not honestly know, but I can see that the pitch itself is working much better out of his hand this year. He rarely used the pitch out of the bullpen. His change does have a touch of sink to it low in the zone, but like his fastball, it flattens up in the zone.

Video

Next: Future outlook