Apr 28, 2016; Phoenix, AZ, USA; A ball sits on the mound prior to the game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the St. Louis Cardinals at Chase Field. The Diamondbacks won 3-0. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports
Apr 28, 2016; Phoenix, AZ, USA; A ball sits on the mound prior to the game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the St. Louis Cardinals at Chase Field. The Diamondbacks won 3-0. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports /
The Atlanta Braves acquired lefty Michael Mader in a trade with the Miami Marlins this season. What kind of pitcher did they get?
Who Is He?
Mader was drafted by the Marlins from Florida-based Chipola College in the 3rd round of the 2014 draft. He was sent to Batavia of the New York-Penn League, where he made 12 starts, throwing 45 innings, with a 2.00 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, and a 16/28 BB/K ratio.
The Marlins sent Mader to Greensboro of the low-A South Atlantic League for the entire 2015 season, and he had a solid, albeit not spectacular season, making 27 starts, throwing 140 2/3 innings, with a 4.73 ERA and 1.41 WHIP, posting a 57/86 BB/K ratio.
Miami sent Mader to Jupiter of the high-A Florida State League to start the 2016 season, and as I was starting to make calls on the Marlins system and who could be big guys that were not big on the radar coming into the season, Mader’s name was one that came up. About a week after I had first heard his name, Mader was part of the trade that the Braves made with the Marlins that sent Hunter Cervenka to Miami.
The Braves sent Mader to AA Mississippi, and he was immediately inserted into a playoff-bound rotation. While he didn’t collect a win, he made five excellent starts for Mississippi in the regular season and made one start in the postseason. In total, his 2016 stat line between Jupiter and Mississippi was 27 appearances, 133 innings, a 3.25 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, and a 40/107 BB/K ratio.
Mader is listed at 6’2 and 195 pounds. He stays tall in his delivery, which gives him a good downward angle on his pitches. He lifts his leg high and delays just a bit before pushing toward home plate. That hesitation has led him to get off in his landing spot, and that has led to some issues with his control.
Mader releases the ball from a 3/4 arm slot, but his slow motion that explodes once he hits the ground with his lead leg has led to his arm slot getting just a hair off, typically low. When he’s lower than the 3/4 spot, he struggles to get on top of the ball on his breaking pitch and to get the depth he would typically get on that pitch.
His delivery does have a habit of getting off if Mader short-changes his follow-through. Due to his hard snap toward the plate after a slow motion, his back foot is often trailing his hips and the rest of his body. He taps his foot and then plants forward as his full follow through. When he shorts things, he plants the foot where he normally would be tapping and ends up out of good fielding position and doesn’t truly get the last bit of snap in his arm for movement on his pitches.
Pitches
Mader has a three-pitch mix, but it plays as a four-pitch mix. He uses a fastball that sits 89-92 and touches 95-96. The fastball isn’t heavy with movement, having a bit of glove side sink. The fastball has a good downward plane in his motion and gets on hitters in a hurry due to his motion. He works it low in the zone, and hitters tend to have a tough time squaring it up from that position to drive it out of the zone, but it does lead to a lot of pop-ups, something notable in Mader’s GO/AO rate on his milb.com page.
His curve is the pitch that can add a second look. If he can stay on top of the pitch, he has two styles of curves, one that is more loop and has less velocity that he uses more, but also a second curve that is more sharp with less bump before the plate. He tends to work the harder curve more in the mid-thigh range. His looping curve works well either high in the zone with more of its movement being before the plate or low in the zone with 12-6 dive toward the catcher’s toes as it has most of its action late in the movement.
It is notable when he doesn’t follow through that the looping curve really struggles to get good depth, and he also struggles to locate it well.
Last, but not least is his change. The change mimics the arm actions of the fastball, but interestingly, in the games I watched, it has more arm-side sink than glove-side like the fastball does. That certainly threw off hitters, and they were not able to square up the ball well at all. His change tended to generate the most ground balls of his offerings.
He throws with the opposite hand, but the guy that really strikes me as a great comp for Mader is current Cardinals starter Mike Leake. Leake is a guy who is perhaps not sexy, but he works over hitters with solid pitches, getting weak contact, even if it is getting the ball in the air rather than on the ground. Leake lives on similar stuff, getting lots of weak ground balls on pitches that get driven hard if he misses his spot just a bit.
Like Leake, Mader is not likely to ever be a guy that is striking out 25% of hitters he faces, living on hitters making weak contact. While Leake works with a true sinker and a slider and cutter combo, so their pitch mix is not exactly similar, their approaches to hitters are very similar.
While Mader’s stuff is not elite by any design, he’s a guy in the same lines as Robert Whalen or Jed Bradley that has above-average stuff that could play up very well with work on his sequencing. Mississippi’s pitching coach Dennis Lewallyn is excellent in working with pitchers just like that as we saw with the two aforementioned pitchers in 2016. I would imagine Mader starts in AA in 2017, but it would not surprise me if the Braves promote him aggressively with his handedness and proximity to the major leagues, so he could end up in AAA and even the major leagues quickly.
