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The Top Prospects

• Tanner Burns, RHP, 6’1″, 210, 18 years old.
• Jacob Heatherly, LHP, 6’3″, 200.  He’s nearly 19 already.

BaseballAmerica’s Top 200 draft prospects list tells us a few things about their 37th and 55th ranked players (MLB Pipeline has them 36th and 45th respectively, with older physical stats).

Think they’re only pitchers?  Burns played shortstop and batted 3rd in the Decatur order.  Heatherly was Cullman’s cleanup hitter.  Both of these guys look all their part of ‘athlete’ and not just ‘pitchers’.

HEATHERLY

Heatherly started the first game.  His repertoire appeared to include a nice fastball, a curve and changeup coming from a simple motion that looked to be entirely repeatable and something that would contribute to consistent command.  That part is still a work in progress.

When in the zone, the fastball over-matched the Decatur hitters all day long with numerous strikes on very late swings.  Hitters simply seemed to not be able to pick up the ball quickly enough, whether that was from deception or simple velocity.  But the wildness streak that was mentioned in his MLB Pipeline report surfaced randomly, mostly as high or outside results.

Heatherly’s curveball (more like a slurve) looked like it froze most hitters, but the problem with it was that he couldn’t buy a strike call from the home plate umpire.  His Decatur counterpart for this game got those calls, but threw a more traditional curve – slower and with more break.

He tired a bit at the end – the result of many full counts.  The changeup was thrown more in the fifth and sixth innings and walks accumulated as control waned further.

As a result, Heatherly ended up with a weird line for the day:  6 innings, 0 hits, 6 walks, just 3 balls actually put into play, and 1 earned run allowed.

Thanks to a 3-run jack in the sixth, Cullman pulled out a 4-1 victory in this 7 inning game, which had been a nail-biter until that point.

BURNS

Tanner Burns was the Game 2 – do or die – starter for Decatur.  But let’s return to Game 1 for a moment.

Interestingly, Heatherly clearly was trying to pitch around one Decatur hitter – Tanner Burns.  That was for good reason.

Burns ended up accounting for both runs scored by his club during the entire afternoon with a sacrifice fly in game 1 and a solo homer – which I hear may have been his 17th of the year.

He was the one hitter that was catching up to the Cullman starter’s fastball, and he’s clearly the main offensive threat that Decatur had.

One has to wonder, though, whether pitching the second game was the right plan for Burns as he took a while to get on track.  In fact, his first pitch hit the first Bearcat batter.

Another possibility was that the top of the 3rd inning of Game 1 ended on an odd play.

Burns struck out while a runner on first attempted to steal second base.  He then crossed over the plate to return to his dugout, but was nailed in the helmet by the catcher’s throw.  Interference on Burns – runner was called out.  Clearly Burns stayed in the game and didn’t seem to be fazed by the incident, but a mild concussion could not have been ruled out.

Burns yielded 2 runs to Cullman in the first inning with pitches that seemed to be good, but not as sharp as those from his counterpart.  The result was a pair of doubles – one from Heatherly.

Another hit was allowed in the second inning, but a flyout/strikeout/weak infield out suggested that better results were coming.

By the third inning, Burns was settled in and started missing bats on a strong changeup that fell to the bottom of the strike zone.

Indeed, after Burns’ own homer, that was the end of the scoring and the result was a 2-1 Cullman victory and berth in the state semi-finals.

Video I’ve seen of Burns shows him throwing across his body and falling off to the first base side of the mound after delivery.  That did not happen on Saturday.  The takeaway was smoother with the entire delivery more controlled.

I do not have insight to know whether that impacted Burns’ fastball velocity yesterday, but while both pitchers are said to be in the low-mid 90’s (with Burns a tick or two higher), the eyeball-test gave the better fastball belonged to Heatherly – at least early on, though the edge goes to Burns for command.