Is Casey Mize easy to hit? For Major League baseball players, I mean–not for your Uncle Bruno who goes to the batting cages once a month. Or did, pre pandemic. Rusty Uncle Bruno would not make contact against Casey Mize. Major leaguers, on the other hand, can’t stop making contact.
During his start on Friday, Mize topped out at 98.7 mph and threw one splitter with a spin rate of 3544. That’s inhuman. Like so wild I think maybe that machine is broken because it also registered a Robbie Ray four-seamer at 3000 RPMs in his outing before this most recent one, during which he didn’t crack 2500 RPMs on any of his pitches. So maybe that machine is hot and that splitter is closer to 3000 RPMs at the moment. Still, it’s great enough that it propelled Mize to be the #1 overall pick in 2019 after a completely dominant SEC career.
Thing is: we know the splitter is good, but for whatever reason, he hasn’t been throwing it much this spring, treating this March more like a veteran working on his craft than a rookie looking to break camp with the big club. We kind of have to hope that’s what’s happening here. If he’s fully focused on generating outs right now, his results are ugly. He gave up 8 hits in 3.2 innings on Friday. Two were home runs. All tallied, he picked up five earned runs, bumping his ERA to 9.90 in the early spring. The eye test was unkind, as well. This cutter, sinker, knuckle curve mix he’s employing looks easy on the hitters, who smashed him all day. To be fair, he was facing the Blue Jays, who have typically punished fastballs, but Vlad and Rowdy Tellez were the only regulars in the lineup unless you count Alejandro Kirk, who smoked an opposite field bomb in the second inning and should be the primary catcher early this season in my opinion.
A year ago, some prospect people were aghast at the fools who ranked Skubal over Mize, and I just didn’t see the problem. Skubal is a demon-spawn lefty who looks like nobody else in baseball from a mechanical standpoint. He’s incredibly hard on hitters, who struggle to pick up his release point, in part because it varies a little pitch to pitch, typically a bad thing but pretty effective for Skooby’s mystery machine delivery. To my mind, this debate is over. Skubal has lapped Mize for our purposes. It’s not even close.
As of today, Skubal’s ADP per NFBC leagues is 320.13. Mize’s is 427.77. Case closed in the eyes of high-stakes re-draft players, I suppose.
But the gap is even wider since March 1: Skubal at 327.69 and Mize at 486.55.
Seems like Julio Teheran and Skubal will make the rotation along with Matthew Boyd, Spencer Turnbull, and Jose Ureña.
Cool.
Only Turnbull is on the covid-19 list. If that persists for the next couple weeks or means he’s not ready to take the ball his first turn, I think Michael Fulmer gets an opening gig, followed by probably Derek Holland or some similar undercase-g guy. Maybe Tyler Alexander. Regardless, it’s unlikely to be Mize at this point, and the people I remember dunking on Skubal believers last year have yet to Tweet their mea culpa. I guess they could always wait it out a decade or so and see if things turn around. People do that in fantasy right? Point to the players they were wrong about? Especially the very aggressive ones, right?
Welp, I went looking for the nastily anti-Skubal, pro-Mize tweets I had in mind from last year, and wouldn’t you know it, they’re gone. Good work on that score. Take a pre-victory lap then delete the tweet. Very 21st century. Still some remnants to be found though.
For what it’s Wuertz, the Razzball staff prediction spreadsheet is making the rounds, and at the risk of spoiling a crucial draw, I’ll tip my hand and say I chose Skubal as the most valuable fantasy pitcher, meaning the best return on investment for your pitching dollar. He’s just so cheap, and the strikeouts are all but guaranteed. Wins, on the other hand, might make me pivot to a different arm before publication day.
Eyes back on Mize, I’m guessing he can be gotten after 500 players have been drafted. Is he a value there? Depends on the league format of course, but mostly, no, he’s not. There’s no telling how long he’d be at the alt site or in AAA trying to rediscover his dominance. I’m still interested because there’s still a chance he goes north with the big cats and kittens, but I don’t mind cutting a player and trying to get him back before his number is called if it didn’t work out the first time. Most people would rather draft someone they won’t have to drop right away. And honestly I’m not landing Mize in any of my leagues. I’ve always been leery because he’s always looked a little stiff, athletically and mechanically speaking. I set that aside and accepted that he wasn’t a waste of an early FYPD pick in dynasty leagues when he was carving through the minors. Now I’ll have to battle my own confirmation bias if I ever intend to pluck him in a redraft league. I mean the guy’s not dead or diseased, so far as I know, and the number of humans who can throw 98.7 mph and drop a 3500+ spin splitter under the strike zone is not high. Might be zero, depending on the statcast functionality. Might be just Mize and Ohtani. I’m trying to talk myself into optimism here, as you can probably tell, but it’s not working super great just yet.
Are you optimistic?
It keeps us alive, after all: optimism, according to this Ted Talk by Tali Sharot.
Thanks for reading!
I’m @theprospectitch on Twitter.
