Today I wanted to look at two of the Reds bigger prospects coming into the 2013 season. Daniel Corcino, I think it would be fair to say, has had a very disappointing season to this point of the year. Yorman Rodriguez has basically had a tale of two seasons and seems to have caught fire from mid-May through today.
Daniel Corcino has a 6.88 ERA in Louisville with the Bats. His control has taken a big step backwards from 2012, where it also took a big step backwards from 2011. He has walked 11.5% of the batters he has faced this year and his strikeout rate is down significantly from last season. Corcino has gone through some mechanical changes from 2011 and 2012 to 2013 and even made adjustments during the 2013 season.
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There are several things going on with Corcino that have made him more hittable in 2013 as well as made his control suffer. The first thing is that no matter which mechanics he has been using, he struggles to repeat his mechanics. At time he still throws across his body and he struggles mightily to repeat his follow through and release point. Those problems have followed him for his entire career. When he remains under control and doesn’t have such a wild follow through, his control is good with solid command.
With all of that said, there are some issues that are more specific to 2013. Coming into the year, his mechanics would begin with his glove at his chin, then drop just a few inches to the letters before he would go into his windup/rotation as he began to come to the plate. There was very little movement here. To begin 2013 Corcino was doing the same thing, but after his first start of the year Corcino was beginning his motion with his glove at his waist. As he began his windup his glove would come up a few inches to just below the letters. Those mechanics remained the same for several starts, then at the end of April things changed a little bit again. While the glove positioning was the same at the starting point, at the waist, Corcino was bringing his glove up to his chin as he began his windup, probably about twice as high as he was for his previous 4 starts. A minor change, but the third change over the month of April. In his next start, the glove was only being brought up to the letters once again.
In his May 27th start Corcino began doing something strange with his head. Prior to this date he had always been rather still with his head, keeping his eyes on the catcher at all times. In this specific start he would begin with his head and eyes on the catcher, but as he rotated to to a 90 degree angle on the rubber he would drop his head and appear to look at the mound before looking back in to the catcher. This seemed to only be happening in the first inning, so someone clearly corrected it between innings.
To begin June things changed again. Corcino basically went back to the mechanics he began the season with and used in previous years with his glove positioning beginning at his chin then dropping to the letters as he began his wind up. He has stuck with that in all of June with his most recent start being the best he has had all season. Of course the one before that was rather poor, so I don’t want to say that going back to his old mechanics is going to turn things around.
Pitching however is all about consistency. Consistently repeating your mechanics. Consistently repeating your release point. Those things lead to better control and allow your pitches to remain at the top level you can throw them. In 2013, Corcino has been anything but consistent. As I opened up with, he has always struggled with some consistency in repeating his mechanics, but on top of that he hasn’t had anything resembling consistent mechanics throughout the year to try and become consistent with.
When Corcino remains under control of his mechanics, whichever ones that he is using at the time, the stuff is still there. The control is good. The Reds and Corcino seem to be attempting to find a way to help him remain in control but haven’t been able to do that just yet.
Yorman Rodriguez was recently promoted to Pensacola. He has been very good this season outside of a big slump for two weeks in May. Taking away that slump he has hit .292/.359/.528 between his two stops this year. His plate discipline has been a question mark in the past even though he has always been very young for his level of play.
While he has only played 8 games at the Double-A level, I have been impressed by plenty of the things I have been able to see from him. As I noted earlier this week, he flashed off plus speed legging out a hit to the shortstop. What about his other tools? It has long been talked about by me that Rodriguez has above-average power in his bat that you just don’t see very often. While I have seen it before from him, in a game last week he hit what I thought off of the bat would just be a soft fly ball to right field. It went off of the top of the wall for a ground rule double. Defensively he hasn’t really had much of a chance to show off any of his tools yet with Pensacola (which is where I have been able to watch him).
One thing that has been a part of the game for Rodriguez at the plate is to use the entire field. In 2010 he went to right field more than twice as often as he pulled the ball to left field. In 2011 it was similar, but with a little more pull tendency than the year before. Last season things were nearly even to left, center and right. So far in 2013 he is going the other way a bit more.
His power output to all three spots is similar with isolated power numbers (SLG-AVG) being .517 (left), .619 (center) and .415 (right). Power to all fields is good, but while the power is there to all fields he is hitting just .366 to right field while he is hitting .619 to center and .759 to left. Players tend to hit the ball with more authority when they pull it or go up the middle rather than the other way, so that makes sense that he would be hitting for a lesser average to right despite having good power to that part of the field.
One thing that helps Rodriguez go the other way is that he often waits on the ball to travel further into the zone, particularly when the ball is in the middle or outside part of the plate. That both helps and hurts him. It helps him in the sense that he can go the other way with the ball rather than trying to pull an outside pitch that would likely result in a more favorable outcome for the pitcher. At the same time though it does seem to leave open some amount of contact issues on pitches on the outer half of the strikezone due to his waiting so long. Most pitches he has missed on have been outer third of the zone pitches. Surprising to me, he really hasn’t chased pitches out of the zone so far at the Double-A level, but he does seem to be a bit vulnerable to pitches on the outer third of the plate from what I have seen. It will be worth watching as pitchers in the league get a longer look at him to see how they adjust their approach and how Rodriguez in turn can adjust back.
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