Yesterday the Reds selected Mikey O’Brien from the New York Yankees in the AAA portion of the Rule 5 draft. After doing some digging on the internet, I couldn’t find anything close to a current scouting report. Baseball America did post one later in the afternoon though, which matched up for the most part with what I saw going back on watching the video. The did have one additional note that is worth talking about, but we will get to that at the end.
Scouting Report
Fastball: The pitch, according to announcers from various games and scoreboard radar guns, worked in the 87-90 MPH range and would occasionally touch higher than that. It had some sinking action to it, but had a flat plane to it.
Change up: This pitch wasn’t mentioned in the Baseball America report linked earlier, but it looked like his best pitch to me with a solid arm action and some nice tumbling action at the end to give it some extra movement.
Curveball: Very inconsistent pitch. At times it was a well below-average pitch without depth or much breaking action to it, almost flat. When at its best it was a slightly below-average pitch that showed more depth and had better breaking action to it.
Other: He seems mechanically sound. He showed solid control in the few games I watched on Thursday afternoon, though his walk rate in Double-A was a bit high. He had big fly ball tendencies in 2013, which wasn’t a surprise given the plane on his fastball and questionable breaking ball that showed up rather often.
Baseball America reported in their scouting report that he also threw a slider (I didn’t see that pitch from what I saw). The important part though is that at some point in the past he has been able to touch 96 MPH. As a slightly undersized pitcher (5′ 11″) a move to the bullpen doesn’t seem far fetched at some point in the future and if he is able to sniff that velocity from the bullpen, he could turn into a rather interesting arm. I don’t think he is a future starter at the Major League level, though I believe he will start in the minor leagues for at least the 2014 season to help provide rotation depth.