The MLB Draft 2018 casts its shadows ahead. One of the most promising talents in this draft class is pitcher Brady Singer. The right-hander won the national championship last year with Florida and is considered a potential top pick. SPOX introduces the Junior.
Singer is no stranger to the MLB draft. Already in 2015 he was expelled from high school by the Toronto Blue Jays in the second round. But no agreement was reached.
Instead, the right-hander decided to accept a scholarship from the University of Florida, after all, he comes from Eustis/Florida and went to high school there as well.
He experienced his supposed climax with the Gators already in 2017 in Omaha/Nebraska. There he and his team won the prestigious College World Series and set a new final record against their rival LSU in Game 1 with twelve strikeouts.
Singer started his college career in the bullpen. In 2016 he acted as a relief and was rather unconvincing: A 4.95 ERA over 44 innings caused little enthusiasm. But he quickly forgot his Freshman season. In the famous Cape Cod Summer League, Singer improved significantly and scored a 0.82 ERA over 22 innings with 20 strikeouts and only two walks.
Singer then continued this positive trend in the press in 2017. That went so well that by the end of the year he was already rising in some eyes as the top talent of the 2018 drag. Confirming his performance so far in 2018, Singer seems to be still on course for the top 10 in the draft – maybe even first overall.
As for his skills, he throws a fast ball in the range of 95 to 96 miles per hour, which can “drill” inwards against right-handers. Furthermore, there is a “Plus Slider”, i.e. a breaking pitch, which is above average effective. However, he still seems to have problems controlling this pitch from time to time. However, there is a clear potential for swing and miss in it.
And then there is a changeup that some scouts still criticized him for in 2017. By 2018, however, Singer had developed the pitch to such an extent that it can now also be described as above-average. Scout Burke Granger of 2080 Baseball described Singer’s changeup as follows: The pitch has an above-average deception for the hitter, has a good fall action and only breaks out of the strike zone at the last moment.
The bottom line is that there are three “plus pitches”, which is more than many an established major-leaguer has to show these days.
But everything is not positive when it comes to Singer. He relies on a rather unusual pitching motion. He holds his arm in the so-called 3/4 position and his general movement can best be described as a kind of shortened windup position. In addition, a certain twitching can be seen in its overall movement, a kind of elastic movement of the legs. This is unconventional and causes alarm bells to ring on some scout drivers.
For much of his college years, especially 2017 and’18, Singer still managed to repeat the movement constantly. But he also showed days when it was not clean, which also led to a change in his arm position and release point. And that’s exactly what you don’t want from a pitcher. However, the results were nevertheless correct.
The question for interested teams will therefore be whether this detail is considered important. Say: Are you willing to overlook it because you think you can fix it in training? Or is this too much of a deficit, so that you would rather bet on another player with your first-round pick?
This article was published without previous view by the Major League Baseball.