The Different Types Of Outliers: Coleman Crow, Brent Suter, Carlos Rodriguez, and Melvin Hernandez

[Harold Hutchison]

The acquisition of Coleman Crow from the Mets was notable for the steep price the Brewers paid for a pitcher who will miss most of 2024 recovering from Tommy John surgery. But is Crow the only type of outlier the Brewers should look for, or should they expand their horizons when it comes to outliers?

Image courtesy of Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports (photo of Suter), Carlos Hurtado (photo of Rodriguez)

There are some other outliers besides the ones that encouraged the Crew to get Crow that could also point to success. Let’s do so in the form of some pitchers, two current (albeit in the minors) and one former, as well as recapping Crow.

Coleman Crow – Spin Rates and Vertical Approach Angle
In Brewer Fanatic’s article on the deal that brought Crow to Milwaukee, his spin rates and Vertical Approach Angle (VAA) were seen as outliers that could point to success. His MLB Pipeline write-up also mentions the spin rate and notes that his fastball tends to induce a lot of ground balls, and his slider tends to get hitters to whiff.

The Brewer Fanatic article compared Crow’s fastball to Freddy Peralta, who has developed into a definite top-of-the-rotation pitcher whose only obstacles to being an Opening Day starter for the past three years were Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff. Add in some deception, per MLB Pipeline, and you have someone who, like Brent Suter did a decade ago, manages to pitch beyond what his “stuff” would indicate.

Crow was selected in the 28th round of the 2019 draft – not quite Suter territory, but still quite a steal for the Angels, who got Eduardo Escobar as an infield fill-in. Not a bad return for a late-round pick. Crow now has netted the Mets a solid outfielder and a good back-end starter.

Brent Suter - Performance
Suter was a 31st-round draft pick that hung at the fringes of the Brewer Fanatic’s top prospect list in its early iterations. In this case, the big outlier was his performance in the 2015 and 2016 seasons. Despite not dominating hitters (he only had 6.3 strikeouts per nine innings), he performed. In Double-A Biloxi, he posted a 1.96 ERA. The real stunner was Colorado Springs, where he posted a 3.31 ERA when half the games were in one of the most hitter-friendly parks in professional baseball.

How hitter-friendly was Colorado Springs? Josh Hader, one of the most dominating pitchers in baseball (who signed a five-year, $95 million contract with the Astros), posted a 5.22 ERA in that venue in 2016. Suter’s ERA at Colorado Springs was 3.50 that year, while he posted a 5.36 strikeout-to-walk ratio pitching half the time in that batter’s paradise.

That, folks, is an outlier worth noting. Put it this way, in 2016, Hader, a pitcher who was undisputedly talented and considered a top prospect, went 1-7 with a 5.22 ERA in Colorado Springs over 14 starts. Now, nobody will dispute that Hader turned out just fine, but it’s pretty clear that, as a rule, even the most talented pitchers got hit so hard in Colorado Springs that baby seals meeting Canadian fishermen in the Arctic felt bad for them.

Suter may not have had great stuff, but he was making extremely effective use of the stuff he had. From 2016-2022, he became a solid member of the Brewers' pitching staff.

Carlos F. Rodriguez – The Arsenal
We touched on Rodriguez when debating whether he or Jacob Misiorowski would claim the title of Ace of the Future. Rodriguez’s outlier is his arsenal. MLB Pipeline’s writeup on Rodriguez gives him a 55 grade for both his fastball and curve. That is somewhat misleading. Rodriguez throws seven pitches, ranging from a slow curve in the 60s to a fastball that tops out at 96 miles per hour.

Part of that arsenal is three different types of fastball: A four-seam, a sinking fastball, and a cutter. In addition, he has two different curveballs – one at 75 miles per hour, the other that drops into the 60s. Tack on a change-up and a slider that are both solid pitches, and the scope of the arsenal is an outlier in and of itself.

If Rodriguez can avoid tipping pitches (an issue Freddy Peralta dealt with for part of the 2023 season), this arsenal could be extremely confusing for opposing hitters. In and of itself, knowing a pitcher has seven pitches is already daunting for a hitter. But with Rodriguez, sitting on a fastball still forces the hitter to guess which fastball is coming, and the same goes for a curve.

Melvin Hernandez – Age
A 2.06 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, and a 3.33 K/BB ratio are not bad figures in and of themselves and are enough to make people take note of Hernandez. Now consider that Hernandez posted those numbers at age 16 for a significant part of the 2023 season when the average age of the hitters he faced in the Dominican Summer League was 17.7.

How Hernandez did it isn’t easy to tell from the stat lines, but we know what did – and didn’t – happen. He struck out 7.7 batters per nine innings, a solid figure. He issued only nine walks in 35 innings pitched. He gave up just one gopher ball. He did that while standing at 5’11” and 139 pounds.

Given his age, it’s a safe bet that Hernandez has more growing to do. With the new facility in the Dominican Republic opening up this offseason, Hernandez could do well, and there are also the resources available stateside (since Hernandez arguably has nothing left to prove in the DSL).

Overview
Crow, Suter, Rodriguez, and Hernandez are at different points in their professional baseball journeys. But all of them have made their marks as outliers. When looking for the outliers, it might be good to look for stuff beyond spin rates and VAA. The Crew might find a pitching gem or three.

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[Michael Trzinski]

Suter would be a great add. Least of all, for his humor. 

[BlazingGunz]

1 hour ago, Michael Trzinski said:

Suter would be a great add. Least of all, for his humor. 

Already signed with the Reds, so no Suter homecoming for us.

[Michael Trzinski]

5 hours ago, BlazingGunz said:

Already signed with the Reds, so no Suter homecoming for us.

Bummer