What Are the Brewers Getting in Left-Handed Pitcher DL Hall?

[Spencer Michaelis]

To trade, or not to trade, that was the question. On Thursday night, the Brewers chose to trade Corbin Burnes, and the one year of club control left on his deal, to the Baltimore Orioles. In exchange, they received a prospect package, including left-handed pitcher DL Hall. What did the Brewers find so intriguing in Hall? In a trade bound to receive backlash and questions, why are the Brewers “settling” for a post-hype pitcher in a trade that involved giving up one of the best pitchers in their franchise's history? 

Image courtesy of © Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

In normal conversation, answering any question with the one-word answer of  “stuff” might cause some annoyance on the receiving end of that answer. If that conversation happened with your parents, you might have even found yourself in trouble. For the Brewers, that one-word answer pretty much sums up what they see in Hall and what they hope to build upon. Stuff.

Prospect followers have likely heard DL Hall’s name before. At one point, he was seen as one of the fastest-rising pitching prospects in baseball. Some struggles in 2022 caused him to slip back off of many of the mainstream top 100 lists, but he rebounded nicely this past season, including a successful 19.1 innings out of the bullpen at the major league level.

No longer qualifying as a prospect by service time standards, Baseball America (who only consider a prospect graduated when they reach the required 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched plateau) still ranks Hall inside their top 100, as he checks in at 93. He likely would have re-appeared on other lists if he was still eligible. Hall’s “stuff” is one of a myriad of reasons that he was able to bounce back in 2023.

Hall is equipped with an elite fastball that averaged 95.6 MPH in MLB in 2023 but has been a tick or two higher throughout his minor league career. Any left-handed pitcher who throws mid-upper 90’s with his fastball will raise some eyebrows. When it comes to Hall, the fastball has characteristics that could make it pretty interesting, even if he only threw it at 91 MPH. One of the most interesting characteristics is his release extension, which comes in at seven feet on average (92nd percentile in MLB during the 2023 season). This means the fastball appears to be a couple of miles per hour higher than the radar gun tells us. It also has a flat Vertical Approach Angle, allowing it to play extremely well at the zone's top. Eno Sarris’s “Stuff+” metric grades the fastball out as 121.5, which ranked 40th amongst pitchers to throw at least 50 fastballs last season. As Nick Pollack of Pitcher List showed in the Tweet below, he doesn’t throw it up in the zone often to right-handed hitters, which is likely something the Brewers will work to adjust. He generated whiffs on 30.2% of his fastballs at the MLB level in 2023, and it’s a pitch that could carry the repertoire even if his secondaries were lagging.

The secondaries, however, are not lagging despite, as Curt Hogg pointed out, the fact that the slider did not generate the best results at the MLB level; Stuff+ and scouting grades across the board view Hall's slider as a plus pitch. Baseball America grades it as a 70-grade pitch, a technical "plus-plus." As Lance Brozdowski pointed out in the tweet below, Hall made a major change to the pitch throughout the season. Around June, Hall completely changed the shape of the slider. He added nine inches of drop to the pitch without losing any of its horizontal movement. This took the pitch from a solid offering to the type that gets a 70 grade. The poor results are certainly noteworthy, but it feels safe to say that they likely boiled down to the command of the pitch and it simply being a tiny sample size more than anything else. 

It doesn't stop with the slider, though. Hall also has a changeup, which grades out quite well by Baseball America, checking in with a 60 grade. Their notes state that the changeup “has developed later in his career into a plus pitch and represents his best offering to right-handed hitters.” While the slider has been primarily used against left-handed hitters, the changeup has been used exclusively against right-handed hitters at the major league level. Throughout Hall’s two stints in MLB, he has thrown 111 changeups, and 110 of them have come against righties. It’s a pitch that he appears to have had some pretty rough luck within MLB so far. In 2023, hitters batted .294 with a .550 slugging against it. The expected stats are much more in line with the Baseball America grade, though, with an xBA of .189 and an xSLG of .368. 

Hall also brings what Baseball America classifies as a 60-grade curveball. He had scrapped this pitch early in his minor league career but re-surfaced in 2022, and it appears to have been a good call to do so. There’s a separation between the slider and the curveball, not only in the velocity but also in the movement profile. Stuff+ is a bit lower on the curve than Baseball America, but it still has it as 106, meaning it’s above average. 

His repertoire grades out as having 3-4 plus pitches, or better, by almost every measure, and as Josh Norris points out with this Tweet, he joins Jacob Misiorowski in rarified prospect air with the quality of pitches Hall brings to the table. He hasn’t yet reached the ceiling he is capable of reaching because of a distinct lack of command, which Baseball America placed a 30 grade on. While Hall only walked hitters at a 6.2% rate out of the major league bullpen, that number was quite a bit higher in Triple-A, coming in at 13.8%. The positive is that Eno Sarris’s Location+ backs up the results he was getting in MLB, giving him an overall score of 106, which is above average. If Hall can carry over that level of command to the rotation and over a larger sample, reaching that ceiling starts to look more realistic. 

It’s easy to see why the Brewers targeted Hall in this return, with his tremendous upside that he mixes with a relatively safe floor.  Hall is the type of pitcher that the Brewers have had a lot of success with in recent history. They may have a guy who can be a legitimate top-of-the-rotation arm if he can stick in the rotation. If the command never comes around enough to hold up as a starter, and assuming he remains healthy, the floor should be close to a high-leverage reliever. Perhaps even in the early-career Josh Hader type of role. 

What are your thoughts on Hall? Do you think he will reach his ceiling?

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[Brock Beauchamp]

I'm far more excited about DL Hall after reading this piece. As always, excellent work @Smichaelis9!

[Rick Daltons Flamethrower]

Really enjoyed the article.    Who is the last Brewer pitcher to have 3-4 plus pitches?  Have we ever had a pitcher with 4 plus pitches?    The info in the article about the release extension were fascinating!    Pleasure to read :)

[Joseph Zarr]

Fun read!

The write-up and the corroborating statistical profiles match the eye test. This just in: DL Hall absolutely has STUFF.  

[Jim Goulart]

From one year ago - worth your 20 minutes:

 

[True Blue Brew Crew]

Definitely paints an exciting potential picture for Hall. But it's based on Hall refining a weakness on every pitch (elevating the FB vs RHB, command of the slider, sheer results with the changeup, and trust in the curveball). All that on top of needing to refine command. If Hall was at the point where confidence was very high that he had made the leap on all of these offerings, the Orioles wouldn't have had the need nor desire to trade him for Burnes. It's fun to dream of what this guy could become, and the Brewers pitching lab is a great place to make it happen, but it's still a long road to travel to get anywhere near that point. Seems like a safe bet to be a useful reliever at the very least. And fans have to be comfortable that the odds rest with that being the most likely outcome.

[Joseph Zarr]

6 hours ago, Mass Haas said:

From one year ago - worth your 20 minutes:

 

I second this notion, Jim. Please watch this y'all. This young man is an inspiration. Hard not to be 100% in his corner as he pushes further into his MLB career. Extremely humble, disciplined, and hard-working. He is still completely active in the Valdosta community. Let's hope we caught lightning in a bottle here! It's pretty clear he's going to put the work in.

[JohnBriggs12]

Well Hall had a better 2023 postseason than Burnes. Joking aside, I think he's a guy who's going to have a significant role this season.

[Lathund]

A lefty with 4 plus (Some of them better than that) pitches is definitely going to have a major league career, probably a good one. I really hope it'll be as a starter. Command is hard to improve so perhaps it's unlikely, but there are also plenty of examples of it happening later in a pitcher's career too . 

Chris Hook and the rest of the pitching development staff must be salivating at the thought of working with someone with that kind of stuff though, and if anyone can make him into a starter, it's them. 

[Playing Catch]

I love that both Hall and Ortiz are high-floor MLB-ready guys. It about as close to a guarantee as you can get for getting long-term MLB production in exchange for Burnes. Add to the fact that both players -- especially Hall -- still have significant ceilings to reach for, and it's easy to feel really good about the trade. Or at least, feel good about the return they got.

[Joseph Zarr]

On 2/4/2024 at 5:45 AM, Lathund said:

A lefty with 4 plus (Some of them better than that) pitches is definitely going to have a major league career, probably a good one. I really hope it'll be as a starter. Command is hard to improve so perhaps it's unlikely, but there are also plenty of examples of it happening later in a pitcher's career too . 

Chris Hook and the rest of the pitching development staff must be salivating at the thought of working with someone with that kind of stuff though, and if anyone can make him into a starter, it's them. 

Confirmed: Starter

[Lathund]

Well we already knew that was what the Brewers were going to to, my point was more if it'll work out or not.