Some detailed notes on the highest ceiling arm in the farm - Bishop Letson

[Terry]

A friend of mine is kind enough to give me access to Lance Brodzowski's minor league pitcher's note. Highly recommend all the pitching nerd out there pay his substack a visit, as the free articles are also well written as well.

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31. Bishop Letson, RHP, Milwaukee Brewers
Outlier release with a lot of projecting to do

Body: 6’4” | 7.5’ extension | 5.3’ release | 35° arm angle

Results: 3.28 xFIP | 24.3% K-BB

Four-Seam: 93.6 mph | 16” iVB | 11” arm-side | 52% zone | 11% swg strk | 110 Stuff+

Sinker: 92.5 mph | 10” iVB | 17” arm-side | 49% zone | 11% swg strk | 109 Stuff+

Changeup: 86 mph | 8” iVB | 18” arm-side | 44% zone | 11% swg strk | 102 Stuff+

Sweeper: 81.2 mph | -3” iVB | 16” glove-side | 53% zone | 15% swg strk | 106 Stuff+

Cutter: 89.5 mph | 7” iVB | 0” horizontal | 104 Stuff+

RHH: 47% SWP, 29% 4S, 22% SK

LHH: 44% 4S, 28% SWP, 21% CH

Letson might be the most fun arm on this list. His 7.5’ of extension would be greater than 99% of MLB pitchers. In ways, yes, he resembles Jacob Misiorowski, who I crushed in my ranking this preseason after being high on him in each of the last two seasons. The Miz just has another two gears of velocity. Letson is working with a pure angles advantage. One thing to note with Letson is that although I list his release at 5.3’, his fastball comes in at 5.6’. While it’s still a funky pitch, the vertical approach angle of the offering (-4.6°) is more average. I’m not concerned with his slot dropping about ~4” for all of his other offerings. This is just below the window of release variance that we see with some of the bigger slot-adjusters pitch-to-pitch in the sport.

Unlike Misiorowski, Letson is showing below-average to average command at High-A (64% strikes is right around average). Although you can probably dream on his velocity a bit, this profile is more one that misses an average number of bats in the bigs, but is incredibly tough to square up. Although the former is easier to predict, and I’m assuming the latter based on some of the contact quality metrics against non-MLB hitters, I’m willing to speculate that the visual he creates makes it difficult for hitters to barrel him.

If there’s an assumed development item with Letson, it’s his left-handed hitter approach. His strikes fall below 60% and his K-BB dips below 16% against southpaws. This is largely due to the huge sweeper he throws and the platoon nature of that shape. In his last two starts of August, he started throwing a cutter with average shape (shown above). This is essential for his mix and something that allowed Misiorowski to leap between 2024 and 2025 in terms of his command. Letson will need more location feel on the offering, given the average shape, whereas zone is more important than location for The Miz. His present strike feel is good enough to make me wonder whether that’s just who he’ll be for most of his career.

Letson’s arm action is pretty long. To my eye, he kicks into a bit of elbow extension after he breaks his hands, which contrasts with the shorter, tighter arm circles I’ve talked about on some guys who naturally cut their fastball a bit (like Troy Melton). His extension is also interesting because from a side view of his mechanics, he doesn’t ride down the slope incredibly well. He drifts forward and then kicks into some incredible separation of his upper half to lower. You think his body will stop moving down the mound… and it just keeps going. I won’t opine on whether there’s a leak in efficiency or something he needs to clean up. It’s just something that jumped out to me watching him throw. Letson needs some time to bake, and I’m curious if we see another velocity boost, but he’s exciting, as there aren’t many release anomalies like this with strikes in the minors.

 

Along with some stats I compile,

Performance split at High-A


At Double-A

Whole season stats

[wiguy94]

Awesome stuff Terry. Hopefully Letson can have a fully healthy 2026 season in Biloxi.

[jay87shot]

I think there is some nice potential to be a very similar pitcher to Quinn Priester if he develops well. Not many 20 year olds have 5 solid pitches with good command. The fact that he got a late season AA look tells me that the front office values him very highly. I wish he would have gotten and AFL look, I get that is an offense heavy league but even 10 innings would have been huge for him.

[Jake McKibbin]

Interesting on the strike rate being average, in guessing that means he's getting quite a bit of chase as those zone rates, especially on the fastballs, aren't really screaming control too much to me

Leading with the sweeper to RHH is also pretty interesting, and may explain some of the lower K numbers. The sweeper, while it moves a lot, has been more of a soft contact pitch across MLB this season. Not sure I'm a fan of a starter leaning on his breaking pitch quite so often as that, but he's certainly getting results

(All of this based purely on the data provided by Terry above, love it dude!)

[Terry]

On 9/26/2025 at 1:51 AM, Jake McKibbin said:

Interesting on the strike rate being average, in guessing that means he's getting quite a bit of chase as those zone rates, especially on the fastballs, aren't really screaming control too much to me

Leading with the sweeper to RHH is also pretty interesting, and may explain some of the lower K numbers. The sweeper, while it moves a lot, has been more of a soft contact pitch across MLB this season. Not sure I'm a fan of a starter leaning on his breaking pitch quite so often as that, but he's certainly getting results

(All of this based purely on the data provided by Terry above, love it dude!)

AAA four seam zone rate: 50.4%
FSL four seam zone rate: 48.6%
In terms of his age, I would say his control is around average though. 

Sweeper is his best swing-and-miss pitch and he's able to zone it as well, so the high usage makes sense. I'm sure the usage will tone down as he climbs through levels.