Don’t Worry about Robert Stephenson’s Terrible 2014

Robert Stephenson has tremendous stuff. The former first round pick wields a fastball that can touch triple digits at times, and compliments it with a plus curveball and a usable changeup. His outstanding arsenal of pitches has earned him universal praise in the prospect world. Kiley McDaniel deemed him the top prospect in the Reds organization, as did Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus. John Sickels and Keith Law ranked him #2 in the organization behind Jesse Winker.

Everyone agrees that Stephenson’s one of the most promising pitching prospects in the game. But for all his virtues, Stephenson wasn’t very good last year. His 4.72 ERA and 4.58 FIP were not only worse than the Southern League average, but were much worse — Both marks ranked in the bottom three among qualified Southern League pitchers. That’s not the pitching line of a top prospect, or even a fringy one. A 4.58 FIP is the stuff of a non-descript minor leaguer. Given this performance, its not hard to see why KATOH spat out a meager 2.2 WAR projection for Stephenson through age-28.

Things weren’t all bad for Stephenson, though. On the bright side, he did manage to strike out an impressive 23% of opposing batters, but that good work was washed away by his 12% walk rate and 3% HR% (1.2 HR/9). Clearly, Stephenson’s performance lagged far behind his stuff last year. Kiley McDaniel offered up the following explanation for this disconnect in his write-up on Stephenson.

This year was a struggle for Stephenson as he hadn’t really failed before, but at age-21 was more of a thrower than pitcher in Double-A, even plus stuff and a heater that hits 100 mph couldn’t allow him to continue as is. . . . The command isn’t really the issue, so much as it is usage of his pitches, getting into good counts and challenging hitters in the right way, not always with a flat upper-90’s fastball up in the zone.

Based on Kiley’s evaluation, Stephenson’s poor performance has everything to do with location. Even plus pitches don’t work if they’re thrown down the middle, or nowhere near the zone. This inability to locate pitches really hampered Stephenson’s performance last year, but Kiley’s not overly concerned that it will remain a problem going forward.

If you assume a smart kid will learn from his tough 2014 season and the stuff will play, then you’re looking at a potential #2/3 starter that will be 22 next year sitting in the upper level, waiting for a chance.

Few doubt that Stephenson has the upside of a very good starting pitcher. But what’s harder to say how likely he is to reach that upside. Kiley notes that a scout identified Homer Bailey as a possible comp for Stephenson’s development path. Like Stephenson, Bailey underwhelmed relative to his stuff in his early 20’s, but then blossomed into one of the better pitchers in baseball these past few years. We all remember Bailey since he went on to be a successful pitcher, but we tend to forget the guys who didn’t pan out. There have certainly been plenty of promising pitchers who never quite figured out how to harness their stuff.

To get a better idea of just how likely it is that Stephenson will get his act together, I turned to the data to generate some comps. In Double-A last year, Stephenson struck out 23% of opposing batters, walked 12% and yielded a home run 3% of the time. To get a large group of similar pitchers, I set my (league-adjusted) filters to include all starting pitchers who met the following criteria: K% over 20%, BB% over 10% and HR% over 2%. Maximum ages were 21, 22 and 23 for High-A, Double-A and Triple-A respectively. This query yielded me a total of 60 pitchers whose age-28 season is in the books.

Most members of this group never amounted to much. Overall, they averaged just 3.0 WAR through age-28 — not too far off of KATOH’s 2.2 WAR projection for Stephenson. Matt Cain, Gio Gonzalez and Pat Hentgen were the biggest standouts, but things get ugly in a hurry shortly after them. Less than a quarter of these 60 even passed the 4 WAR threshold, which isn’t a particularly high bar to clear. In fact, it’s what you’d expect from Stephenson in a single year if he were to hit his ceiling as a #2 or #3 starter. In case you’re wondering, Homer Bailey didn’t quite make the cut. While he did allow his fair share of walks and long balls as a prospect, his struggles were never quite as serious as Stephenson’s.

This looks bad for Stephenson, and certainly explains why KATOH is so down on him. But his future probably isn’t as dim as these data make it appear. A lot of the pitchers grouped into this analysis look nothing like Stephenson. Comparing him to guys like Damian Moss and Corey Thurman — soft-tossers who rarely broke 90 — doesn’t seem particularly fair. Let’s see what happens if we limit the analysis to the 12 pitchers who appeared on Baseball America’s top 100 list following their Stephenson-esque seasons.

That’s quite a bit more promising. Yes its a small sample, but its also encouraging to see that most of the pitchers who became very good made the cut. Here’s a look at the 12.

It’s pretty clear that KATOH’s projection of 2.2 WAR through age-28 is selling Stephenson a bit short. When KATOH looks at Stephenson, it sees a pitcher who strikes out a fair amount of hitters, but also allows far too many walks. What it doesn’t know is that Stephenson isn’t your garden variety Double-A pitcher with an ERA pushing 5.00. His stuff is leaps and bounds better than that.

By no means is Stephenson a lock to reach his upside as a #2 or #3 starter. That’s just the way it is for pitchers: They carry a lot of risk. For every Matt Cain there’s also a Jon Rauch and also a Brian Barber. Still, given how often prospects fail (especially pitchers), a better-than-even chance of being at least Jon Rauch doesn’t sound so bad.

Last year, for the first time in his professional career, Stephenson failed. Plain and simple. It goes without saying that you’d rather not see a top prospect have one of the highest ERA’s in his league, so his 2014 struggles should certainly raise some concern. Yet despite his lousy 2014, there’s still plenty of room for hope. For all that went wrong last year, Stephenson still managed a respectable strikeout rate. And perhaps most importantly, his physical tools were still good enough to keep most scouts and evaluators on board. History shows that pitchers who fit this mold often get their acts together, and there’s little reason to think Stephenson can’t follow a similar path.