The Houston Astros have summoned David Paulino from the minor leagues to make his big-league debut against the Indians today. Paulino was utterly dominant in the minors this year. Splitting time between Double-A and Triple-A, the 6-foot-7 righty whiffed 29% of batters faced on his way to a 2.00 ERA and 2.24 FIP. Somewhat quietly, Paulino put together one of the best seasons in the minors in 2016.

Paulino had shown flashes of excellence in the past, but his triumphs in the low minors have been regularly interrupted by injury. He put up a 2.63 FIP across three levels of A-ball last year, and was missing bats in rookie ball as far back as 2011. But his 2016 campaign marks the first time he’s logged anything resembling a full season, and the first time he’s had the opportunity to prove himself against advanced hitters.

KATOH loves Paulino’s 6-foot-7 frame and lofty strikeout rates. My system pegs him for 5.3 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method and 6.0 WAR by KATOH+, which integrates Baseball America’s rankings. KATOH had Paulino as a mid-top-100 prospect on their mid-season list. To help you visualize what his KATOH projection entails, here is a probability density function showing KATOH+’s projected distribution of outcomes for Paulino’s first six seasons in the major leagues.

To put some faces to Paulino’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps for the tall righty. I calculated a weighted Mahalanobis distance between Paulino’s performance this year and every Double-A and Triple-A season since 1991 in which a pitcher faced at least 350 batters. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.

Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun

Paulino has tantalizing stuff. He throws in the mid-90s while also mixing in two potentially plus breaking pitches. Now that he’s proven he can use that stuff to get out high-minors hitters, there’s little reason to doubt he’ll have similar success in the big leagues. He’ll almost certainly help the Astros in their quest to snag a wild-card berth from one of the AL East teams ahead of them.