Joe Ryan Addresses His 2020 FanGraphs Scouting Report
Joe Ryan has developed into one of the better pitchers in the American League. So far this season, the 28-year-old Minnesota Twins right-hander has a 5-2 record to go with a 2.57 ERA, a 3.19 FIP, and a 29.8% strikeout rate over 63 innings. Moreover, he’s been rock solid since debuting with the AL Central club in September 2021. His career ledger includes a 3.76 ERA and a 3.77 FIP over 533 1/3 frames, with all but one of his 95 appearances coming as a starter. The lone exception was working five innings as a bulk reliever in the resumption of a suspended game earlier this month.
His prospect profile wasn’t particularly high. Drafted 210th overall by the Tampa Bay Rays out of California State Stanislaus in 2018, Ryan proceeded to pitch well in the minors, but he was largely overshadowed. When our 2020 Tampa Bay Top Prospects list was published in March of that year, Eric Longenhagen wrote that the Rays possessed “one of the, if not the, best farm systems in baseball.” He ranked Ryan 13th in the organization and assigned him a 45+ FV. The Rays subsequently sent Ryan to the Twins in their July 2021 trade for Nelson Cruz.
What did Ryan’s 2020 FanGraphs scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out I shared some of what our lead prospect analyst wrote and asked Ryan to respond to it.
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“Ryan dominated Midwest League hitters in April, then was quickly moved to High-A Port Charlotte, where he continued to mow through Florida State League hitters, striking out 35% of them during his first dozen appearances.”
“I was mostly just using my fastball,” Ryan recalled. “I knew that Brendan McKay was moving up really quickly using his fastball, so I decided not to throw a lot of offspeed. I figured I’d just learn my offspeed in the big leagues, or whichever level I needed to.”
“He did most of his damage with the fastball, which was puzzling because Ryan’s heater doesn’t seem remarkable in any way, even in light of the pitch data I’ve sourced.”
“I think data got a little overused, and still is overused in a quite a few areas,” Ryan said. “I think the game tells you everything you need to know a lot of the time. Certain guys get more opportunities because of the data, and certain guys are more restricted because of the data. If I were with the Rays, I’d probably still be in [Triple-A] Durham. So yeah, I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad I’m able to pitch in the big leagues. It’s definitely more fun.”
“His arm stroke is curt and the ball just kind of jumps on hitters, so perhaps that’s contributing to its effectiveness, but it’s not such a unique look as to satisfactorily explain this level of dominance.”
“I mean, it just shows that they don’t know everything that’s going on,” Ryan reasoned. “But yeah, extension, VAA, and some other things partly answer that question. There’s more to it than just… and I was throwing a big curveball back then, too. That might have added some level of deception.”
“The supporting cast — a low-70s rainbow curveball, the occasional cutter or changeup — is only okay.”
“I was just throwing those to keep them off the heater,” Ryan said. “But a lot of guys throw that. You’re watching [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto throw a low-70s curveball right now and have a lot of success. Obviously, his is a lot nastier than mine was. Freddy Peralta’s curveball, same thing. I used to watch a lot of Aaron Nola and he’d throw that curveball in there. Those guys all have better curveballs than I do.
“Again, I was going to start throwing more offspeed when the game told me I needed to. I wanted to see how far I could go just throwing heaters. I mean, I would work on my stuff the whole time. The pitching coach I had in High-A, Doc Watson, was one of the best pitching coaches I’ve had. We talked a lot about pitching and learning how to attack hitters properly. Pitching to my strengths was a big part of that. In my worst outing, I was throwing curveballs, changeups, and sliders — I wasn’t attacking with my fastball — and he told me that I should be throwing my fastball more.”
“I have him in as a strike-throwing No. 4/5 starter.”
“Whatever they said then is what they said,” Ryan replied to the assessment from five years ago. “I’ve never read a lot of that stuff. I don’t know if I even knew what FanGraphs was at that time.”
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Previous “Old Scouting Reports Revisited” interviews can be found through these links: Cody Bellinger, Matthew Boyd, Dylan Cease, Matt Chapman, Erick Fedde, Kyle Freeland, Lucas Giolito, Randal Grichuk, Ian Happ, Jeff Hoffman, Matthew Liberatore, Sean Newcomb, Bailey Ober, Austin Riley, Max Scherzer, Marcus Semien.
David Laurila grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and now writes about baseball from his home in Cambridge, Mass. He authored the Prospectus Q&A series at Baseball Prospectus from December 2006-May 2011 before being claimed off waivers by FanGraphs. He can be followed on Twitter @DavidLaurilaQA.
Absolutely love this from him. The comment about still being at Durham is hilarious
there’s a way to make the points he was making without sounding like a dick
(True of commenters, as well.) Personally, I read his remarks as if he had an air of bemusement and acceptance to them, not grievance.
But even if there was a sharp edge to his answer, I’d be fine with it. Not many people like being underestimated or being asked to follow advice that later proves out to be unhelpful.
Bravo. This is one of my favorite replies I’ve ever read online.
I don’t think he sounded like a dick. He acknowledges that he basically leaned on his fastball in the lower levels because he could, with the idea that he’d develop other pitches later. But clearly, he is of the opinion that scouts (even within his own previous organisation) underestimated his talents because their evals or the data missed something with him.
Look at Ryan’s minor league history and you’ll see someone with a pretty fantastic combo of results and underlying data (K-BB%, xFIP, etc.) Yet he never ranked in the top 100 prospects or the top 10 within the Rays organisation on Fangraphs. Given the uncertainty for lower level prospects about if and when they’ll get an opportunity to go to the big leagues and the huge impact that has on their future career earnings, I can understand his frustration with the past scouting reports.
What about this format makes you think it lends itself to politeness? It’s somewhat confrontational in nature. Personally I respect every player who participates and respect them even more when they push back on their reports because they almost always have interesting reasoning, regardless of how much eyewash/politeness they package it with
Maybe it’s just sour grapes as a Rays fan, but he’s being ridiculous. If he kept performing like that the Rays would have brought him up too. At the time it was nice to see them finally make a buyers trade in a way they never do, and just a shame that it couldn’t have turned out worse. Cruz sucked, Ryan turned out to be pretty darn good. Oh and the Rays media people kept going on about how Cruz would be such a great mentor for Wander Franco. Oops.