Look at This Stupid Breaking Ball
We haven’t written very much about Jakob Junis. And that much makes sense — he hasn’t been in the majors very long, and it’s not like he’s broken any records. He plays for a team that isn’t that great, and he only found his groove last season down the stretch. Junis has never been a top prospect, and he was drafted in the 29th round. He doesn’t throw with eye-popping velocity, and he doesn’t rack up a boatload of strikeouts. Junis has done little to call attention to himself. Baseball analysts have done little to call attention to Jakob Junis.
I had a note by my computer to write about Junis all offseason long. I never did it. The timing never felt right. It feels better now, after Junis shut down the Tigers’ offense on Tuesday. It was cold, and, it was the Tigers, and the Tigers are bad. It’s not as if Junis went out and blanked the Astros. But he still spun seven shutout innings, with six strikeouts, and he threw 71% of his pitches for strikes. We’re talking about Jakob Junis now. And if you’re going to talk about Jakob Junis, you’re going to talk about his breaking ball. I’ve prepared plenty of clips from Tuesday’s outing. Just look at this stupid breaking ball.
I know it’s not great to have an off-center camera angle. Unfortunately, I’m not in control of that. Hopefully you can still get a sense of the movement. Baseball, if you’re out there: Please provide exclusively off-center camera angles. They’re better for those of us pitching dorks. Anyway, here’s a laughable breaking ball.
That’s a hitter in swing mode. That’s a hitter who was already in trouble, before a pitch was even thrown. But still, that’s also a breaking ball that compelled a full swing. The pitch wasn’t even close. It looked as if it was going to be close enough. Here’s a breaking ball from another at-bat.
Here’s a very early breaking ball.
Perhaps the sequence of the game featured three consecutive breaking balls to Miguel Cabrera in the bottom of the third. First pitch went for a called strike.
You see Cabrera hold up. Junis successfully messed with his timing. After that, it was time to go away.
At last, the cherry on top.
That’s a good indication of movement, right? You can’t always tell how a pitch looks, from a screen, but hitters can tell you. Cabrera thought he might be hit by the pitch. It broke left to find the zone. And that’s in an 0-and-2 count, when umpires are disinclined to call strikes in the first place. Pretty good! Junis threw some other breaking balls that were good, even though they didn’t get strikes. This is a very good 1-and-2 pitch.
This is a very good 0-and-2 pitch.
And in case you’re worried, Junis isn’t a one-trick pony. He started throwing his two-seam fastball more often last August, in the majors. This right here is a visually appealing two-seam-fastball highlight clip.
Junis is good about throwing his two-seamer to the arm side. It’s a pitch that generates plenty of tail. But let’s go back to the breaking ball. It’s the breaking ball that first got Junis on my radar. As you know, we have information about just about every pitch thrown at the major-league level. Junis has thrown his breaking ball — apparently a slider — roughly a third of the time. That by itself is an indication of how much Junis trusts the pitch. It’s averaged a little better than 81 miles per hour. More notably, it’s averaged about eight inches of horizontal break, with slightly negative vertical break. I compared that pitch to other breaking balls thrown by current starting pitchers. The Junis breaking ball compares very well to the one thrown by Jose Berrios. It also compares very well to the similar ones thrown by Yu Darvish, Marcus Stroman, and Corey Kluber. It’s not easy to generate that much movement, and it’s not easy to control such a pitch in the first place. Junis knows his breaking ball is a weapon, and it’s given him a major-league career.
By itself, the slider could get Junis noticed. Maybe he’d end up in the bullpen. But since he started folding in a two-seam fastball, Junis has worked regularly with three pitches. Technically, four, since lefties have seen about 10% changeups. Dating back to last August, Junis has thrown just shy of 70 major-league innings. He has 10 walks and 56 strikeouts, with a 76 FIP-. As you can tell from the clips, Junis is hardly overpowering. His fastball almost never gets up to 93. But he’s armed with strong control and command. Over the same window, Junis’ zone rate has been 55%. Last year’s highest zone rate by a qualified pitcher was 54%. Junis throws almost nothing but competitive pitches, and he does so with a clean and smooth delivery. This isn’t an over-thrower. Junis just has the fundamentals down cold.
When I look at Jakob Junis, I find it easy to think about Corey Kluber. Now, Kluber might be the best pitcher in the league. And he has a little more zip than Junis does. Kluber, also, throws a cutter, that Junis doesn’t possess. But Junis has the same kind of breaking ball, and he has two very similar fastballs. He’s topped out as a fringe prospect in the minors, even though he’s able to throw his pitches with precision. A simple explanation is just that Junis’ talent doesn’t reveal itself immediately. The slider does, sure, but the velocity isn’t remarkable, and it takes a while to be sold on a pitcher’s ability to locate. The raw stuff isn’t there, so Junis doesn’t get slapped with an ace-level ceiling. Junis, though, can win you over, if you give him the chance. If you don’t like the Kluber comp, he’s also like a slightly less powerful Jose Berrios. He’s hardly overwhelming, but he’s always around the zone, so hitters get put on the defensive. The slider’s a real wipeout offering, when Junis elects to throw it.
The purpose of this post is not to announce that Jakob Junis is amazing. Plenty left to prove. Plenty of innings still to throw. I don’t know what Junis will amount to. I just think he’s worth keeping an eye on, because he’s flown under the radar, as a fringe prospect in an underwhelming system. I’m given to understand that the Royals know what they have. They like him a lot, and they won’t give him up. Junis might still disappoint, or get injured. But right now, he has one very good pitch. His fastballs work well off one another. And when you start from a foundation of having a clean delivery and a real secondary weapon, I think there’s still a lot of room for growth. I believe in Junis’ ability to get even better. To this point, he hasn’t been thought of as very much. Moving forward, it won’t really matter what’s been true to this point.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Objective grades for the physical components of his slider are:
Velo = 81.5 (Grade 36.7), HMov = 7.0″ (Grade 73.1), VMov = -0.3″ (Grade 58.9)
It’s basically a lesser version of Ohtani’s. I would hang a 65 grade overall on it.
So what is the criteria for good or bad velo on a slider?
Based on 2017 data, here is how the grades for slider velocity shake out:
80 91.5
70 89.2
60 86.9
50 84.6
40 82.3
30 79.9
20 77.7
Everything I’ve read suggests velocity isn’t super important for sliders, so when grading them overall I weight the movement more heavily with horizontal movement being weighted the heaviest.
If anyone is interested, here are all grades for sliders:
Grade vSL X Z
80 91.5 8.1 -5
70 89.2 6.3 -2.6
60 86.9 4.4 -0.5
50 84.6 2.5 1.6
40 82.3 0.6 3.6
30 79.9 0 5.7
20 77.7 0 7
The horizontal run on that two-seamer looks to have been a whole lot more than he got in any game last year. Brooks has 8.56 inches arm-side as his highest average for any game in 2017, and yesterday he averaged 11.89 inches. To put that 11.89 in perspective, Chris Sale’s season average has been just a little over 12 for most of his career. In Tony Blegnino’s 2016 piece grading two-seamers, Sale was the only pitcher whose season average was over 11.
I’d want to see a few more games before getting too excited, but it sure was a fun pitch yesterday.
Yeah, it was actually the two-seamer clip that made me say “wow”. That’s a ton of horizontal separation.
Now if he could add a change that gets that kind of armside on an offspeed…
Great article.
It oes remind me of how great KATOH was, and hope fangraphs gets back to data-driven prospect analysis.
The eye-test scouting for prospects is a nice tip of the hat to the industry and tradition, but quite frankly, it’s so dumbed-down and anecdote-based because it’s a job that has been primarily designed for former players, most of whom are uneducated and reject modern empiricism. It’s notable that Junis has some visually impressive pitched in the clips above, but the detailed and precise information provided by the posters below (rating the breaking ball and the two seamer) is simply much more measured than an eye test grade.
Without a sound epistemology to rely on, it’s no wonder that eye test grades hedge so much to the middle unless there is a super obvious tool. Junis, as a low velo, late pick with only moderate athleticism, is a guy that you wouldn’t expect scouts to rate. More to the point, the eye test simply doesn’t have a substance-based epistemology: so whereas a measured approach can capture the appropriate inputs, weight them, and estimate their impact, the eye test can simply do word-of-mouth, watch a few clips or games, and stick to the safe and obvious.
KATOH saw Junis as one of the Royals’ top prospects before last season- having Junis as KC’s 6th best prospect and 2nd best SP prospect. The eye-test/industry consensus approach from Eric, though, didn’t really see much (40 FV) and just gave a very average report without noticing any of the finer, relevant details.
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/top-20-prospects-kansas-city-royals/
The breaking ball is given a 50/50 grade (no reason given, not much focus on the pitch), infact Junis is simply given 50 grades across the board. Data analysts typically weight out metrics in z-scores or according to normal distributions, but scouts tend to not analyze or normalize their marks, so they often do not even realize how many non-elite prospects are simply given 50s across the board if they are in the 100-200 range, and 40s/45s otherwise. If the eye test were able to capture the relevant observation points and properly weight all the info, the scouting reports would focus in on accurate signal- instead, the reports are so generic- draft pedigree, velo, size, injury, and some micro-narrative or industry chatter, i.e. ‘some scouts are rethinking the changeup grade,’ usually as inaccurate as ‘scouts rave about Hosmer’s fielding.’ The mere fact that eye test cannot distinguish between a slider and a curve- and indeed, the eye test used to believe in a Dice-K arrange of imaginary pitches that don’t even exist- is a strong hint at the ‘don’t-look-behind-the-curtain’ lack of actual signal and processing capacity involved in eye-scouting.
It’s not as if Junis’ one game means the below scouting report is wrong. I just find his case illustrative of what strikes me as a lack of seriousness (and predictable inaccuracy) in the fangraphs eye test scouting: astrology-like, there is just no actual skill adding value to the anecdotal observations. I believe it’s likely that all the observations in the scouting report range from wrong-to-largely inaccurate-to obvious, with no subtle an accurate observations.
The low ceiling assessment simply means, ‘im a scout with an eye test and cannot process enough data points to assess performance, have not seen enough games to even have a fraction of the comprehensive information, but I see no obvious tools, draft pedigree or industry buzz.’ I find myself questioning whether Junis actually did ‘bump 94’ or if this statement is merely evidence of the over-focus on tools. The eye test approach is so weak on intellectual integrity that it’s hard to trust the info. Data approaches have so much precision that they even adjust for hot guns and can tell you exactly how often Junis hits 94 (from the looks of it, very rarely), eye test approaches just sort of take any observation, add some narrative and bluff the rest- the whole approach so sloppy that there are rarely back-testing assessments anyway. Is there any reason to take the 50 grade on command seriously? Or the 50s for the fastball or curveball? Is there actually anything beyond industry narrative that his arm action improved?
13. Jake Junis, RHP
Drafted: 29th Round, 2011 from Rock Falls HS (IL)
Age 24 Height 6’3 Weight 225 Bat/Throw R/R
Tool Grades (Present/Future)
Fastball Curveball Changeup Command
50/50 50/50 45/50 45/50
Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Increased strikeout rate from 14% to 24% at Double-A between 2015 and -16.
Scouting Report
Junis got a significant overslot deal in the 2011 draft’s 29th round and has pitched his way to Triple-A with middling results. His arm action has improved over the last year, though, and his stuff has ticked up a little bit as a result, giving him a chance to fill in the back of a rotation or in a frequent relief role.
Once mostly 88-92, Junis is bumping 94 with more life than he used to have on his fastball, and his improved arm action has scouts revisiting his changeup projection a bit, though it remains fringey.
Junis has always had solid feel for an average curveball that he locates fairly well, and he has similarly solid average command of his fastball. With the chance for a better changeup suddenly entering the picture, it might be best for Kansas City to let Junis barbecue in Triple-A a while longer where he can get a starter’s reps and work on sequencing it. He’s already 24 and has a limited ceiling but should yield big-league value in some capacity and probably more than I would have thought
Apologies for length, but the IMO Junis has not changed, he has not broken through- he was just overlooked by the eye test. He’s had a plus fastball and slider for a while, and he has had plus control for a while as well. The failure to assign 55+ grades to these aspects of his game isn’t because he changed, developed beyond what could be expected and it’s hard to predict the future IMO- it’s rather because the eye test isn’t a serious approach and cannot tell the difference between a pitch 5 runs (over the course of a season) better than average or 5 runs worse than average.
No question scouting isn’t perfect, but there are numerous studies about draft pick and prospect valuation that show that the top guys tend to be the most valuable. That would indicate that, to some level, scouts get this right. I would be curious to hear why Junis flew under the radar with a breaking ball like this, and there’s no question that subjective evaluation has its flaws, but to say that scouting ranges from “wrong to largely inaccurate” isn’t true. I mean, KATOH ranked Dylsn Cozens the #1 prospect in baseball last year, and it’s an open question whether he’ll ever reach the big leagues, so objective methodologies of amateur and low-level players aren’t perfect either.
I saw Jeff’s off-the-cuff reference to Junis yesterday. Since I had never seen the guy pitch, I went to his player page and saw a reference to a Nick Pollack article from last season. The first GIF in that article showed off one of his sliders. I thought to myself “holy crap, look at that stupid breaking ball”.
The second helping was just as good as the first.
Junis was always a fun little sleeper prospect. 29th round pick. Not bad at anything, nothing stands out. High probability fourth starter. Over-aged prospect. Been around forever. But then…wow, what the heck happened in AAA last year?
It reminds me of an exercise I did last year where I tried to figure out where all of the game’s top pitchers were drafted. Sale, Scherzer, Kershaw, Strasburg, Bumgarner, Price, Fernandez, Nola, and Greinke were first rounders. But Kluber was a 4th rounder. Archer and Arrieta were a fifth rounders. Jimmy Nelson and Jon Lester were 2nd rounders. Keuchel was a 7th rounder! DeGrom was a ninth rounder!
Between the injury rates for pitchers and random mid-range pitchers busting out to become legitimate Cy Young candidates, the variation on pitching prospects is enormous. It’s why it’s a good idea to have a million high-probability back end starters hanging around and a somewhat troubling sign if you’re getting Hector Santiago to round out your AAA rotation.
(I note this with some irony, since the Royals did the exact same thing with Clay Buccholz and Ricky Nolasco)
I feel like I should note that while Junis was a 29th-round pick, he was also lured away from NC State commitment by way of a $675,000 signing bonus. So yes, that was the round he was drafted in, but he was given the bonus commensurate to what the 83rd pick of the draft was slotted for last year.