Some Possible Futures for Houston’s Vincent Velasquez

The prospects just keep on coming for the Houston Astros this year. First, it was Preston Tucker, who’s stepped in to produce a 110 wRC+ as the team’s left fielder. Then, along came Lance McCullers, who’s been one of the best pitchers in baseball over his first month in the majors. Another came on Monday,when Houston summoned Carlos Correa — arguably the best prospect left in the minors. Then, last night, the Astros graduated yet another impact prospect to the majors in Vincent Velasquez. The 23-year-old tossed five scoreless innings in his debut, striking out five while walking four.

Heading into the year, very few anticipated that Velasquez would make it to Houston in 2015, as he had zero experience above A-ball. He pitched reasonably well in High-A Lancaster last year, posting a 3.74 ERA and 3.96 FIP, but a groin injury limited him to just 51 innings of work. At year’s end, he reported to the Arizona Fall League, where he posted an unsightly 6.59 ERA before he was shut down with a lat strain. Velasquez looked as though he was still at least a year away from the show.

But something seemed to click for Velasquez between this year and last. After sitting out the first few weeks of the year recovering from his lat injury, the 23-year-old hit the ground running in Double-A Corpus Christi. In five starts, he pitched to a sparkling 1.37 ERA and 2.13 FIP on the strength of a 37% strikeout rate. Yes, that’s a small sample, but those numbers are about as good as it gets.

Although he’s just now getting to the majors, and has very little experience in the high minors, Velasquez isn’t new to the prospect scene. The Astros drafted him in the second round way back in 2010, but a plethora of injuries have slowed his ascent up the minor-league ladder. He battled elbow problems in high school before missing all of 2011 with Tommy John surgery. More recently, his aforementioned groin and lat problems limited his innings the last couple of years.

Despite the injury concerns, Kiley McDaniel rated Velasquez very favorably heading into the season. He ranked him 75th overall on his top-200 list, and gave him a FV of 55, which is the equivalent of a #3/#4 starter or an average closer. Velasquez’s stand-out pitches are his fastball and his changeup. Both are above-average (55) offerings right now, according to Kiley, with the potential to be plus (60) pitches down the road. He also possesses a curveball that flashes above-average at times. Both the fastball and the curve were on display last night.

Here’s a 96 MPH fastball to Jose Abreu.

FB

And here’s a Adam LaRoche looking silly while flailing at that bender.

CB

KATOH, on the other hand, was very low on Velasquez following the 2014 season. My system pegged him for a meager 2.0 WAR through age-28, which wasn’t even good enough to crack KATOH’s top-200 list. KATOH’s disdain for Velasquez was two-fold, and you could argue that both knocks against him shouldn’t really apply.

Firstly, Velazquez was dinged for working in relief in one third of his appearances. My KATOH model found, unsurprisingly, that minor-league starters generally accumulate more WAR than minor-league relievers. While Velasquez did, in fact, make several relief appearances last season. This was the result of the Astros’ “piggyback” rotation, though, and had less to do with Velasquez himself.

Velasquez also loses points on the age-to-level front. As a 22-year-old in A-Ball, he wasn’t particularly young for his level. However, when you consider how much development time he’s lost due to injuries, things suddenly don’t seem so bad.

Running his 2015 numbers through the KATOH machine produces a much rosier forecast of 6.8 WAR through age-28. This bump is the result of his improved performance, and also reflects the fact that he started all five of his appearances.

Let’s generate some comps for Velasquez’s 2015 numbers. Using league-adjusted, regressed stats, along with age, I calculated the Mahalanobis distance between Velasquez’s Double-A performance and every Double-A season since 1991 in which a pitcher faced at least 350 batters. Below, you’ll find a list of historical players whose performances were nearest and dearest to Velasquez’s, ranked from most to least similar.

Rank Mah. Distance Player IP thru 28 WAR thru 28
1 0.75 Matt Kinney 389 2.3
2 1.07 Neil Ramirez* 46 0.8
3 1.18 Alvin Morman 142 0.0
4 1.21 Mike Minor* 652 7.5
5 1.22 Ezequiel Astacio 86 0.0
6 1.26 Tim Redding 822 4.9
7 1.29 Gio Gonzalez 1,154 19.3
8 1.30 Oscar Munoz 35 0.0
9 1.37 Jorge de la Rosa 1,173 13.3
10 1.41 David Hernandez 381 3.4
11 1.47 Aaron Heilman 630 4.0
12 1.48 Kevin Rogers 125 1.2
13 1.50 Ryan Nye 13 0.0
14 1.74 Matt Magill* 27 0.0
15 1.75 Jake McGee* 230 5.5
16 1.75 Rick Helling 1,526 12.7
17 1.76 George Kontos 167 0.8
18 1.84 Chin-hui Tsao 88 0.0
19 1.88 Scott Mathieson 44 0.0
20 1.94 Tony Cingrani* 195 1.5

*Pitchers who have yet to play their age-28 seasons.

As is always the case, there are some hits and misses among this group. But considering how successful Velasquez has been this year at a level so close to the majors, this list feels underwhelming. Several of the guys listed above struggled with the transition to the major leagues, which ultimately rendered them relievers (like Ramirez, Hernandez and Heilman) or Triple-A depth (like Morman and Estacio). This goes to show that a strong, strikeout-heavy performance in Double-A is no guarantee of a successful career.

When looking at Velasquez’s recent trajectory, it’s hard not to draw comparisons to Lance McCullers — another Astros rookie who wasn’t supposed to make it to Houston 2015. Like Velasquez, McCullers pitched unremarkably in High-A Lancaster last year, but broke out this year in Double-A. McCullers recorded a 2.11 FIP in 29 Double-A innings before putting up a 2.07 spot in the majors.

Still, despite these similarities, it’s unlikely that Velasquez will enjoy the type of immediate success that McCullers did. Or anything close to it, really. The transition to the major leagues is a tough one, especially when a player’s asked to skip over the Triple-A level entirely. It’s also important to consider sample size when looking at only 30 innings of data. A 30-inning streak of dominance certainly can be indicative of a major improvement in skill. But more often than not, stints like that are just flashes in the pan. McCullers just happened to one of those rare cases where the improvements were real.

Nonetheless, there’s reason to buy into Velasquez’s 2015 performance. The righty has endured more than his share of injuries in his young career, which has almost certainly had an impact on his performance. This very well might be an instance of him finally being healthy enough to make the right adjustments and capitalize on his excellent stuff.

Only time can tell if Velasquez’s health is here to stay. But injury history aside, there’s a lot to like about the newest Astro. He has three potentially above-average pitches and his recent performance has been excellent. If he can carry that success over to the major leagues, he could become yet another exciting piece of Houston’s young and quickly-developing core of talent.





Chris works in economic development by day, but spends most of his nights thinking about baseball. He writes for Pinstripe Pundits, FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. He's also on the twitter machine: @_chris_mitchell None of the views expressed in his articles reflect those of his daytime employer.

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hobbes020
8 years ago

That breaking ball looks pretty nasty.

FeslenR
8 years ago
Reply to  hobbes020

it was. I saw some of it on tv, he will be a very decent pitcher-his stuff moves a LOT.