2062 Ultra Stuff and Relievers

[RonCo]

It's a fairly common refrain on Discord these weeks. Brace yourself: Stuff is on the rise. And it does seem like it is. At least I feel it here in Bikini, where it seems like every week or two I see another one of my relievers spike Stuff, some pushing the normal 1-10 scale up into the 11-13 Ultra range. The key word there being "reliever," though. When someone mentioned that the Stuff barrage is coming from relievers, it struck me to wonder, just how prevalent is this coming Stuff Apocalypse? Is it really as real as I feel like it is? How much of it is Bikini?

So I did what I do, and grabbed the current ratings then diced them to relievers and threw them into a set of pivot tables to see what's real.

So, let's start here: of the 1,538 relief pitchers in the BBA universe of majors, minors, and International complexes, how does the Stuff world look? I chose to focus on potential for this one, so here's that table:

STUFF P	MLB	AAA	AA	A	S A	R	INT	All
4	10	13	14	14	19	24	17	111
5	101	89	83	77	78	59	32	519
6	77	53	47	50	76	33	15	351
7	44	27	32	51	42	32	10	238
8	22	17	22	30	32	24	2	149
9	16	19	11	21	16	12	1	96
10	9	5	6	9	4	4		37
11	8	3	4	5	2			22
12	3	2	2	3	1	1		12
13	2				1			3
	292	228	221	260	271	189	77	1538

So, to be clear, there currently exist 13 relivers in the BBA that have Ultra-Stuff Ratings (those above "10"). In the entire universe, that number is 37. So about 30% of the Ultra-Stuff Relievers are already in the bigs. That includes Charlotte's 29 year-old Eduardo Moreno and Phoenix's 23-year-old Jim Gaston, who both sit at 13. That leaves 24 pitchers with Ultra-Stuff. Taking a look down into the minors, the question strikes me "how many of these guys will make it up to the BBA? To get a feel for that, I then did another cut, this time looking only at guys who are rated at least 45 on the Potential scale, hence theoretically removing the non-prospects who happen to throw really hard.

Here is what's left:

STUFF P	MLB	AAA	AA	A	S A	R	INT	45+
4	5	6		1				12
5	91	44	9	8	2	1		155
6	74	28	6	3	4		1	116
7	40	17	9	11	6	1		84
8	18	13	6	9	10	1		57
9	15	14	4	6	4	1	1	45
10	9	4	4	8	1	2		28
11	8	3	3	4	2			20
12	3	2	2	3	1	1		12
13	2							2
	265	131	43	53	30	7	2	531

So we only lose three prospects. But let's take a look at their details (again, focusing on level and potentials.

Here are all the minor leagues in any BBA system who have Ultra Stuff Potentials, sorted by level but with those under 45-rated ones at the bottom:

Name	ORG	Lev	Age	OVR	POT	VELO	STU P	MOV P	CON P	PBABIP P	HRR P
Luis Gonzales	BRK	AAA	22	45	60	98-100	12	5	5	5	5
Bob Rolf	NO	AAA	22	45	45	99-101	12	5	4	6	5
Cesar Castro	NO	AAA	21	45	55	94-96	11	7	2	6	8
Charlie Egan	BRK	AAA	22	40	45	99-101	11	5	3	5	5
Julio Madrid	BRK	AAA	20	60	70	96-98	11	7	5	6	9
Jose Lopez	TWC	AA	22	35	60	99-101	12	5	5	6	4
Pedro Uralde	BRK	AA	21	40	50	93-95	12	5	5	6	5
Heath Brown	BIK	AA	24	45	45	97-99	11	4	5	6	2
Andy Pedley	BIK	AA	21	50	65	96-98	11	5	5	5	6
Jonathan Swett	BOI	AA	20	35	60	96-98	11	5	4	5	6
Timothy Lockwood	VAL	A	21	30	65	99-101	12	5	5	5	5
Manuel Parra	PHX	A	24	50	75	96-98	12	6	6	6	6
Emmilian Perdziak	ATC	A	21	40	70	96-98	12	5	7	5	5
Jorge Castro	CPF	A	22	35	55	97-99	11	5	4	5	5
Roberto Cruz	TWC	A	22	45	45	99-101	11	5	4	5	4
Wayne Humphries	TWC	A	20	35	55	98-100	11	5	5	5	5
Jorge Solis	CCJ	A	22	35	50	97-99	11	5	4	6	4
Dillon Jenkins	TWC	S A	19	30	60	97-99	12	5	6	6	4
Julio Ocampo	BRK	S A	17	25	50	99-101	11	4	6	5	4
Pedro Valencia	BIK	S A	19	35	65	99-101	11	6	5	6	6
Min Siu	TWC	R	19	25	50	95-97	12	6	1	6	7
Mac Smith	BRK	AA	23	30	40	95-97	11	4	5	6	2
Yong-hong Li	CCJ	A	22	30	40	97-99	11	4	5	5	3
Dennis McKnight	CCJ	S A	18	25	40	96-98	13	4	3	4	3

First off ... holey crud, Batman, what is it about the Atlantic Division?

Regardless, once you've stopped looking for your own teams (or opponents,) take a few moments to look at the full scope of these pitchers. So many have holes. Not all, of course , but a lot. And so many are very, very young. So, yeah, maybe we're going to see a velocity glut in the bigs sometime soon, but it's hard for me to get too worried about facing some of these pitchers. They're going to throw a ball through the wall of the barn, but a lot of them look like they throw pretty straight or cant get it over the plate. As I think it was Kurt who said, "hello Dev lab!"

Anyway.

As with a lot of these things, I'm not sure what to make of it all. Like most of human things, how you think of the future probably depends on your preconceived notions and biases. I know mine do. But at least maybe a look at a few specifics will give us something to go on a bit more than gut feeling.

[BaseClogger]

I think you’d find a lot of the potential won’t be met either. Having said that, the recent draft classes (and your BIK org) does have me convinced the league will see a shift of a greater percentage of innings thrown by bullpens. The arms are too talented.

[Trebro]

I guess the question on these guys is "Do they have The Right Stuff?"

I'll show myself out.

[Dington]

Make Relievers Great Again. Bring back 18 stuff flamethrowers!