FYI cubs 1st round pick Alex Lange is pitching tonight on ESPN at 7 central

CSF77

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Don't have ESPN. how did he do?
 

beckdawg

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Don't have ESPN. how did he do?

He got roughed up by the long ball. Ended up giving up 4 runs but he did have 8 K's in 6 innings. LSU also won so there's that. Strikes me as someone who has some dominating pitches but who's going to need some work on his control. Sorta plays to the scouting report where he has starter potential but may end up in the bullpen. Still though that sort of K rate vs a team like Miss St who's pretty talented isn't bad at all.
 

CSF77

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He got roughed up by the long ball. Ended up giving up 4 runs but he did have 8 K's in 6 innings. LSU also won so there's that. Strikes me as someone who has some dominating pitches but who's going to need some work on his control. Sorta plays to the scouting report where he has starter potential but may end up in the bullpen. Still though that sort of K rate vs a team like Miss St who's pretty talented isn't bad at all.

Control would be related to walk rate. Command to lite contact. IE throwing strikes and throwing located strikes. SO rates have alot to do with a strong knock out pitch. Like a power slider or a hammer that catches guys looking. Some can get swinging strikes on change ups etc but if a guy has a high SO/9 he has a knock out pitch of some sort.
 

DanTown

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He got roughed up by the long ball. Ended up giving up 4 runs but he did have 8 K's in 6 innings. LSU also won so there's that. Strikes me as someone who has some dominating pitches but who's going to need some work on his control. Sorta plays to the scouting report where he has starter potential but may end up in the bullpen. Still though that sort of K rate vs a team like Miss St who's pretty talented isn't bad at all.

Lange to me seems Mike Montgomery esque where he doesn't have enough depth of quality pitches and doesn't get a huge jump in velocity as a bullpen guy but I think his fastball and curve will be enough to be a good lefty who can come in and get multiple outs. He has some potential as a MOR arm but almost prefer he ends up a very good bullpen arm instead. The other kid they took at 27 has that Andrew Miller type potential if he can harness his third pitch (which I think was a slider ala Miller).
 

CSF77

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Lange to me seems Mike Montgomery esque where he doesn't have enough depth of quality pitches and doesn't get a huge jump in velocity as a bullpen guy but I think his fastball and curve will be enough to be a good lefty who can come in and get multiple outs. He has some potential as a MOR arm but almost prefer he ends up a very good bullpen arm instead. The other kid they took at 27 has that Andrew Miller type potential if he can harness his third pitch (which I think was a slider ala Miller).

Little has a high quality curve. 12-6 hammer with a fastball that can hit 97 in short stints. He is a guy I believe they will develop as a Miller type. Miller started in the minors and found his nitch in 2 inning situations.

Lange has one of the best power curves in the draft. In general if a guy has a marketable curve you push him into the rotation. If he has a marketable slider he goes to the pen in general. It is just how things tend to shake out. There are exceptions like Dempster and Lackey were 3 pitch pitchers for the most part.

But a guy with a 60-65 grade curve you try to build around that pitch in the rotation. He is a guy who has to work on mastering fastball command when he starts to develop. So in layman's terms what does that mean? Well a start is scouting hitters and getting to know hot and cold zones of each hitter and pitching strikes into their cold zone. So if a guy is good inner half but is bad a outer half pitches command tends to means being able to locate his pitches in those zones. And so on.

After that it also gets into fastball movement. Mostly pressure on each finger or getting to the side to add a cut. A guy like him should have mastered that bit. Most guys like him are more into the command phase where they are working on locating to specific hit zones vs trying to throw a strike vs a ball.
 

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