What we have here is a right-handed strike-thrower with ordinary stuff  and a limited ceiling who needs to maximize his fastball deception by changing speeds. He has a couple of ways of doing this, first and foremost, through location. So that 89-90 fastball needs to hit that corner and pitch to both sides. The second thing he has going for him is the change-up, which runs about 78-80. It’s mostly a straight change though you’ll find some fade against right-handers, which can work when it’s set up well. He needs to work on that slider in pro ball, as this 77-78 breaking ball is a little bit slurvy and get it over. So basically he’s a guy you draft and see what you get. He’s basically a poor man’s Plutko, a right-hander who must be fine to survive but with a notch less power.  How high guys like this go in pro ball are usually dictated by how well they can succeed within their limitations and how good they become at frustrating the-ever-living-hell out of hitters.

Hey, I learned long ago never to doubt myself when I look at players, and I don’t care if the guy next to me thinks the guy we’re looking at is a college guy. People make mistakes in baseball all the time and they make them because they fail to take into consideration all the present variables that you might have to dig for in order to identify why or why not a guy is a major league prospect. This is why I don’t like the amateur baseball machine, the beauty pageant baseball, the pimping off of kids to travel teams, the collecting of hats and freebies along the way. That doesn’t make you a major leaguer. What does? Let’s have a look at Healy now.

I got lucky and saw him good against Stanford, but let’s be square: he’s been good all year. Saturday, you get two home runs to the opposite field, one against a left-hander and one against a right-hander. Friday, you get a single against Appel. Sunday you get a double against a guy named Lindquist, who has a good arm and a tough delivery. Healy can hit. This is not a college hitter, this is a pro hitter. This is a guy who shows power to all fields and against both left-handers and right-handers. This is a guy who shows power at PK Park.

Healy has nine home runs. But he also has other tools besides the bat and these are tools that other college power hitters generally lack. Tools matter! Healy is a plus, plus, plus defender. He played third base all summer on the Cape. His feet move, his hands are soft, he bends his knees on ground balls, his feet are square to the ball. His arm is enough. So let’s look at him at first base, where he has a .996 fielding percentage, which means two errors in forty-plus games.

I’ve always thought Healy could play third, but I think he’s valuable at first base. He glides to the ball. He can make the throw behind the runner with accuracy, as he did on a pickoff play. But truth be told, he moves well. Put him in left, put him in right, leave him at first, move him to third. Won’t matter.

He can also run well for a big guy. I’ve had him at 4.25 on bunts, I’ve seen others have him at 4.18. That’s damn good for a guy who is 6-5, 227. So that means he won’t clog, he can go first to third, he can score from second. I even saw him pull off a straight steal against Mark Appel on Friday and avoid a tag on a rundown on Sunday.

What you want at this time of the year is a guy who comes into his own but doesn’t peak as an amateur. I see projection with Healy because I think he has a more broad body for muscle. I think Healy moves well, I think Healy is a good defender, I think Healy has more defensive versatility, and I think Healy wants to work harder at the aspects of his game that are not hitting. Not too bad for a “college guy.”

Brookside Park, Pasadena. Spring 2010. I’m there with 800 other scouts to see Dylan Covey. The guy pitching for Pasadena Poly is a junior wearing those orange-and-white uniforms. I remember walking up the right field side and seeing this tall dude getting loose. At the time, he wasn’t throwing all that hard, but he was just a junior growing into his body. I made a note, I saw one pitch, I liked him. Then I went and watched Covey.

Fast forward and I’m working my beat. I see this dude throwing for Stanford, and I’ll be damned, it’s Kutzer — but now with new and improved submarine slot. And what gets me is this — this guy is a nightmare waiting to happen for right-handed hitters. I mean, this guy has the potential to be Ewell Blackwell death to right-handers, and hey, just like old Ewell from Bonita High, he is from the 626 Sidewinders bloodline. Yes, Indiana Jones chased the Grail Bloodline. Old Beginnings guy is chasing the 626 Sidewinders. 

I happen to like the 626 Sidewinders, for they are a surly, combative, creative and consistent gang who make their ways in this game by defying the conventional wisdom that all right-handers must be power arms. Sink is their velocity, cunning is their friend, and like my old pal Lew Burdette believed, they feast off the greed of hitters. They feast off divers and then are not afraid to come inside, hiding the ball back of third base, and then smoking a guy on the corner. Fastballs and Sliders are their religion, especially that slider, thrown so hard that the proper adjective is not appropriate for young children to read. Kutzer can be one of these guys, if he can ever get into a game. But innings pitched does not match future potential. So let’s have a look at this bird and discuss.

If I’m a scout, the first thing I say to myself is, hello, what do we have here. This guy looks the part. Long and lean, high hips, long arms, great levers, large hands, fingers and feet. He looks like a walking human tendon. Watching this guy throw the side, I see the physical maturity that I anticipated when I first discovered him, but I also conclude that he must have more physical maturity in front of him. He is loose, whippy, coordinated and balanced and my god, does that fastball have life. I love fastball life. God, I do. This guy has late, late sink. There’s tail and it starts low. You can see the late life in his half-speed look. There’s also the makings of a hard slider, a split, and what I swear looks like a split-change. I ask around and come to find out that the split change Appel throws? Meet Kutzer, the guy who gave it to him. The Kutzer split change-up is putting Appel back on the map.

Sidewinders are an unappreciated bunch whose tenacity, intelligence, personality, dedication and competitiveness are often off the charts when compared to the big arms who chuck and duck. They are in vogue now because of Darren O’Day’s success, but even O’Day wasn’t drafted. This is a long line that dates back to a guy named Iron Joe, but really begins with a fella named Carl Mays and continues to this day. The other thing about the good sidewinders is this — they make something that is actually pretty complicated look incredibly easy. And in college baseball, guys who make things look easy, especially making the unorthodox look easy, are often shunned and have to sweat, bleed and fight for all they get in this game. For that, they are my kind of guys, fearless and inventive. They must be profiled right and used right. But I bet you there are some sidewinders pitching right now who could be starters like old Carl Mays was…but might be best off excelling in a bullpen role at the coming levels.

Kutzer here can be one of these guys. Ewell Blackwell returns. You’ve got Google, go look him up. I’m never wrong on my historical comps. Never. I just wish the coach at Stanford, Monty Burns, would realize what he’s got there.

Yes, I always remember old Jim Walton teaching me that, and anybody that Del Crandall trusted with his pitchers is good enough for me. So up at the University of Oregon, where many a scout has trudged to see Ryon Healy hit home runs and Jimmie Sherfy close games, is a left-handed hitting outfielder named Brett Thomas, who just might, “Up Jump the Devil.” And hey, you got nine innings to wait for Sherf, so look at the leadoff guy while you’re at it.

I look at Thomas and I see a left-handed hitter who lives 4.15-4.20 down the line, can play all three outfield positions and close the gaps in center, has enough arm to play, and is an athletic guy growing into the hitter with the strength and pop he needs to have in order to survive professionally. Thomas is the junior leadoff hitter at Oregon who has 14 doubles – one less than Healy, who the world agrees can hit the sh*t out of the ball – and he’s gotten better as his junior season has gone along. Healy’s got a ton of RBIs and Thomas has a ton of runs scored. Good aggressive base runner, can steal a base, can go first to third. That has value, but you gotta watch. If there is one hitter in that lineup who has helped make Healy better, this is the guy.

So ask me what his role is and I say major league fourth outfielder with defensive versatility, occasional pop, average to plus speed, playable arm and a hardnosed, hard-working attitude, who can be signed for cheap. I see Sam Fuld, who was a 10th rounder out of Stanford, the school that wears tight white uniforms from 1983.

But I think Thomas is a better athlete than Sam Fuld, who pretty much everyone agrees is a good left-handed hitting fourth outfielder for the Tampa Rays. Scouts didn’t love Fuld, but I guarantee you Joe Maddon does – why? – because guys like this give good major league managers OPTIONS. And scouts ALL THE TIME forget to ask themselves what a guy does that will give him value to a major league manager. You know who taught me that? People who were trained by Rogers Hornsby and George Kissell, and I promise you, no matter how modern this game gets, some things will never change. Old Raja, he never had much use for the guys upstairs who he called the “shoe clerks,” I can promise you that.

So while what a guy like Thomas does isn’t flashy, it adds up and it has potential to be very useful. And that has real value and it’s something that you have to look for. Too many times, in this game, in my opinion, we forget to profile players because we stop looking at the many and only look at the few.

So that’s Thomas. Is he a star in the making? Um, no. He’s just a ballplayer in the making, and I sure hope that still means something in this game.

This is the kind of guy, that if I’m an area guy, I fight like hell to get, because I have to gamble if I want my name on guys. Hey trust me, I know this business is all about putting your name on guys. Because the boss is going to decide on Healy and Sherfy, but Thomas is the kind of guy I can beg my boss to take and he might do me a solid. And what you need in that situation is a kid who can make you look good. That’s Thomas. Nobody will draft this guy thinking he will be a major leaguer. But they can draft him thinking this is a very good minor league player with a chance to be a very good major league role player. You don’t have to dream on what he does here that he will do well there – run, play defense, have defensive versatility, put the ball in play. But what you might get is a little bit more pop than you expected, just the same as you got from Fuld, who came from the same college conference and had seven fewer uniform options. And maybe you might get a guy who winds up a little stronger than Fuld, who wears Nike instead of Mizuno.

The real art of scouting is finding the players in the draft who are on nobody’s radar, who may be overshadowed by a better known guy on the team. But these players, if they have tools, are the kinds of guys who often become the hidden gems, the success stories in the ordinary rounds of the draft. And sometimes they are players who get slowly better when nobody is looking, but that’s exactly when you should look, and remember that judging ballplayers as future pros or potential major leaguers is not all about the same handful of guys everyone has known about forever.

Sometimes, a guy you sign as a minor league roster filler might actually come up and surprise you. That’s why you gotta watch BPs even when you’re not there for that guy and run the watch even when you’re waiting to see the guy you came for hit. It’s pretty hard to find a ballplayer on the bottom of a carton of red vines.

I can tell you a thousand baseball careers that began this way, but it takes a scout to say, let’s forget the obvious, let’s find the overlooked. Let’s project the future, let’s not be afraid to look in the crystal ball and see if present tools offer future development. And that, my friends, is how you create the great scouting stories and the ballplayers who become good ballplayers five or six years after college. Maybe Thomas is one of these guys, I’d love for him to make himself one of them. Those guys aren’t born. They are made. I’m a romantic. I like to believe there are ballplayers like this still around. I know there are still some scouts like this out there doing free agents. As the old cowboy song about the Strawberry Roan crows, “I know there’s some of them left, they haven’t all died.”

I think this is the best I have seen him. His body looks better – still strong, but in better shape, less dumpy and more durable. He’s easier, looser and smoother. He’s less max-effort. I’ve never been a tremendous fan of the way he naturally throws the ball, but he’s more efficient now than he used to be, less violent, and that should put a little bit longer of a life span on his elbow before he meets the inevitable blade. These are factors that I identify, which I sincerely doubt a club drafting him will care about. They’re not going to sign him for tomorrow, they’ll want him for right now, and he’ll learn most of what he’s going to learn against major league hitters. That can really stunt a guy and make him try to do too much. It almost always gets a guy hurt. Or it leads to a very short period of success instead of a prolonged productive career.

All they will care about are the two “S” factors: Stuff and Signability. I can’t speak for his signability, and for all I know, he’ll visit the Independent Leagues or some other league in some other place before he actually signs. I hope Appel gets it over with quickly this time. He shouldn’t be in college anyhow, he badly needs pro instruction and development, and he’s not getting any younger. It’s a bit like watching a guy with a major league arm facing a lot of high school hitters. What’s the point? There’s supposed to be a spot on the scouting card marked “competition,” and you should temper what you see from him by considering what he is facing. Most Pac-12 teams do not have a Ryon Healy or a Trent Gilbert or a Brian Ragira or a Michael Conforto in the middle of the lineup. So in my mind, for every inning a guy pitches against players that can’t hurt him, he’ll need two in pro ball against hitters who can hurt him, so he learns the difference between what he can do, what he can’t do, what he can get away with, and what he cannot. And they’re not paying for development here, they’re buying finished products. So as I have always said, he’ll never get that time he needs to catch up, because he does need to catch up. Again, these are factors that I am pretty sure a club selecting him won’t care about. And if they do, this is an ownership sign, which means this kid is going to be considered a hedge fund, not a human being.

Let’s talk about stuff. Appel is big and strong. He reminds me of Virgil Trucks, but he’s probably going to end up looking like Chad Billingsley. You cannot question his strength and his arm strength. This is where his value is. I think he’s a stronger guy than Strasburg was. Appel’s got a big arm, but he’s got a bigger ass and thighs, and this is where his power comes from, the lower half. Mechanically, he pushes a lot less than he used to, and the ball gets downhill with a lot less effort and comes out of his hand a lot nicer than it used to. The end result is a 93-97 fastball that generally pitches at 94, but the lack of consistent movement and control makes his fastball play down a notch. So he has 70/70 velocity, but I’d say 50/60 movement and 50/55 control. Those are all actually pretty good grades for a power arm. His fastball is generally straight, but he will occasionally flash sink and tail. He has some really nice moments of full extension, but not enough of them yet. He’s around the plate but don’t ask him to flash Satchel Paige or Greg Maddux plus-plus-plus control, because you won’t get it. The best part is the strength to make the velocity hold, and he can give you 94 or 95 100 pitches deep into an outing. That’s pretty valuable.

His slider stinks. It’s basically a hard slurve, a push pitch, 85-87. You look at the gun and say, “Holy Number Nine, an 85 slider!” But, alas, the gun is a crutch, and so is Appel’s slurvy breaking ball. This is not a major league weapon. This is a thumb slider thrown by a guy who is very strong. This comes back to Appel’s natural arm action. He basically is mid ¾, which is going to make it hard for him to get on top of a slider or a curveball, because he doesn’t have the time to turn his hand over. So he’s on the side of it and pushing. You can’t give him a curveball, because he’ll have the same problem. You don’t really see this as a weakness in college, but you will in the majors, because it threatens to make him a two-pitch guy. And that second pitch is…

The change-up. Where the hell did this thing come from, because it wasn’t there last year and it wasn’t there the year before? That’s a 60 change for me. People used to gush last year about how good Wacha’s change was, I think Appel’s was better. 83-85 with late, hard sink. He’s developed a nice feel for selling it out of the hand. He doesn’t fear using it as a strikeout pitch. But there’s no speed separation between that slider and this change, and that will be an issue down the line.

Warren Spahn once said a pitcher only needs two pitches: one that pitches to a pitcher’s strength and one that pitches to a hitter’s weakness. Of course, Spahn threw 84 miles per hour from the left side and was a masterful junk ball pitcher with perfect control. That ain’t Appel. But it raises the question. How many two-pitch starters do you know in the major leagues, because I don’t know any. So he’s either a closer or a starter who needs to develop a better third pitch. How you gonna do that with this arm slot? He needs to find a slider that works more with his arm action than against it. It’s there somewhere, but it ain’t gonna be found on the Farm. Which takes me to this…

The pitch calling in Stanford has really stunted him. Nobody wants to see a 6-foot-5 horse pitching backwards. It creates a lot of bad impressions, namely that somebody doesn’t trust his fastball. Which is lame. Dance with the lady who brought you to the dance, and if she trips and falls, or somebody doubles off it, so be it. But I get disheartened when I see this guy nibble in big spots rather than just say, “Here, hit this.” Because now, as a scout, I can’t predict how this guy will respond in major spots in the major leagues, because he’s had his hand held through college. And that is a great detriment to this young man, just as much as essentially repeating the level. I want him to be Virgil Trucks because he should be Virgil Trucks, but he’s not going to be Virgil Trucks if he doesn’t develop a more intrinsic and more intellectually developed approach to attacking hitters. He’s been in college for four years and he still hasn’t learned this and he’s still not on his own? OK, let me put this in simpler terms: It’s like signing a 21-year old high school pitcher. He’s going to be rushed, used incorrectly, and he’s going to have a hard time learning fast against older, faster, stronger and wiser hitters. I really, really, really want to be right about my Virgil Trucks comp, because I’m never wrong on my historical comps, right Ewell Blackwell?

The best thing he might have going for him is also the worst thing he might have going for him – blissful ignorance. And in that case, you say, if the guy just follows instructions, then here’s the check, give him to us, and we’ll see if we can pro him up. We’ll pay the price to see if we can pro him up and give him a third pitch. You work for a club, you take that chance, and you see what you get.

But until Appel slows this down and takes in some more complete information, in my opinion, he’s just going to be rushed on the assembly belt and he won’t be as good as he can be, through no fault of his own. Readers here know how that always breaks my heart.

I know enough about the game and about scouting in general to know some people won’t like this guy’s delivery points and others won’t care how he does what he does. It all depends how finicky you want to be. On a good day he’s going to flash a plus fastball from time to time but mostly pitch with a nice 50 fastball and move it around. The change-up is going to be the make-it-or-break-it pitch for him and it flashes sweeping sink and tail, across the body. Just an average curveball which in college more or less serves as a change-up.

I know enough about the industry to know that a lot of people will think there’s still some projection here, but since I saw him so young, I’d say he’s more or less the same guy. So for me, what you see is what you get. If he’s a 50 fastball and a 55 change on a good day, well, then, that’s a good pick, as long as that’s who he is when he gets to the big leagues. Good luck Windle, may you one day face Rosin.

I didn’t see this guy on what I would consider a good day, even though I had never seen him before. What I had in that look was a guy who couldn’t establish the fastball enough to bring his change into the game, which meant he couldn’t pitch off the fastball and it made both pitches play down. So that’s what you get on a bad day, and on a bad day in the big leagues with this set of variables, you’re nursing a beer at your locker by the third inning.

You could see him good and arrive at the exact opposite conclusion — he’s got an average fastball with average to plus control, mostly straight and a little sink. The change is the difference and he doesn’t really have a breaking ball I trust, and if he does, it’ll be a slider, but he’s going to lack the arm speed for a hard slider, which means it’s going to be a little slurvy until he figures out how to define it better so it doesn’t look like it’s the same speed as the change.

Overall, I get why you’d take him, but I see a guy with a limited ceiling for this kind of pitcher. I saw Noah Lowry back in college and in high school, for that matter, back in the day, and Noah had a better straight change and a better arm than this guy has. So take your pick, see what you get, but if he can’t pitch off that fastball, it’s awfully hard to get by pitching backwards against real hitters. Yeah I know, I’m a real bummer. So are professional hitters.

Yeah, I’ve seen that delivery before and I know it’s points: rock back, break the hands at the waist, backload, come over the top, big full circle, pull down, throw everything hard. It does produce power, but power doesn’t play as well in the big leagues unless you have movement, control and life on multiple pitches. So the power might get this guy drafted good and it will. Fastball in my look, 91-94, he pitches at 91, so we’re talking average to slightly above average right-handed fastball. I felt movement was average and I felt control was average. A lot of college pitchers who throw hard don’t really understand that they don’t throw hard enough to blow down big league hitters with just the fastball. In this guy’s case — and I don’t know him from my garbage man — he likes to change the eye-level of the fastball, and I can respect that, but good luck getting straight 93 or 94 past established major league hitters more than once through a lineup.

So what else is there. My cards say he’s got a curve, a slider and a change. This guy is practically dating his slider, but he should go out with his change-up a little more often in my opinion. Why? Because he doesn’t change speeds otherwise. The curve can be 80-83 and it was inconsistent. The slider is 76-77 and flashes bite but also has inconsistency. You can pretty much blow away college boys and Triple-A lifers with this assortment, but the big leagues is a different animal.

He’s got a good arm and a strong arm, but it’s not enough. He needs more consistency and to change speeds better. He needs to understand that he’s really not a power pitcher even though he throws hard. This guy should be a middle of the rotation starter on a good team. That’s what he is. Scouts are free to rip off my summary, I don’t mind.