Kevin Hart

[Post Count Padder]

Do 11 solid innings in the majors make this guy a prospect? I'm not seeing much in his minor league numbers that suggest he's much more than average-above average, but he's getting talked about by some people like he's a top prospect. Does his potential say otherwise?

[UK1679666180]

He's not a top prospect nor is he or likely will be an above avg. player, but he's a late bloomer by learning a plus pitch (cutter) last year and it allowed him to take that next step.

He has what it takes to stick in the majors, I think he's better off in the pen, but we'll see who goes into Mesa competing for the 5th spot.

[RammyFanny]

Regardless, getting back Hart for Boom Boom Bynum makes the Trachsel trade a little easier to swallow.

[craig]

Do 11 solid innings in the majors make this guy a prospect? I'm not seeing much in his minor league numbers that suggest he's much more than average-above average, but he's getting talked about by some people like he's a top prospect. Does his potential say otherwise?

 

I think it's been somewhat fashionable to minimize hart as a prospect, to exclude him from top-10, to bash LouHendry for including him as a candidate for rotation or for the staff, and to view as simplistic people who think he might be a good prospect, since a smart analyst is too smart to get deceived by an 11-inning sample. I'm not suggesting this is your mindset at all, PriorPower; if it was you wouldn't have asked if his potential says otherwise. I'm guessing yours is a sincere question of whether there is more than meets the eye with him and his career numbers.

 

So I'm going to try to give some reasons why I think yes, it's not simplistic to view Hart as a meaningful prospect, and perhaps a legit rotation candidate for 2008. Ping has already touched on this, but I'm going to expand a bit. Again, I want to emphasize that he's not a "great" prospect or a Cy Young possibility or a sure thing or a certain-to-be-better-than-marquis guy. But I think he's a real prospect, with a reasonable chance of emerging as a solid useful big-league pitcher, even if not a front-of-rotation likely or a likely closer. So, here's my best case for him.

 

1. There *were* signs in his minor-league number that suggest he's got some promise. It wasn't just the 11 innings with the Cubs that were good. His previous 3 months at AA/AAA were also very good. I can't get the last-10-game split, but my recall is that his last 10 games at AA were really impressive and sub-3 ERA. If you took his numbers from mid-May on, you'd get a much more impressive stats line than using the full-season numbers. (His 3.99 on the season doesn't look that great. But he was really bad in April.) So there is a "something happened" sample much larger than 11 innings.

 

2. Background: In junior college. In his one year at Maryland he was an ACC all-star .... as a 1B. In Junior college, he was the 2003 Rawlings NJCAA Big Stick Award Winner. He also pitched along the way, but relative to his competition it appears he was more memorable as a bat than as a pitcher. I'm theorizing that perhaps he was a good enough hitter that his commitment to pitching wasn't 100%? And thus that he isn't quite as advanced in his development as a pitcher as you'd expect for his age, and might have more untapped potential than you'd expect?

 

3. Scouting the fastball: his fastball looked like it had major-league velocity, and major-league movement. That wasn't an 11-inning fluke, it was real. It's not like his fastball is overpowering. But his velocity is definitely not a liability. Not like he's an 86-mph guy who finessed his way. His arm looked fine.

 

4. Walk control: He's never walked much more than 3 guys per 9, and he was quite a bit better than that during his last 3 months at AA. So he's not a walkaholic wildman, we're not talking about veal or pre-05 Rich Hill. A good arm and can throw strikes, why wouldn't he be a prospect?

 

5. Scouting the breaking ball: He doesn't have a very good curve or slider. When the curve was his breaking pitch, and it wasn't very good, the combo of a bad curve and a good-but-not-extraordinary fastball combined to give ho-hum results. (Maryland 2004, Baltimore pros 2005-06, this April. But as ping noted, the Cubs got him going with a cutter. Hart and the Cub coaches have agreed that his "something happened" breakthrough in AA coincided with figuring out the cutter and that becoming a really useful pitch for him. Several things all coincided with the discovery of the effective cutter: ERA down, hits down, HR's down, K's up, GB/FB up. The cutter worked for him in AA and it worked for him in majors in September. By the eye test, it looked very good. Note: That doesn't mean it will look as good, or be consistent, in the future. Perhaps after a winter off, he won't be able to find the release point and his cutter will be inconsistent and not nearly as effective. Maybe if he's in the league the scouts will case him, hitters will just sit on fastball/cutter, and he won't be able to sustain. Maybe if he's pitching rotation instead of short relief, his fastball will be 88 instead of 92, and less effective. But at present I think there are valid reasons to think that he did improve once he learned the cutter; that he learned and used the cutter over an extended period of time, so it may be sustainable; and that with the cutter and fastball combination that he's got two usable big-league pitches that he can throw at the strike zone and get hitters to swing at.

 

There is a famous Rickey quote how some pitchers are like a rose. It's all green, then 3 days later it's in blossom. When the time comes something that had shown nothing rather abruptly becomes something to see. Perhaps that's hyperbole and mockable scout talk. But I think there's at least a chance that Hart really has learned the cutter, and that the numbers on Hart-before-cutter have little predictive value for Hart-with-cutter.

[UK1679666180]

1. There *were* signs in his minor-league number that suggest he's got some promise. It wasn't just the 11 innings with the Cubs that were good. His previous 3 months at AA/AAA were also very good. I can't get the last-10-game split, but my recall is that his last 10 games at AA were really impressive and sub-3 ERA. If you took his numbers from mid-May on, you'd get a much more impressive stats line than using the full-season numbers. (His 3.99 on the season doesn't look that great. But he was really bad in April.) So there is a "something happened" sample much larger than 11 innings.

 

 

Craig, you'd be correct...

 

His last 10 starts in AA:

 

Which consisted of the dates (5/24-7/5) as well as one start on August 30th.

 

He was

 

6-1

2.70 ERA

60IP

53H

13BB

56K

 

His previous 42IP

2-4

6.43 ERA

42IP

47H

14BB

36K

[BigbadB]

His cutter (and I did see all 11 innings that Hart pitched in MLB) is at the very least good enough to make him a very serviceable major league reliever.

 

Whether his other pitches are good enough to entertain the thought of being a good starter is still very much up in the air. He relied almost completely on the deception of his cutter in those 11 innings. Once the scouting report is out on him, he's going to need more than an excellent cutter for extended innings.

 

That's my view.