Drew Hutchinson

FB doesn’t really have a whole lot of life and its 88-92. Meh. He’s a good prospect, but he’s more of a good pitchability guy with a 3 pitch mix of ok stuff and average-ish velo. I do think a good portion of his success is coming from his slightly funky mechanics. He steps almost toward 3B, not towards home. So he stays closed late and throws across his body some. Despite the so-so velo, the ball sneaks up on people because you can’t pick it up until late. He kinds of cuts off his delivery a little though – because of where he plants – and that hurts his command. Though on the upside, he still manages to keep everything down – guys with these kind of mechanics often end up leaving the ball up. Hutchison did lapse into that occasionally, but overall still showed good control of his FB and kept it down in the zone even if he wasn’t spotting it where he wanted/to both sides. To be fair, I had heard his FB command was supposed to be better but he was not really showing me that at all this game outside of a couple stretches. I hope to get another look at him in the spring or at NH next season, but all I can go on is what I saw.

Overall, I just have serious reservations about ranking a guy with this kind of velo and stuff in my top 100. He’s a good pitching prospect who has been getting very good results, but he’s also got an adult body and I’m not sure there’s any projection left here. He can definitely refine his pitches more and he will need to in order to continue having success in the high minors. I mean… he probably will end up sneaking into the back end of my top 100, but this is the kind of guy that I’m not sure whether I’ll want to take him or some high ceiling live arm until I actually do the list.

I’ll link here (or a fanshot) when I write the article (and I’ll show animated gifs of his pitches slowed down), but I’m doing Brad Peacock and Mason Williams pieces first, so it will be a couple weeks. I also may do Travis D’Arnaud first, actually. He looked fantastic. Moved like a cat behind the plate and good swing. I had D’Arnaud 34th on my midseason list and that feels far too low now. He’s more of a top 20/25 talent, IMO. Got some great footage of him working on his receiving with Sal Fasano (who is NH’s manager) before the game. Can’t wait to get to that video. In fact, I liked his receiving, moving and blocking so well that if you asked me what minor league catcher I would most like to throw to (if I were a pitcher) I’d probably answer d’Arnaud. With the caveat I haven’t seen Austin Hedges, though the film I’ve seen is super impressive.