Baseball Beginnings

By John Klima
April 2, 2009

The video shown here was shot earlier this week. Skaggs pitched with his fastball at 87-90 in this start. He threw a few pretty good two-plane, 12/6, start-at-your-eyes, finish-at-your-knees curveballs (pick your favorite terminology, in sandlot speak, ‘breaking ball’ works just fine for me) at 66-68 mph. If you were watching closely from atop a wooden shed (and I was), you would have caught a few of those in his bullpen. You’ll be able to see it in the video.

The thing that scouts dig about Skaggs is that he’s got a blur for arm action and his body looks like it has more growing in it, which could project to more power. He’s got some polish that will need to be added in the minor leagues, but as an amateur, he does a pretty decent job of line action to the plate and keeping all the parts of his delivery working together.  Skaggs wasn’t thrilled with this outing and, truthfully, it probably wasn’t his best work. But as I’ll often say on this site, you shouldn’t bury a high school kid because he had an off day. That’s a good way to make a mistake.  

You’ve got to look at the sheer raw physicality the kid gives you. If you went solely by the radar gun and didn’t get the 91 or 92 you wanted, then you might have been turned off. But if you went by the arm action and the arm speed and the ability to consistently stay down in the strike zone, then you’d have to come back for Skaggs again. Now that I’m off my wooden shed (i.e. soap box), here’s the show, neighborhood scouting at its best, complete with a chain-link fence, smog and moving cars.

Read Tyler Skaggs Q&A
Read Tyler Skaggs Scouting report
Catching up with Tyler Skaggs
Tyler Skaggs Drafted by the Los Angeles Angels

Categories: '09 Videos
Tags: Tyler Skaggs