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People seem to be cooling a little bit on Giolito, but it kind of seems to me the natural dampening of enthusiasm that occurs when a guy who appeared to be superhuman in the minors actually experiences some struggles. The specific issue seems to be fastball command, so it's not like there's been any reconsideration of his actual talent - just the likelihood of reaching the status of big, fat, firebreathing ace. There are only a handful of guys in MLB who are that, and a larger (but still correspondingly small) group in the minors who are projected to get there. Sox gave up a real one with Sale and got a maybe-one with Giolito. He may or may not get there, but even guys with his chance are exceedingly rare.
And they hedged their bets with Lopez and Dunning. BPro had a free article on the deal:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=30804
Giolito had a rough 2016. There’s really no way to sugarcoat that. His velocity was down for most of the season, eventually confirmed by PITCHf/x data in the majors. He got called up and was absolutely throttled. He couldn’t spot his secondary pitches well. Media reports, including Keith Law at ESPN, suggested that coaches in the Nationals' farm system were altering his mechanics for the worse, and he didn’t always look the part of a top pitching prospect. Although it was a close call, we dropped him behind Victor Robles in our recent Nationals top-10 list, and Jeffrey Paternostro wrote an essay wondering whether he's really a reliever. Whispers circulated about the Nationals themselves souring on Giolito.
Yet at the core, the profile remains the same, and it’s a heck of a profile. He’s down a tick or two in velocity, but it’s still low-to-mid-90s with incredible downward plane. The curve still flashes double-plus, sometimes even better. There’s an average changeup in there when he uses it enough. Wavering command is a pretty big issue right now, but he’s a talented 22-year-old with fewer than 200 innings above A-ball, and a lot of guys at that age and experience have command woes only to figure it out later. I wrote Giolito up a few weeks ago as an OFP 70, still a potential top-of-the-rotation starter, with a likely role of 60 as a mid-rotation arm or high-end closer. That’s a heck of a prospect, still one of the best in the game. The stock is down, sure, but consider the heights from whence it came.
Prospect development doesn’t happen in a vacuum, either. If we accept the premise that some of Giolito’s struggles were due to coaching and organizational factors, he just hit the change-of-scenery lottery. Don Cooper is probably the best pitching coach in baseball for maximizing mechanically-challenged young starters while keeping them in the rotation. That’s not an out-and-out guarantee of success—Cooper couldn’t get much out of Jeff Samardzija, for one, and Carson Fulmer still looks headed to the pen—but Giolito’s suddenly in an organization really well-positioned to mold him into the ace he always could be. It should surprise no one if Cooper rights this ship and has Giolito throwing pills and ripping off 80-grade curves in an American League ballpark near you pretty soon. —Jarrett Seidler
An undersized righty who signed for a paltry $17,000 bonus as an amateur in 2012, Lopez burst onto the prospect scene two years later after gaining strength and physical maturity. His fastball began flirting with triple digits between stops in Auburn and Hagerstown. He has some of the better raw stuff of any starting pitching prospect in the minors, though it isn’t hard to envision him dominating hitters in later innings with his power arsenal. He pitched exclusively as a starter before being shuffled up and down between Washington and the upper-rungs of their system, though his big-league appearances late in 2016 were out of the bullpen. If he can continue developing the consistency of his pitchability and strike-throwing, the ceiling is that of a mid-rotation power starter. That said, his short stature, effort, and high-velocity mix of stuff will bring about rumblings of a full-time conversion to the ‘pen if Lopez falters as a starter down the line.
Lopez’s game is all about overwhelming hitters with big stuff, though it isn’t without effort to his delivery’s finish. His arm speed is about as good as it gets, but there's recoil and noise through his high three-quarters slot. This caused his control and command to waver earlier in his career--and even in the early goings of last season--though he progressively stayed around the zone more as 2016 wore on. Lopez holds a late-bursting fastball sitting at 94-96 (scraping 97-98 at best) late into starts, and can reach back for even more velo on his bests bolts when he pitches out of the ‘pen. His power curveball is in the 80-84 range, showing hard vertical bite. He'll lose control of the curve, specifically, when he pulls off his release point, though a large part of his reduced walk totals stem from an increased ability to land his secondary pitches for strikes. Lopez's third pitch is a split-like change in the upper 80s, showing the power arm-side action of an above-average pitch when he sells the pitch well off his fastball. Lopez will need a third pitch less if he’s working as a full-time reliever in years to come, but all three of his pitches show the raw ingredients to miss bats. —Adam McInturff
The Nationals had two first-round picks last year for the first time since selecting Anthony Rendon and Alex Meyer in 2011, and used the second on Dunning. Florida’s rotation was so stacked last spring between A.J. Puk, Logan Shore, and 2017 top prospect Alex Faedo that Dunning didn’t make many starts for the Gators as a junior. He showed that his turbo sinker and hard curveball can play as dominant pitches in short stints, though evaluators long saw him as capable of transitioning back to pitching every fifth day as a pro. Dunning breezed through eight starts between the GCL and Penn League in his pro debut, walking just five percent of hitters while holding opponents to a .208 average, his heavy fastball generating tons of ground-ball outs.
A wiry 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds with trim features and a tapered lower-half, Dunning’s sinker and curveball both are above-average to plus pitches at their best. His hard, arm side-boring fastball sits 90-94 as a starter, and reached as high as 96-97 working from the ‘pen. His curveball shows shows the makings of a swing-and-miss pitch, working 78-82 with flashes of late, crisp downward action. Working as a starter this summer, he relied more on a changeup; while I’ve seen it play more like his third pitch in looks at Dunning, he’ll flash darting, bottoming action away from opposite-handed hitters. With size on his frame and fairly clean extension out front, Dunning can fill up the zone when his timing is right, and has a best-case ceiling of a reliable back-end sinkerballer with a full three-pitch mix. If his arsenal lacks the depth to turn big-league lineups over, Dunning could move very quickly in a two-pitch relief role. After contributing to a talented Gators team for three years, Dunning is a polished pitching prospect who could debut as early as 2018 if all goes right. —Adam McInturff
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"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"
--Walleye's Dad
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