Written by: Justin Lada
LHP Logan T. Allen, Cleveland Indians
Observed: 6/3/21
A bunch of draft reporters joked during the 2020 draft that Cleveland would wind up drafting Florida International University’s LHP Logan T. Allen, not solely because he fit their recent profile, but because they already had a left-handed starter named Logan Allen they acquired in a trade from San Diego in 2019.
This Logan Allen was a starter and first basemen/DH at Florida International University but has ditched the bat to pitch full time and Cleveland gave him the appropriate assignment in High-A Lake County to start his pro career.
Cleveland hasn’t done much to Allen’s delivery because they have’t needed to. It’s still a step and turn to start his delivery from the third base-to the middle side of the rubber. The delivery is clean and simple with a back turn to the hitters and his hands meet his plant leg in a coil as he gathers. The back turn and coil gives his delivery the look that he’s going to come at the hitter throwing across his body, but Allen does a good job with his torso and upper body to tilt without compromising balance and help get his arm slot up to the high 3/4 mark smoothly. Outside of occasionally losing his release point, his motions are athletic, clean and repeatable. The only notable thing about his delivery is that he can show the hitter the ball behind his back hip as he drops his arm before his arm swing. He gets through it quickly and gets the plant foot down well and maintains a quick tempo on the mound. His delivery is short and compact as much as his time is from when he gets the ball back and gets back into being set to throw again.
Allen so far has stayed with his true three-pitch mix that he had in college. There was some video surfacing around the internet last year that showed him throwing a bigger, almost 12-6 breaking ball, but in pro ball so far he’s stuck with the fastball, slider and changeup. He’s been a fastball / change-up arm first nearly since high school and said he didn’t add the slider until late in his high school career. All three offerings work well off of each other and in the looks I’ve seen of Allen, it depends on the matchup which non-fastball he relies on more. The change-up has been his best pitch throughout his amateur career and still looks good in pro ball, but he’s shown more comfort with his slider at times and it has been effective when he chooses to use it more than his change-up.
Working through the sixth inning in his starts, Allen has maintained a solid baseline for his fastball velocity. There’s no additional jump in velocity in the first inning and nary a dropoff as he gets to the fifth and sixth innings. He firmly sits 91-93 with the fastball. He hasn’t topped 94 yet but will consistently get to 94 more than a few times throughout his starts. There is some natural cut to Allen’s fastball out of his left hand, but it doesn’t have a ton of noticeable movement. His delivery and command likely help the pitch be as competitive as it is in and out of the zone. Allen likes to bust hitters up and in on their hands with his heater. He forced more than a few batters to attempt to check their swings only to go through or he pushes the fastball up on their hands so much that they end up fouling the ball off on their check swing. It’s an easy way for Allen to steal strikes and set up the rest of his arsenal and he has the command of that pitch more often than not to do so. He isn’t afraid to work his fastball up in the zone despite average to fringe-average velocity and he also likes to work backwards, often throwing backdoor or fastball’s up in the zone on two strike counts. He had multiple hitters chase and miss the fastball up in the zone on two strike counts because of the sequencing and his ability to show the hitter he throws it for strikes all over the zone. Allen’s fastball can get him in trouble a few ways. With lower velocity, it can be less effective when he gets behind in the count. When he leaves it up and out where the hitter can extend their arms, it can also be driven. Against Dayton on June 3, Francisco Urbaez got a 2-0 fastball up and middle-away and drove it over the right field fence for a line drive home run. Command and sequencing are what allows Allen’s fastball to be competitive.
While Allen’s change-up has been considered his best secondary offering, the starts I’ve watched featured a lot of slider usage from him. It appears as if Allen may manipulate the shape of his slider, or perhaps the shape is inconsistent. I’ve seen the slider with late horizontal bite that looks cutter-ish but has some vertical depth to it. Other times his slider has a longer break and will dive more vertically. It has looked like a 2-9 shaped and other times, 2-7 and even 1-7 at times. He’s unafraid to to start hitters off with a slider and will backdoor it to right handers and throw it away from lefties. He does a good job of burying it down in the zone and more often than not, the slider is a chase pitch for him. In multiple starts, I’ve seen him rely on it more than his vaunted changeup and get right handed hitters to chase it down by their feet. The slider velocity band for Allen has ranged from 78-83 and he was effective starting it out as a strike and getting hitters to chase below the zone. He tunneled it well with his fastball and the sequencing of going upstairs with his fastball and then burying the slider below the strike zone. A few times, he did leave a slider up in the zone, allowing right handed hitters to turn on it with hard contact. Leaving the slider up and mainly relying on it as a chase pitch are the few concerns. He did get a few called strikes with it but seeing if more advanced hitters lay off of the pitch when it looks like it will start as a strike will be a good test of its effectiveness.
Despite only having a three pitch mix, there is something slightly confusing about Allen’s arsenal. His slider and change-up sometimes have the same velocity band. His cambio can sit between 78-83 as well and his change-up shape can make it hard to pick up if you’re not watching closely for it. Allen throws a circle change but he splits it coming out of his hand, so you won’t seen it with as much armside run as you would a normal change-up, but more of a split type change-up. Like his slider, Allen’s change-up often starts as a strike and drops below the zone. I haven’t had many opportunities to see him drop it for a strike and he’s been good about varying his sequencing to hitters between when and how often they see the slider, and when he breaks out the change-up against them.
Allen did exactly what you expect him to do on the mound. As an arm without plus raw stuff and big velocity, his command, sequencing and tempo were all on point. Of his 86 pitches, he threw 60 for strikes (69%) and got 12 swinging strikes and 14 called. He had just one three ball count all night, his one walk, and six two-ball counts. He showed the drawbacks of his fastball and lack of big raw stuff when he fell behind hitters Urbaez, however it wasn’t something he did frequently. His walk and the homer Urbaez hit were the only times he fell behind 2-0 to any hitters. He threw first pitch strikes to 13 of the 22 batters he faced (59%). More advanced hitters may not chase the slider as much as hitters are at High-A. It wouldn’t surprise me if Allen has gone to the slider more than I expected given what we know about his changeup for developmental purposes and the real next step for him is seeing how more advanced hitters react to his slider and how much he can force them to chase it, even when they are behind in the count. Shane Bieber, another master of command profile Cleveland successfully developed, has seen hitters in 2021 not chase his breaking stuff as often. That took hitters some time to do after he blew them all away in the shortened 2020 season, but Allen doesn’t have an arsenal as deep as Bieber’s, and better hitters might lay off Allen’s slider. While he doesn’t look like he dominates or blows hitters away when you watch him, the results suggest Allen is ready for a harder test at the next level.
LHP Ethan Elliot, San Diego Padres
Observed: 5/11/21
A Division-II lefty, Ethan Elliottt has faced Lake County three times so far in 2021 and has stymied them each time out. His second outing against them alone earned him High-A Central Pitcher of the Week honors (6 IP, 13K).
Elliott first faced Lake County this season on May 11 and took the loss despite turning in a good day’s work.
A tall and lanky lefty, Elliott stands over the middle of the rubber with a wide base. He turns his back and gathers with a very high leg kick. He’s only listed at 6’3 but looks like a lot of arms and legs on the mound. He sweeps his front foot around in his delivery and throws cross body with a low 3/4 arm slot. His arm swing is a little long and uses a lot of his lanky legs and arms in the delivery.
Elliott sticks with a simple arsenal, a fastball, slider and change-up. Against Lake County, he saw four left handed hitters, three switch hitters and two pure right handed hitters. He used an array of fastballs and sliders to neutralize most of them the first time seeing them.
He was aggressive, throwing first pitch strikes to 13 of the 17 hitters he faced, most of them fastballs that sat between 87-89. I never got him hitting 90 once in this outing, but some of the swings from hitters on his fastball suggested that it played faster than what it was reading on my gun. He held this velocity into the fifth inning and spotted it well, especially on the outside corner to right handed and left handed hitters equally. With his crossbody delivery and low arm angle, he had no problem working inside and outside to hitters. He got behind one of the Captains left handed hitters, Joe Naranjo, and missed high with an 88 mph fastball and paid for it with a solo homer, the only run he allowed all night. Like I mentioned above with Allen, with his fastball velocity, getting behind hitters and into fastball counts is what will expose that lack of velocity, even though Elliott’s has some deception to it.
Elliott’s slider was his primary offering to most of Lake County’s left-handed hitters and it worked well on them. He showed the ability to throw it down and in, and low and away as well. It’s a slower off-speed offering, sitting 73-75 and has a bit of a big, slow break late. It’s not a power slider but it does get hitters to chase, at least at this level. He threw it for strikes about as often as he did throwing it to get hitters to chase it.
The best offering Elliott had, though I didn’t see it as much as the fastball or slider, was his change-up. I suspect at these levels, when organization’s know pitchers already have an above-average to plus pitch, that they don’t throw it as often as they might normally, so they have to work on developing and refining their other pitches. The few change-ups I had a chance to see, it was straight drop change-up that didn’t feature any armside movement. In fact, it had some cut to it when it dropped, if anything. It dove under hitters bats when he threw it for a chase and miss pitch. The change-up runs 80-82 for him, so it doesn’t have a ton of separation from his fastball, and it doesn’t dive away from right handed hitters like a traditional change-up, but there’s enough vertical drop to it to miss bats and be deceptive. It seemed like he had arm speed to sell it, as I didn’t notice any difference between when he threw his fastball and his change-up.
Overall, it was an outing that showcased Elliott’s abilities as currently built. He’s had a lot of dominant starts against Lake County this year, and really has yet to turn in a less than quality outing, but between live looks and video, I haven’t seen his fastball climb north of 90. The extension he gets on his delivery with long limbs, command and maybe spin give it the look of a more competitive pitch than the radar gun might suggest. He is able to get swings and misses on the pitch and he has the slider and change-up to keep hitters off of it. Like Allen, sequencing was a big factor for Elliott and getting ahead with good command. Added velocity, even consistently into 90-92 range would make a big difference for Elliott, and it might even help his slider. He clearly fits a pattern of what the Padres have liked in arms recently. He’s tall, lanky, has good command and is deceptive. He shares those traits, but maybe not the stuff with starters they’ve drafted like MacKenzie Gore, Adrian Morejon, Nick Margevicius, and Joey Cantillo, who is also in Cleveland now. Lake County has one of the youngest hitting teams in the league, however, they don’t strike out a lot, so Elliott’s ability to compete for strikes with his fastball is very intriguing, though how it plays against older and more advanced competition will tell a lot more about some of its traits.