Los Angeles Dodgers RHP Brusdar Graterol has received a lot of notice lately. Did the Red Sox miss out by passing on him?
The first version of the Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers trade sent strong-armed righty Brusdar Graterol from the Minnesota Twins to the Boston Red Sox via Los Angeles. The Red Sox reported concerns with Graterol and backed out of the deal, but in the end, the Dodgers were able to acquire Graterol along with outfielder Luke Raley and a competitive balance draft pick for starter Kenta Maeda, catching prospect Jair Camargo, and cash. Did the Red Sox miss out or are the Dodgers getting damaged goods? Let’s take a look.
Background
Brusdar Javier Graterol was originally signed by the Minnesota Twins from Venezuela in August 2014, days after he turned 16, for a $150,000 bonus. The Twins sent Graterol to the Dominican Summer League in 2015, and he was dominant, making four appearances, tossing 11 innings, with a 2.45 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, a 2 BB%, and a 36 K%.
The Twins and Graterol were both very excited for what was to come in 2016, but as he worked out the next spring, he felt a pop, and the diagnosis was Tommy John surgery. Graterol missed all of the 2016 season and he did not make his first appearance in 2017 until June 26. Even then, his work in just a handful of appearances with the Gulf Coast League and another handful with the Twins’ Appalachian League advanced rookie club.was incredibly impressive, as he tossed 40 innings with a 2.70 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, an 8 BB%, and a 29 K%.
Graterol’s huge velocity and potent secondaries would make any team want to push his time table, but the Twins were patient with Graterol after his surgery, allowing him to build up his arm in 2018 as he split time between the Twins’ two full-season A-ball clubs. He tossed just over 100 innings, 102 to be exact. In those innings, he posted a 2.74 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, 7 BB%, and a 26 K%. His big year allowed him to pop up on top prospect lists, ranking as the #74 prospect for Prospects Live in the 2019 preseason top 100 prospect list. He ranked as high as #33 in national top 100 lists.
The 2019 season started with Graterol hoping to work to 125-130 innings, and he started the year pitching well in the Double-A Pensacola rotation. However, Graterol faced a shoulder injury and missed over two months. Once he returned, the Twins chose to maximize use of his big arm for their playoff push and used him exclusively as a reliever. In all, Graterol made 18 minor league appearances, 11 of them starts, tossing 61 innings with a 1.92 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 10 BB% and 26 K%.
The Twins recalled him in September, and in 10 relief appearances, he hurled 9 2/3 innings. In that time, he posted a 4.66 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, 5 BB%, and 25 K%. He was ranked as high as #32 nationally but fell to #93 on the Prospects Live 2020 preseason top 100 list.
Note: this report is done through extensive video research. Nine 2019 games were viewed for this report - four before Graterol’s injury in 2019, five after the injury; six with Double-A Pensacola, one with Triple-A Rochester, and two with the major league club, the Twins.
Build/Delivery
Graterol is listed at 6’1” and 265 pounds, and while he’s all of that, he has gotten a bit of a rough reputation as being out of shape, while most of his build is in thick thighs and backside. He does have a paunch, but he’s plenty athletic off the mound, and he’s not struggling to move within his delivery due to an abundance of size or anything like that. Some reporting on his size could give the impression that he’s quite out of shape, which is far from the truth.
Brusdar’s delivery is really a story of two parts of the season in 2019. Before the shoulder injury that kept him out from May 19 to July 29, Graterol had a much different look than after he returned. In part, one thing to consider is that Graterol did not make another true start again after he returned from the shoulder injury, while he made nine starts before the injury, so there is adequate film on both to review.
Pre-injury, Graterol would stand to the first base side of the rubber, then take a step back parallel with the rubber. He would tuck his upper body toward his midsection as he brought his knee toward his chest. From the balance point, Graterol explodes toward the plate, digging into his hefty legs and snapping his torso through as his lead leg would hit the dirt, pointed directly to his catcher.
Graterol pre-injury was down into his legs in his delivery as he released the ball, using his leg strength to generate consistent power behind the pitch beyond just the velocity. His arm slot was consistent across his offerings at a true 3/4 angle from the pre-injury delivery.
The change in Graterol’s delivery post-injury in 2019 was notable. He stood taller throughout the delivery, usually working purely from the stretch, though he would sometimes work with one foot standing open toward first base and come to his balance point from that position. He did not bend at the midsection, though, staying tall in his upper body. Not getting his upper body low in his delivery led to Graterol not getting down into his legs much at all.
Graterol snapped through his midsection in a similar way as his landing foot comes down, but his arm slot is significantly different. As part of standing tall, Graterol would throw from a more high 3/4 arm angle. His true slot would vary, however, as he threw the two-seam from a nearly over-top slot, the four-seam from a high 3/4 arm angle, and the slider from just a tick below the high 3/4 slot. While the movement of the pitches allowed him to succeed in the big leagues, with a tell that strong, he will struggle, even in a relief role, without work back to his early-season delivery.
Pitches
Fastball (FV 80) - Yes, I went there. Sure, Graterol is not the only guy on the planet who can hit 100 mph and do so consistently. He’s not even the only one who can do so as a starting pitcher. However, just because there’s more than one in the entire game does not take away from his fastball being everything that an 80-grade fastball should be in velocity and impressive late movement.
He really has that late movement whether he’s using his pre-injury or post-injury delivery from 2019. He does get more of a hard sinking armside action on the two-seam fastball from the higher arm slot, but he loses some ability to locate in the upper part of the zone with the pitch. The two-seam is Graterol’s preferred fastball, and he does throw harder with his two-seam than his four-seam fastball. From the 3/4 arm slot, he gets the rare effect in the upper part of the zone with the two-seamer that sees the pitch sink just as it gets to the batter, meaning hitters actually swing over his pitch at their shoulders, a rare thing indeed.
The four-seam fastball would likely be more of a 70 than a pure 80 simply because the location is good, but the movement is not as strong. Graterol does heavily prefer the two-seam, though, using the four-seam only about once every 10 pitches.
Slider (FV 70) - As you can see in the first tweet of the article, this is the real deal. Graterol’s slider runs 88-92 mph in velocity. The ball travels toward the plate on a fastball trajectory before jotting hard and sharp gloveside, with a shade of sink as well. Once again, there is a difference between his actions pre-injury and post-injury.
Pre-injury, Brusdar was slotting at a pure 3/4 arm angle, and his slider tunneled well with his fastball, breaking laterally just at the same moment his two-seam fastball would break down and armside, leading to the pitch drawing a very high rate of swing and miss. After his return, he worked from a slightly higher arm angle on the slider, and the pitch did break similarly late, but his fastballs were from a different release point, so batters seemed to track his slider well enough to put good wood on it, resulting in a .391 average and a .489 slugging in his MLB time on the pitch.
He also struggled to locate the pitch well, often seeing the pitch finish on the lower inside quadrant of the plate due to his struggle to get his release point right. I also noted a lot more sliders hung in the majors than I’d seen either pre- or post-injury in the minor leagues, and that could be due to nerves causing him to overthrow the pitch, so I’ll hold off on putting a ton of weight on that result, other than to note that it was present.
Curve (FV 55) - A pitch that Graterol did not throw once in the majors and rarely threw at all once he returned, Graterol from his 3/4 arm slot used a curve in the low-80s that Graterol would vary in its shape. He worked the pitch 82-83 with a sharp one-plane 1-to-7 break and also more 78-81 with a sweeping, slurvy break. The latter was very effective against right-handed hitters in virtually any count, and Graterol showed a very good ability to control the ball, though he did sometimes have difficulty commanding the slurvy variety of the pitch.
Once he returned from his injury, he threw just a handful of curveballs that I saw in the minors before getting to the majors, and from the higher arm slot, he struggled to control the curve, whether it was a sharp breaker or a sweeper. This is almost counter-intuitive as the major issue I noted with the pitch before his shoulder injury was staying on top of the ball, which one would assume would be easier from the high arm slot.
Change (50) - Graterol has a solid enough change, but it’s a pitch that he telegraphs in his arm speed through views as a starter and as a reliever. With the “tall” delivery, he had a different arm slot for the change when compared to his fastballs, so even though the pitch has good velocity separation and movement, it doesn’t have the effectiveness that you’d expect.
To maintain his arm speed, if he was working as a starter, Graterol may benefit from utilizing a fastball variation like a cutter or a split-finger as his offspeed pitch rather than a true change. Many pitchers have done similar recently with heavy success, including the guy who I see as an excellent comp for Graterol.
MLB Comp
One of the first thoughts I had a few years ago when I first watched Graterol was a pitcher that has been through four organizations, ironically two of which were involved in the Mookie Betts deal.
Frankie Montas was originally signed by the Boston Red Sox in 2009 out of the Dominican. A raw Dominican, Montas flashed great raw stuff for the Red Sox until he was traded to the White Sox in 2013 and then to the Dodgers as part of a three-team deal in 2016. The Athletics acquired Montas in the offseason of 2016-2017, and he established himself as one of the elite talents in the game before a PED suspension in 2019 caused him to miss half the season. Of course, with knee and shoulder issues, among others, Montas had missed plenty of time throughout his minor league time, which is also a connection with Brusdar (along with their similar large builds).
Montas returned in 2019 from the suspension seemingly without skipping a beat, and he’ll be a key member of the rotation for Oakland in 2020. Montas features a similar high-velocity fastball and a slider that works near 90 mph just as Graterol does. Montas found success in the rotation in 2019 when he ditched his changeup for a split-finger, and it’s not out of the question that a fastball variant could be what ends up being the pitch that allows Graterol to stick in the rotation.
Future Role
Firing triple-digit bowling balls with a slider that moves the way Graterol’s does along with his previous injury history could certainly pigeon-hole Graterol into a future relief role. Even if he’s an elite reliever, though, that would seem to be under-selling his full value if a team is willing to take the time to work through to what he was doing early in 2019 with the lower arm slot and more leg-based delivery.