Ian Anderson's stuff

the options aren’t only control issues or pristine control. Anderson’s control wasn’t amazing in the minors. and i never claimed it was. it just wasn’t a problem to worry about.
i will one more time say we know what control issues look like. they are obvious. no one who watched Anderson felt he had them. he was a very young pitcher figuring things out...but he didn’t have command issues.
 
Anderson isn’t Fried or Soroka who can figure things out when he has a bad game. His stuff isn’t good enough for that, and that’s why he’s a 4 who can flash being a 3 with good control...while Fried is a TOR guy with Soroka a notch below.

2 good games then a clunker. That’s a 4 production.
 
Enscheff said:
Anderson isn’t Fried or Soroka who can figure things out when he has a bad game. His stuff isn’t good enough for that, and that’s why he’s a 4 who can flash being a 3 with good control...while Fried is a TOR guy with Soroka a notch below.

2 good games then a clunker. That’s a 4 production.
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People need to figure out that what you said isn't an insult to Anderson. There is a lot of value in a consistent 4 who can pitch up to a 3 when the control is on.
 
DirkPiggler said:
People need to figure out that what you said isn't an insult to Anderson. There is a lot of value in a consistent 4 who can pitch up to a 3 when the control is on.
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It's particularly huge when the Braves otherwise have a number-one, a number-five, and a bunch of sevens.
 
I'm not making judgements off of this.

Looked like he made a horrible error and it went off the rails there. Could be mental. Could be it just go his pitch count up. Could be a combination.

He's 23 on start 3.

this is a sh!t happens start for me. have to learn how to do better when something goes poorly and or you don't have you best stuff.
 
I might be wrong but it seems like Anderson has always had streaky control. He'd string together a few starts with few walks and people on the minor league threads would be saying he has no control issues. Then he'd walk 11 over his next 3 starts. I might be misremembering though.

The idea that no one talking about Anderson's BBs at the minor league level is evidence it wasn't seen as a problem is weak. There wasn't a ton of in depth discussion of Anderson outside of message boards.

The BB numbers jump out at you with him. The fact that no one said they're not a problem can just as easily be interpreted as them being a problem.

Ultimately we'll see. I agree with Enscheff that he's a number 4.
 
striker42 said:
I might be wrong but it seems like Anderson has always had streaky control. He'd string together a few starts with few walks and people on the minor league threads would be saying he has no control issues. Then he'd walk 11 over his next 3 starts. I might be misremembering though.

The idea that no one talking about Anderson's BBs at the minor league level is evidence it wasn't seen as a problem is weak. There wasn't a ton of in depth discussion of Anderson outside of message boards.

.
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I don't understand how you would quantify that, but this seems counter to fact. He was a Top 50 prospect that has been profiled as much as any Top 50 prospect that doesn't have huge stuff.

Because of his central role in the Braves rebuild, he's gotten more attention than most, IMO.
 
Southcack77 said:
I don't understand how you would quantify that, but this seems counter to fact. He was a Top 50 prospect that has been profiled as much as any Top 50 prospect that doesn't have huge stuff.

Because of his central role in the Braves rebuild, he's gotten more attention than most, IMO.
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You'd think there would have been a lot of analysis but I consistently looked for it as I've been involved in a fair few debates about him and couldn't find much of anything with any real meat. The yearly prospect lists were largely just a rehashing of what was said about him on draft day with a little talk about what he did the previous year.

A lot of places talked about him having a big curve with the changeup being his third offering. Only one or two people reported his changeup passing his curve which it has clearly done.

When you think about it, you can see why he got overlooked by the writers. He was a high draft pick but was taken as an underslot guy and wasn't among the top names in that draft. He did well but wasn't ridiculously dominant nor did he fall flat on his face (both of which would get you more analysis). He was also always overshadowed by bigger prospects in the Braves system.

So when you're a prospect writer having to do writeups on a couple dozen players (often for all 30 clubs), you're not going to spend a ton of time on every guy. Anderson was a perfect candidate to get minimal real analysis.
 
striker42 said:
You'd think there would have been a lot of analysis but I consistently looked for it as I've been involved in a fair few debates about him and couldn't find much of anything with any real meat. The yearly prospect lists were largely just a rehashing of what was said about him on draft day with a little talk about what he did the previous year.

A lot of places talked about him having a big curve with the changeup being his third offering. Only one or two people reported his changeup passing his curve which it has clearly done.

When you think about it, you can see why he got overlooked by the writers. He was a high draft pick but was taken as an underslot guy and wasn't among the top names in that draft. He did well but wasn't ridiculously dominant nor did he fall flat on his face (both of which would get you more analysis). He was also always overshadowed by bigger prospects in the Braves system.

So when you're a prospect writer having to do writeups on a couple dozen players (often for all 30 clubs), you're not going to spend a ton of time on every guy. Anderson was a perfect candidate to get minimal real analysis.
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he was a Top 50 prospect.
 
Southcack77 said:
he was a Top 50 prospect.
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And not ever top 50 prospect has the same amount of time spent on them. Believe me, I've looked a great deal at the reports on Ian Anderson and they were almost always disappointingly light on details. There was very little new information from the time he was drafted to the point he made his big league debut.

This was the writeup from MLB Pipeline this year:

"High school pitchers taken from the Northeast in the early rounds haven't always had an easy time reaching the big leagues. Mike Nikorak, a late first-round pick in 2015, hasn't made it above A ball, while upstate New York product Scott Blewett, a second-rounder in 2014, has yet to make it to the big leagues. Anderson, who hails from just outside of Albany, is hoping to be the exception to the rule. The No. 3 overall pick in 2016 has reached the upper levels of the Minors and pitched in the Futures Game in 2019.

Anderson isn't far from bringing his three-pitch mix to a big league rotation. It all starts with a plus fastball that he can still get up to 96 mph, thrown with good angle and downhill movement. He misses a ton of bats and can get contact on the ground, as well. His power curve can be a plus pitch when he commands it and the fastball-curve combination is a big reason why he's struck out 10.7 per nine innings heading into 2020. His changeup continued to improve in 2019 and is now a viable third weapon for him to use.

Despite struggling with finding the strike zone when he got to Triple-A for the first time in 2019 -- something that happened when he got moved up a level in 2018 as well -- he did improve his overall command for most of the year. That will have to continue in order for him to reach his ceiling as a frontline starter, but it's important to note that he would have been just a college junior in 2019 if he hadn't signed."


This scouting report is almost completely wrong. Anderson doesn't have good downward movement on his fastball, he has terrific rise on it. The curve isn't plus and it's not the pitch he pairs with his fastball. His change isn't a third weapon, his fastball is weapon 1A and the change is weapon 1B. The curve lags behind those. Also, Anderson's ceiling is clearly not a frontline starter as he doesn't have that good of stuff.

This was a writeup that was basically just updating his draft day scouting reports with new numbers. Anderson was ranked 38th. This writeup is pretty similar to the rest of the writeups on Anderson.
 
Your error is in assuming that most Top 50 prospects like Ian Anderson have a whole lot written about them. Most of them don't. And I think that's enough words on this subject.
 
He was top 50 so it means he is automatically going to be a stud. They should extend him now.
 
Anderson was a mediocre prospect (in terms of the Top stud guys) because he has mediocre stuff and mediocre control.

While I don't remember him being dinged much for control, it wasn't pimped like it was for Soroka either. He was simply a good prospect with normal control concerns all pitchers have. About as generic as a top pitching prospect gets. The only interesting thing about him was the reportedly low spin rates that turned out to be complete nonsense.

Folks around here fixated on him because he was the best of what the Braves had left after Wright fell on his face a few times. The system is way down right now, so guys like Anderson and Waters and Pache are being inflated by Braves fans living in their Braves bubble. Long gone are the Swanson, Acuna, Albies, Soroka days, and folks probably need to adjust their expectations of the guys coming up now...they aren't all that.
 
Southcack77 said:
Your error is in assuming that most Top 50 prospects like Ian Anderson have a whole lot written about them. Most of them don't. And I think that's enough words on this subject.
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I agree with you there. There are simply too many prospects to give an in depth look at them all. However, others were arguing that writers weren't really mentioning control as an issue and so therefore it was never a real issue. My point is that these writeups aren't terribly in depth or even accurate. So we can't draw the conclusion that control has never been an issue just because writers didn't mention it. That's my only point.
 
Enscheff said:
Anderson was a mediocre prospect (in terms of the Top stud guys) because he has mediocre stuff and mediocre control.

While I don't remember him being dinged much for control, it wasn't pimped like it was for Soroka either. He was simply a good prospect with normal control concerns all pitchers have. About as generic as a top pitching prospect gets. The only interesting thing about him was the reportedly low spin rates that turned out to be complete nonsense.

Folks around here fixated on him because he was the best of what the Braves had left after Wright fell on his face a few times. The system is way down right now, so guys like Anderson and Waters and Pache are being inflated by Braves fans living in their Braves bubble. Long gone are the Swanson, Acuna, Albies, Soroka days, and folks probably need to adjust their expectations of the guys coming up now...they aren't all that.
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He was also inflated because he was the highest draft pick since we drafted Chipper.
 
Enscheff said:
Anderson was a mediocre prospect (in terms of the Top stud guys) because he has mediocre stuff and mediocre control.

While I don't remember him being dinged much for control, it wasn't pimped like it was for Soroka either. He was simply a good prospect with normal control concerns all pitchers have. About as generic as a top pitching prospect gets. The only interesting thing about him was the reportedly low spin rates that turned out to be complete nonsense.

Folks around here fixated on him because he was the best of what the Braves had left after Wright fell on his face a few times. The system is way down right now, so guys like Anderson and Waters and Pache are being inflated by Braves fans living in their Braves bubble. Long gone are the Swanson, Acuna, Albies, Soroka days, and folks probably need to adjust their expectations of the guys coming up now...they aren't all that.
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Yup.
 
Russ2dollas said:
I feel like this board has been pretty reasonable on Anderson.

Most seem to agree he's a 4 (1.5-2.5 WAR) pitcher with upside.
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Maybe now that they've actually seen him.

Braves' prospects are usually over-hyped in general, and substantially so around here. Not by everybody, and not always, but as a rule of thumb there are quite a few folks here that aren't particularly realistic. There's nothing wrong with that - it's called being a fan. Fans only tend to look at a player's ceiling. There was an awful lot of "Anderson's untouchable - AA shouldn't trade him for anybody" around here before he was called up, just as there has been with Wright, Pache, Wright, and the Catchers at times.

Once these kids get called-up and folks actually SEE them, they quickly backtrack and say "we should've traded Waters and Langeliers for Clevinger because we've got Fried and Soroka and 'just a bunch of guys'".

Fans expect everyone to reach their ceilings instead of becoming useful players - Braves fans squint and see another Acuna WHEN (not if) Pache's power COMES (instead of develops).
 
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