Birmingham Barons pitching coach John Ely cannot be accused of taking the Southern League's best team ERA (2.50) for granted.
"Buddy, I am drinking it in." Ely said with a laugh at the end of a half hour of talking up his now six-man rotation. "It's the most fun I've had coaching any season that I've been a part of. Obviously because of the talent level there, we don't have to discuss 'How do we get you in the zone? How do we do this?' A lot of groundwork is laid. Yeah, we bust our ass on the side doing mechanical stuff, doing drill work, doing everything we need to do to maintain what they're doing.
"But they're also very self-aware, so now all we have to do is talk about game-planning and that's been a lot of fun. 'This is what I want you to do,' and then they're able to go out and do it."
Elite minor league rotations don't hold stay together for long, especially when there are openings in the big leagues, to the point where if this group remains in place until the Barons win their first half division title, it'll come as a conscious effort from the front office.
Ely politely declined to say who would win a battle royale between Drew Thorpe's changeup, Jake Eder's slider, Noah Schultz's slider, and Jairo Iriarte's fastball.
Ky Bush
I asked Ely about Bush last, which I feared gave the impression that the former Angels second-round pick is the last remarkable of the group. Ely resisted that assumption.
"He's fucking incredible," Ely said. "That kid could go to the big leagues right now. He's got command, pitchability. He's got a four-pitch mix as good as anybody's."
Bush worked over the offseason on shortening his arm action and riding longer on his back leg, and hoped to improve command while restoring some velocity lost last season while he was working back from a lat strain. Ely describes Bush's best nights as sitting 93-95 mph with the occasional 96 mph spiked in there, and lauded an outing where he was able to get by on the strength of tunneling his secondaries for several innings before find his backside mechanics mid-outing and ramping up velocity from there.
"He's able to beat you with the fastball at the top, he's able to locate at the bottom and he's able to locate all his pitches off of that," Ely said. "He's able to make everything look the same, kind of like how everyone else is doing right now. He just tunnels pitches so that they either get taken or they get really bad swings."
Recently Bush has been working on a cutter to add to his slider, curve and changeup, but Ely said it's been merging with the slider to a degree where it's been sidelined from games at the moment. But even without it, Bush has a 1.95 ERA in 50⅔ innings with a 28.1 percent strikeout rate.
Jairo Iriarte
Having not had the privilege of interviewing Iriarte since he joined the organization in late-March, I have to defer to Ely's description of his demeanor.
"He's a frickin' ax murderer out there; as soon as he steps between the lines, he's a savage," said Ely. It's a compliment that doubles as an explanation for Iriarte's 12.1 percent walk rate, despite Sox officials lauding how his mobility projects to future command.
"Sometimes because of his age he'll lean toward overdoing it," Ely said. "When you go too fast, sometimes you get out of yourself and that's when you spray the ball all over the place. So, set the catcher up down the middle and let it eat through your direction and I guarantee you it plays. He's bought in and you see the results."
Because of its approach angle, release height and extension on top of mid-90s velocity, Ely said Iriarte has a "unicorn fastball," and that his slider and changeup combine to give him All-Star potential. The fastball's extra qualities allow him to live in the zone with less fear of damage, and Ely feels his best outings have come when the 22-year-old has just relaxed and gone right at hitters. Iriarte has a 2.77 ERA and 30.7 percent strikeout rate so far.
"When he struck out 13 [hitters], he was in the zone a lot," Ely said. "I think he had six punchouts that were just three pitches."
Jake Eder
From the outside, Eder has made a series of small but not transformative improvements.
His 9.7 percent walk rate is much improved from when the Sox shut him down last season and just got him ready for the Arizona Fall League, but still elevated. His 24.2 percent strikeout is solid, but well south of the heights he reached in his most exciting stretches as a Marlins prospect. His 4.57 ERA makes him look like the weak link, but Ely backed up the notion that his .376 BABIP reflects how snakebitten Eder's results have been. Thanks to just one home run allowed to 207 batters faced, predictive metrics look at Eder's performance much more kindly.
"The in-zone percentage alone and his command with the fastball speaks to the fact that he's come a long way. He's repeatable and throws four pitches in the zone," Ely said. "We've come up with mechanical cues for him so he lets the ball speak to him. If he's coming off of it or doing something that he knows is hurting his pitch-to-pitch ability, he understands what he has to do to get back into his direction, his mechanics and everything else. And he does it pitch-to-pitch instead of letting an inning blow up on him."
Eder had a bevy of lower-half mechanical issues to iron out upon arrival, from riding on his back leg long enough to pelvic posture. Whether it was all the time the Sox devoted on his delivery or simply time removed from Tommy John surgery that allowed Eder to settle into his low three-quarters arm slot, it's put him in a place where he could successfully develop a cutter. Similar to Garrett Crochet, it's given Eder a needed bridge between his fastball and a "depthy, two-plane slider" that can very big in its horizontal movement.
"We needed him to stay in his drive leg just a little bit longer," Ely said of Eder's delivery. "He understands that, he just had to create the feel. And I think he's done that now to the point where if he leaks out a little bit or gets a bit of early rotation, he feels it now and he has cues to right himself."
Mason Adams
As the oldest (24), shortest (six feet even), softest-throwing (low-90s) and lowest drafted (13th round in 2022), Adams is easily overlooked. Rarely is the fifth-most notable starter in a minor league rotation a future mainstay, let alone the sixth now that Schultz has been promoted.
Ely would encourage you to not overlook Adams.
"Realistically, man, he's just as good as everybody else."
Adams' slider probably gets the most attention of any of his pitches ("it's got teeth") but his lower profile could be chalked up to excelling in deception, which tends to get talked up as the results pour in against increasingly lauded competition. So far, Adams' results are a 2.09 ERA with 59 strikeouts and just nine walks in 51⅔ innings.
"You ever watch those Wiffle ball tournaments on YouTube?" Ely asked. "That's what it looks like. He looks like he's throwing Wiffle balls. The movement is so late, it catches seams so late in the hitting zone. He has the same hand position on every single pitch. So it's very difficult to pick up if it's a curveball, slider, a sinker or a changeup because they all look exactly the same. They go different directions and they all tunnel really well off each other. Plus, he has that low approach angle where if you need to beat somebody above the zone, he can throw that four-seam at 93-95 mph. I sound like I'm talking about the freakin' Braves in the 90's, but it's kind of how they're performing."
The discussion of Adams' five-pitch mix made me wonder if he can flip his arsenal in response to handedness like Erick Fedde, but Ely makes it sound like the distinction isn't even that apparent.
"He tries to mix up everything to everybody," Ely said. "I don't think we had an understanding of who he could potentially be when he was drafted. But once we got him and saw how special of a talent he was, it's like a no-brainer. He could probably be another guy that could go to the big leagues right now and survive at the minimum. He might even take off."
Drew Thorpe
How good is Drew Thorpe's changeup?
"Almost as good as mine used to be," Ely said, barely able to land his punchline before laughing.
"It looks exactly like his fastball. It has the same spin, the same movement but he's able to manipulate where it runs off the plate. He's able to throw it up in the zone, he's able to throw it down in the zone. He's able to expand it strike-to-ball at the bottom. He's able to throw it strike-to-ball on the arm side, he's able to throw it ball-to-strike on the glove side. It's really impressive. It's an outstanding weapon for him. He could throw it back-to-back-to-back times and would be able to throw it for strike, expand it for a swing-and-miss and then freeze you on it on separate pitches."
The big takeaway from that explanation beyond the changeup being good, is that Ely touts Thorpe's ability to manipulate and command the baseball however the situation dictates, which extends to his multitude of breaking pitches. While Ely echoes his belief that closer to mid-90s heat is a long-term possibility for Thorpe or even situationally accessible at present, the ability he touts is being able to offer so many variances in timing and location that objective measurements miss the whole picture.
When a pitcher is able to outclass minor league competition with command and breadth of pitch mix, I do begin to wonder -- other than when will they just get called up already -- if there's development left when their competition gets upgraded. After my 37th birthday passed this week, I'm old enough to remember the heartbreak of Dan Remenowsky being able to "hit a gnat on the ass of either side of the plate," but not having an extra gear for Triple-A hitters.
But Ely assured that Thorpe is still growing as a pitcher, even if his 1.33 ERA in Double-A makes it look like he's playing with his food.
"He still has to understand the best options," Ely said. "There are things he doesn't do, that he can do. But he's had so much success doing what he's doing that he hasn't needed to yet. He's a big fish in a small pond right now. When he gets to the big leagues, he's going to be able to expand his understanding of what he needs to do to beat both sides of hitters. It's not just going to happen, but it's going to happen fast because he's a quick learner."
Noah Schultz
With a larger Schultz piece coming, the proper showbiz thing to do is to leave you wanting more.
"No doubt, surefire, he's going to be really good," Ely said. "He has an 80-grade slider. In my opinion, he could go to the big leagues and just throw his slider and probably get through an inning or two. Right now."
