Scouting Notebook featuring Dylan Bundy

By Nathaniel Stoltz | @stoltz_baseball

As someone who frequently discusses prospects in his writing, one of the most important ways for me to get and stay informed about the minors is to attend minor league games. Certainly, statistics, video clips, and even MiLB.tv are invaluable resources as well, but nothing is quite like sitting right behind home plate and taking everything in.

So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on some of the more notable players I’ve had the pleasure of watching in person over the last couple of weeks.

(Cliff Welch/Icon SMI)

Dylan Bundy, RHP, Orioles (Double-A Bowie)

I’ll start with the obvious: Dylan Bundy is a fantastic pitching prospect. You don’t need to go see him to know that. At this point, he’s essentially the consensus top pitching prospect in baseball, which is no small feat for a guy who hasn’t even escaped A-ball and is the least progressed of the top four picks of the previous season’s draft.

So yes, Bundy is terrific. He has four distinct pitches: a fastball with riding life up and in that’s usually in the 92-94 range, a curveball with sharp, big break in the mid-70s, a solid changeup at 81-84, and an upper-80s cutter. The fastball is easily a plus pitch, the curve is unhittable when he sets it up and locates it, the changeup flashes plus, and the cutter is a nice change of pace when he locates it.

Many reports mention the curveball as Bundy’s worst pitch and the cutter as a plus offering, but in my viewings, the cutter looked a bit on the soft side, and several ran out over the plate, while the curve was inconsistent but deadly when he stayed on top of it, forcing some absurd swings by unprepared batters. He’s supposedly been asked to deemphasize the cutter in favor of working on the curve this season—at least the latter half of that seems to be paying off.

Given all the talk about Bundy’s polish for his age, some have suggested he could succeed in a major league rotation right now. Great as Bundy is, that idea is quite a bit off the mark. His biggest flaw at this point is a lack of pitch sequencing ability—compared to some of the polished college arms he was facing, Bundy didn’t have much of a feel for when to go to his offspeed pitches or what to use to strike batters out. It’s completely understandable why this is the case—until he reached High-A, Bundy probably went his whole life getting batters out using whatever pitch he cared to use. Only now is he starting to get any sort of pushback and negative feedback from hitters that will really allow him to assess what is working and what is lagging behind as he advances.

That makes his issue, which isn’t all that big of a deal for a teenage A-ball pitcher, not too difficult to fix, and given that Bundy receives high marks for his acumen and work ethic, there’s no reason he won’t get a better sense of when and where to throw what as he continues to progress. Still, Julio Teheran and Jacob Turner have been waylaid by similar issues in Triple-A and the majors, so it’s not out of the question that Bundy will experience some bumps in the road when he gets to those levels.

Overall, Bundy looks on a path to have a lot of major league success. He has a diverse and effective arsenal with good mechanics and control, with a lot of development time in front of him to tighten things up. He might not quite make it into the Justin Verlander/Clayton Kershaw class of ridiculous aces, but a career along the lines of Matt Cain’s seems feasible. Barring a total meltdown, he’s a #3 starter at the worst.