In the wake of Matt Brash’s demotion to Triple-A Tacoma on Thursday, it would behoove the Seattle Mariners front office to re-think the way the player development side goes about preparing the franchise’s young pitching.
Brash, 23, was selected out of Spring Training to join Seattle’s 28-man Opening Day roster just a month prior. The right-hander who burst on the scene virtually out of nowhere (not unlike his story of being from Kingston, Ontario, Canada and Niagara University) in 2021 when he lit the Mariners farm system on fire while dominating High-A and Double-A baseball.
How dominant was Brash in 2021? Let’s just say it was no fun for hitters. Brash first tore up the High-A Northwest League over 10 games and nine starts. In 42 1/3 innings, he allowed 31 hits and walked 25. Hitters batted .204 against him while striking out 62 times. So Seattle moved him up.
The higher level didn’t matter. In fact, Brash got even better when he joined Arkansas and pitched against the Double-A Texas League hitters. Over 10 more starts and 55 innings, Brash limited hitters to a .162 average (32 hits), while striking out 80 and walking 23. His command seemed to improve as the year went on and the right-hander from Canada who was acquired from San Diego at the August trade deadline in 2020 as a player-to-be-named-later posted a K/9 over 13.
In the shortened Spring Training with the Mariners essentially holding a tryout for the open fifth spot in their starting rotation, Brash continued to impress. His upper-90s fastball had enough life to get swings and misses from major-league hitters. His slider and knuckle-curve made those same hitters look foolish. His spin rates registered off the charts.
Yet, Brash followed a brilliant 5.1 innings, four hits, two runs, six strikeouts, one walk debut against the White Sox by going just 14 2/3 innings, allowing 20 hits and 15 runs and walking 16. His WHIP soared over 2.00. What happened?
The answer lies in player development.
While Brash dominated at multiple levels in the minors in 2021, he still threw just 97.1 innings over 19 starts. That’s just over five innings per start. If you take into consideration his WHIP, he averaged 21 hitters per outing. That’s barely two times thru the lineup.
And when you’re not going thru a lineup three times, you’re not being forced to game plan against hitters, to use your secondary offerings, let alone refine your pitches so that they are landing in the strike zone late in the game.
Matt Brash wasn’t the only pitcher in the Mariners system being held back in 2021. That list includes such high draft choices as George Kirby (20th overall in 2019 draft), Emerson Hancock (6th overall in 2020 draft) and Levi Stoudt (third round in 2019 draft).
Kirby, 24, made two starts in May, pitching 8 2/3 innings. In June, he made four and pitched 18 innings and July just two for 12 innings. Then in August, he made four and pitched 12 1/3. That’s 51 innings over four months! That’s just not enough.
A pitcher of Kirby’s skill — a guy that was drafted in the first round after three full seasons at Elon University — and age (23 last season) should be averaging six innings every 5th day. That equates to 30 innings per month or 120 over four months, far more than 51.
Yes, Kirby dealt with some shoulder soreness in July which resulted in him missing time. While we can question how severe it really was when he was held out just three weeks, doesn’t it also show the development team in Seattle that holding starters back isn’t preventing injury? Clearly it didn’t do anything to help Kirby when he still missed time with an arm issue.
Yet because Kirby was limited to 67 innings in 2021, Seattle deemed the right-hander ill suited to join the roster out of Spring Training. The thought being he would be asked to give 150 innings at the MLB level in the fifth spot in the rotation (if not more given a possible postseason experience), an amount Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto and his coaching staff were not willing to ask of him. That total would equate to an increase of 125 percent, drastically more than the 30 percent teams are generally comfortably with (again, a rather misguided approach not to mention an arbitrary number not proven by science).
Because Kirby was deemed ill suited to open the season as the No. 5 starter, it left the Mariners to pick Brash. As I’ve highlighted and as the Mariners soon discovered, Brash wasn’t ready for the MLB level.
Not only has the Mariners player development department failed to prepare Brash for the Show, it failed to prepare Kirby to handle a full workload in 2022.
We will have to wait and see what it costs them. A division title and spot in the playoffs — their first berth in 21 seasons — may just be the dire consequence.
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