Detroit Tigers: 4 reasons Jackson Jobe is risky

The Detroit Tigers took an awfully big chance when they drafted Jackson Jobe.

It has now been more than five months since the Detroit Tigers took Oklahoma high-school pitcher Jackson Jobe with the third overall pick in the 2021 MLB Draft. Jobe didn’t throw a professional pitch after signing, and he didn’t attend the Instructional League this fall.

That’s not what makes Jackson Jobe risky, though. It’s common for recently drafted pitchers to sit for the rest of the year, and Jobe’s season had been over for more than two months when he signed with Detroit, so it didn’t make sense for him to ramp up again just to throw a handful of innings.

No, what makes Jackson Jobe risky is simply what he is: a high-school pitcher.

The stigma surrounding high-school pitchers goes back decades — a high-school righty has never been drafted first overall — but it has only ramped up in recent years. Just one high-school pitcher was taken among the first 20 picks in both 2019 and 2020, and some teams flatly refuse to take a high-school righty within the first 30 picks.

Why? Because high-school pitchers bust at an alarmingly high rate.

Jackson Jobe and First-Round High-School Pitchers

We went back and looked at every prep pitcher taken in the first round from 1995 to 2016, and added in high-school pitchers who were drafted later but given bonuses like first rounders. We also looked at a subgroup of high-school arms taken in the top ten. This is what we found:

*Career bWAR of less than 5.0

We’ll start with the easy part. If a team drafts a high-school pitcher in the first round, there’s a 60% chance he’ll reach the majors one day. Those aren’t great odds, but it’s hard for anyone to make the bigs. First-round picks as a whole reach the highest level just under 67% of the time, though the rate is much better for top-ten (~83%) and top-five picks (~85%).

Appearing in an MLB game is certainly a noteworthy accomplishment for players, but it’s safe to assume fans and teams want much more than that. Baseball is hard, and plenty of very talented players struggle at the MLB level. Only about 40% of our prep pitchers went on to produce a positive WAR, and fewer than 25% had a career WAR of 5 or better. Again, things look a bit better for top-ten picks, but there’s still about a 50-50 chance they bust.

And let’s talk about that “bust” designation for a moment. Our 5-WAR threshold is admittedly arbitrary, and setting it there leads to some iffy inclusions. Adam Eaton (the pitcher) started 201 games in the bigs. Jordan Walden was an All-Star in 2011. Jerome Williams pitched in parts of 11 seasons. Those are above-average outcomes among their cohort, and it feels wrong to call any of them busts.

But would Detroit Tigers fans be happy if Jackson Jobe has a career like that? Almost certainly not.

Can Jackson Jobe Avoid Being A Bust?

Well, being incredibly talented is a nice place to start…

https://twitter.com/FlaSmitty/status/1378350791010963459?s=20

…but every first-round pick has an awful lot of talent, and a lot of them still manage to bust. It’s not hard to guess why things don’t work out for prep pitchers, but we wanted to know EXACTLY why. So we looked into it.

Thanks to the indispensable draft database at Baseball America (get yourself a subscription) we were able to look at hundreds of detailed scouting reports for high-school pitchers over the last 25 years. We focused on the 202 players we deemed as “busts” to find out what kept them from reaching their ceiling.

Hit the jump to find out the four things Jackson Jobe needs to avoid…

Jackson Jobe Risk Factor Number1 – Mental Struggles

About 17% of the 202 busts in our sample struggled with issues that weren’t directly related to throwing a baseball. The actual number is likely much higher, but teams ignored mental skills until very recently, so many players suffered in silence. It can be very easy to simply focus on performance and forget about the humans behind the numbers.

Most high-school pitchers are 18 or 19 when they sign. They’re technically adults, but certainly not fully mature. In many cases professional baseball is their first real job, their first time living away from home, and their first taste of freedom. For some of them pro ball is also the first time they’ve tasted failure in any real way. Add in enormous sums of money, and the boredom of playing once every five or six days, and it’s not too hard to see how some pitchers might find themselves dealing with anxiety, depression, or substance abuse.

And some pitchers simply lose their love for the game. Tyler Gonzales (TOR, 2012) quit baseball after two partial seasons to pursue a career in punk music. Dillon Howard (CLE, 2011) pitched for one year, was suspended for 50 games, and then lost the desire to pitch. And Ashe Russell, the pitcher in the picture above, struggled for two seasons before walking away from baseball in 2017. He returned this season, but walked eight batters in four innings and was released.

Presumably the Detroit Tigers did lots of homework on Jackson Jobe’s makeup before they drafted him, but no one can predict the future. Hopefully the club has also committed resources to help players with any issues that may arise in the future.

Jackson Jobe Risk Factor Number 3 – Injuries

Injuries eventually come for every pitcher. The lucky ones manage to stave off serious injury trouble until late in their career, or get past early injury issues to become quality big leaguers. But for 51% of our busts, injuries delayed, derailed, or outright ended their careers. The only real surprise here is that the number isn’t higher.

One injury typically isn’t enough to immediately end a career, but many times a devastating injury effectively ends a prospect’s career. The Houston Astros made Brady Aiken the top overall pick in the 2014 draft, but they had concerns about his elbow and ended up not signing him. Aiken then tore an elbow ligament in his next appearance. Cleveland took him with the 17th overall pick in 2015, but he threw just 179 career innings before being released in October.

Typically prospects are derailed by everything else that comes with an injury, including lost development time, altered mechanics, and downgrades in control or stuff. And, crucially, the biggest predictor of future injury is past injury.

The Orioles took Hunter Harvey with the 22nd pick in the 2013 draft, and by the end of 2014 he looked like a future top-of-the-rotation starter. But injuries cost him all of 2015 and held him back in every other year since. Harvey’s raw stuff is still excellent, and he generally throws strikes, but he’s now 27 and has fewer than 25 MLB innings to his name. San Francisco claimed him off waivers in November.

For every workhorse like Rick Porcello, there are ten injury plagued Matt Wheatlands. Once again, only time will tell if Jackson Jobe can stay healthy.

Jackson Jobe Risk Factor Number 4 – Stuff

We came into the exercise thinking injuries would be the main issue keeping high-school pitchers from MLB success, but we were wrong. A stunning 68% of our busts failed to reach their ceiling because their stuff just wasn’t good enough. There are a dozen possible reasons for this, from injuries, to scouts getting overly excited about small samples, to players simply failing to develop.

Jackson Jobe’s scouting reports look amazing. He owns a mid-90s fastball, a plus-plus slider, and a changeup and curve that both project as above-average offerings. But it’s remarkable how many prep pitchers begin their pro career with glowing scouting reports, and then three years later have an evaluation that reads more like this:

His fastball has touched the mid-90s in the past, but it sits in the 88-92 MPH range now, and his once plus-plus breaking ball now takes a back seat to his average changeup.

Miami selected Tyler Kolek with the 2nd overall pick in the 2014 draft, largely because he consistently threw in the upper 90s and touched 102 MPH in high school. But his velocity dipped to the low-90s as soon as he began a pro pitching regimen. He couldn’t miss bats, started walking hitters, and then injured his arm. He isn’t officially retired, but he hasn’t pitched since 2019.

Our busts list is littered with former top high-school arms who seemingly had good stuff that just didn’t play at higher levels. And, unfortunately, some of the best examples of this are recent Detroit Tigers draft picks.

Beau Burrows sat in the mid-90s and flashed above-average secondary offerings in high school. He never really developed beyond that, though, and he’s now a replacement-level arm with an ERA above 10 in the majors.

It’s far too early to close the book on Matt Manning, but his early results are troubling. He looked like a future ace after dominating Double-A in 2019, but in 2021 he couldn’t consistently miss bats with any of his offerings, and he essentially abandoned his curveball, which had long been viewed as a plus pitch.

And then there’s Jacob Turner, Detroit’s top pick in 2009. His -2.6 WAR is the worst of any player on our bust list. His stuff always looked good, which bought him enough chances to post a career 5.37 ERA over 369 innings.

Professional baseball is a gauntlet, and it’s a small miracle when high-school pitchers have the ability, and the durability, to reach 20 career WAR.

Jackson Jobe certainly has that level of talent. All he has to do is avoid off-the-field issues, stay healthy, throw quality strikes, and maintain his plus stuff for the next 15-20 years.

No sweat.