The Blue Jays’ 2023 3rd rounder out of Oklahoma seems to be finding his form, striking out 39.4% of the NWL batters faced while keeping the walks in check at 7.3%. Not.too.shabby. Here’s what Watts-Brown has done as a pro thus far:
The tools are fairly simple, yet maybe not. The look we’ll have here, you get a four-seam fastball. I think he sinks it on a few occasions. You get a slider/cutter looking breaker that had this lineup a mess. You see a curveball and changeup vs lefties. Pair it with Savant’s 2024 FSL sample, and Watts-Brown appears to have a little Mussina to his spin game, with a myriad of speeds and breaks on his resume:
If you like swords and freezing hitters, this look is full of them. Note how many of the Ks came vs the top of the lineup vs hitters who are currently or have been considered top 100 bats. The big takeaway for me is the effect Watts-Brown slide piece(s) have on hitters. He has them all kinds of in between, leaving me to wonder if something outlier is happening with Watts-Brown’s deception and quality of stuff. Maybe stuff+ type models see it too, maybe they don’t. I recently had someone in baseball tell me, much like a changeup, if someone tells you with too much confidence what makes a slider a good slider, there’s only so far that can go. The proof is mostly in the pudding. See for yourself:
Watts-Brown is still up and down, outing-to-outing, production-wise, but in my looks, execution-wise as well. Locating the fastball well might be a bigger key for him than for some. It’s not a monster, but it might be good enough. When I’ve seen him hit hard, it seems like a mis-executed fastball, like we saw above, is the culprit. At 2% Fantrax rosters, Watts-Brown isn’t very popular. Perhaps justifiably so at this juncture, but it might be worth keeping an eye here. The Blue Jays can be hard to figure out in regards to assignments and how they deploy their farm arms, but Watts-Brown is currently in a small league where hitters are going to get a lot of looks at him. This can be a good test for him. I wouldn’t be shocked to find him in the Eastern League relatively soon either. One doesn’t need to be overly imaginative to see a future MLB pen arm.