Zach Thornton NYM (AA) FQO 5/13/25 (Complete Outing — Condensed)

81 pitch­es (despite boxs­core say­ing oth­er­wise), 54 strikes, 67% strikes, 10 whiffs (despite game­day cred­it­ing 12), 22 BF

The Mets’ arm farm is turn­ing heads this sea­son, deserved­ly so. Near the fore­front of the mud­di­er buzz is their 2023 5th rounder out of Grand Canyon, who put up a 29.5 K‑BB% over four Brook­lyn starts. Thorn­ton’s first cou­ple AA out­ings weren’t any­thing to write home about, but he put up an FQO in his third try. Thorn­ton’s been a curi­ous sub­ject in our Dis­cord, so let’s get into a look.

You don’t get through 7 IP with­out some quick at-bats. This out­ing was full of them. Thir­teen of 22 at-bats last­ed three pitch­es or less. A Hart­ford line­up full of aggres­sive hit­ters isn’t news, but unlike Hart­ford line­ups of recent his­to­ry, there might not be much here in the way of future MLB bats. Regard­less, Thorn­ton filled up the zone, unafraid of con­tact; 6 ground­outs, 7 air outs, which is a .188 BABIP if you’re count­ing at home. Bad hit­ting? Good pitch­ing? Both? All debat­able.

Hart­ford’s broad­cast is one of the bet­ter angles we’ll get in the minors. It’s also full of cut­aways. You don’t get any looks of catch­er signs, and as you’ll see, straight-up miss­ing pitch­es and quick ABs lead­ing off an inning are par for the course. The broad­cast does offer velo, but I am unsure how that read­ing is gained. These fac­tors, plus Thorn­ton’s arse­nal, make things a bit tricky. Offer­ings are labeled on our video, but con­fi­dence in the label­ing is lack­ing. It might be more use­ful to think about veloc­i­ty readings/bands paired with eye­balls to try and dis­cern what Thorn­ton’s throw­ing.

The four-seam­er sits 91/92. There are a few fast­balls flash­ing arm­side run, but most did not look that way. Two dif­fer­ent fast­balls? Hard to say with any cer­tain­ty. The rest gets tougher to par­cel out. Thorn­ton’s game is break­ing balls, of which there’s either a ton of incon­sis­ten­cy or five dif­fer­ent ones, putting the cut­ter in the fast­ball fam­i­ly feels both right and wrong depend­ing on which one you pick out. Thorn­ton is throw­ing a cut­ter around 87/88 mph. And prob­a­bly his mon­ey-mak­er. There are times I won­dered if there were cut­ters a few ticks slow­er, or a few ticks high­er. I’ve gener­i­cal­ly labeled what might be two dif­fer­ent pitch­es, “SLD” in an 85ish mph band. There seems to be two dis­tinct shapes in this range, one a more gyro-look­ing ver­ti­cal drop, and one more hor­i­zon­tal. There is also a slow­er, slurve-look­ing break­er I marked “SWP.” Thorn­ton also throws a dis­tinct curve­ball in the 75–78 mph range. And to throw anoth­er wrin­kle in, Thorn­ton is said to throw a change­up. I can’t pick one out with 100% cer­tain­ty. Part of the issue here might be that his change­up grip isn’t easy to spot/isn’t tra­di­tion­al, and the change may deceive us from our angle and/or his arm angle, or it might have a lit­tle cut to it, real­ly mak­ing it tough to spot. There may be some change­ups to right­ies marked as a break­er in the 83ish mph range, but maybe not. For our pur­pos­es, this change­up stuff does­n’t need to be solved to get a good grasp of Thorn­ton’s game.

Messy stuff there, but things make more sense as you watch:

What do you think? As impres­sive as the line leads on? In my opin­ion, not real­ly. I’d love to be inside every pitcher’s head for every pitch, but Thorn­ton more so than most. There are all kinds of things going on all over the place here, but how much looks like Thorn­ton intend­ed it to go? Are we throw­ing to the mid­dle of the plate and let­ting the buf­fet of gears and break do what they do? Regard­less, this line­up did­n’t han­dle it well. In our con­text, try­ing to project how an arm may or may not help our MLB fan­ta­sy teams, imag­ine this per­for­mance dropped into an MLB game. You think it goes well? I tend to think not. And of course, that is the answer to darn near every out­ing we will review, but there’s a spec­trum, right? Are there any MLB lefty SPs like Thorn­ton? By no means 1:1 com­par­isons, but the only two I can think of that might be a dis­tant cousin are Nestor Cortes and Noah Cameron…maybe??

Per­haps a data per­son would have a far dif­fer­ent take, point­ing to out­lier abil­i­ties we can’t see. But I’m still skep­ti­cal how this all plays vs bet­ter hitters/the rest of the East­ern League sea­son. I’m also aware, if you looked at Joel Diaz, Thorn­ton’s rota­tion mate in Brook­lyn, with me, there might be a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties between the two, with Diaz being a right-hand­ed ver­sion. Per­haps I am hyp­o­crit­i­cal, but the dif­fer­ence between the two is hav­ing more con­fi­dence in Diaz’s fast­ball game, and my guess Diaz’s inten­tions are more sophis­ti­cat­ed.

Intrigu­ing watch, and from a fan stand­point, I love guys like Thorn­ton and would love to see MLB suc­cess. I’m just not bet­ting on see­ing him in the Mets rota­tion any time soon, not­ing the lack of innings build-up on his resume, or that this is going to be a dynasty must-have. Thorn­ton’s still ros­tered in just 1% of leagues, so I’d still say he’s under­val­ued. There are less pop­u­lar arms I feel more con­fi­dent in or am con­vinced are more excit­ing gam­bles.

Back to muddylooks.com home