The Player
Adam McCreery, LHP
Age: 25
OFR Prospect Rank: Not Ranked
2018 Level: AAA Gwinnett
The Results
2018: 3.75 ERA | 3.22 FIP | 35 G, 0 GS | 48.0 IP | 11.81 K/9 | 6.19 BB/9
Minor League Career: 3.44 ERA | 3.21 FIP | 126 G, 0 GS | 183 IP | 11.56 K/9 | 5.75 BB/9
The History
Adam McCreery was a 22nd-round pick by the Los Angeles Angels back in the 2014 draft out of Azusa Pacific University. Though possessing good velocity and a hammer curveball, the Angels exchanged him for the Braves starting pitcher Jhoulys Chacin early in April 2016 after keeping McCreery in the rookie leagues for two seasons.
Braves minor league pitching coordinators Dave Wallace and Dom Chiti took McCreery on as an intriguing project, smoothing out his delivery to make everything more repeatable. The results were a sharp drop in the number of walks and he forced his way onto the Rome roster in late 2016 after two and a half seasons in rookie ball. He overpowered hitters in a 20-appearance stretch with Rome to start the 2017 season and had similar success after a mid-season promotion to advanced-A Florida.
Even with this success, it was somewhat of a surprise that the Braves opted to protect McCreery from being taken in the Rule V draft last offseason by putting him on the 40-man roster. Assigned to AA Mississippi, McCreery has had mixed success as his issues with walks resurfaced. Nevertheless, he got a promotion to Gwinnett only two days ago, where he appeared in only a single game as a Striper (1 inning, no hits, no runs, 2 strikeouts).
The Report
McCreery is a huge man, standing at 6′-9″ and weighing in around 250 pounds. In fact, according to baseball-reference.com, Adam McCreery will be the tallest player in Braves history, breaking a record shared by 6′-8″ Brandon McCarthy, Kameron Loe, Phil Stockman, and Gene Conley. Pitching with that kind of height has it’s advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that he gets easy extension that makes his low-90s fastball get to hitters, especially left-handed hitters, in a hurry. However it’s the breaking ball that’s worth the price of admission. Earlier in his career it was a true 12-6 curve that got a lot of swings-and-misses, but also would hang and get hit. Over the last couple of years, he’s evolved into a tighter breaking pitch with more horizontal movement. The result has been ugly for left-handed hitters, who have only hit .212/.325/.288 against him.
The disadvantage of pitching at that height is the difficulty in controlling the body all the way through the delivery. Even getting slightly off mechanically can have a wider set of outcome on pitches, and for McCreery that manifests in loss of control. Also, the evolution of his breaking pitch has meant that while it has become more devastating against lefties, righties tend to pick up on it well, and righties have hit him to a .276/.390/.358 clip in 2018 after not showing appreciable splits in previous minor league seasons.
What’s Next
McCreery’s stay with the big league club will likely be a short one as he is called up for the back-half of a doubleheader. The organization no doubt would like to see if McCreery will be worth continuing slotting into that valuable 40-man roster spot, and this is a good opportunity for McCreery to insert him self into the team’s 2019 bullpen plans. He has a live arm and good stuff, and sometimes that’s all it takes to make it as a major league left-handed reliever.
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