Archive for Jarred Cosart

Last second I changed the title from “Having a Presence” to “Commanding Attention”. If I were to talk about the team as a whole, I would have had to go with “Having a Presence,” but I’m focusing on their rotation, and well…they command our attention…

It’s rough to be a Mets fan living in Minnesota. It’s rough being a Mets fan anywhere, but watching the Twins and their approach to 100 losses doesn’t help. Despite being only 6.5 games back from the 2nd Wild Card to date, I don’t think the Mets will have enough offense to sustain next year, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be fun to watch. There will be quite the trio that commands attention – or even a quartet with the assumption that Noah Syndergaard makes an impact. And with a quartet…who knows?!

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We have been asked about Jarred Cosart once or twice for the podcast, and I have fielded a question or two about him in chats. At the time Eno addressed him on the podcast, he basically called Cossart a hurler about whom he’d have trouble becoming excited, because command and control have so persistently been problems for the right-hander. I have harbored some fascination with the right-hander for a few years, but I couldn’t really disagree.

I’ve become a tad more interested, again, now that he’s back with a Senior Circuit organization. Cosart’s “stuff” just intrigues me, as it does many; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been at least somewhat well-regarded by multiple organizations at one time or another. The issues he’s had with command threaten to be of the career-long variety because they’re rooted in that stuff. But I wonder a little about how crazy the stuff might be, perhaps unlike any others’ stuff, and if that isn’t the beauty of Cosart. It’s a catch-22, with insanity the only likely outcome, surely.

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On my last day down at Spring Training I was lucky enough to catch two high profile pitching prospects face each other in a minor league game at Astros camp in Kissimmee. Houston power arm Jarred Cosart opposed the also highly regarded A.J. Cole of the Washington Nationals. I thought today I’d provide a little breakdown of those two pitchers and how they can potentially help your fantasy team.

Jarred Cosart

The Breakdown: Cosart

A 38th round pick by the Phillies out of high school in Texas, Cosart is a big, athletic pitcher who can throw mid 90’s all day long. He has a quick arm and the ball comes out of his hand well. Cosart looks like he throws even harder than the 94-96 mph at which I clocked him. I kept looking down expecting to see a 98 or 99 but never got it. There’s some effort in his mechanics, but nothing that would trouble me in terms of workload or injury. The issue with Cosart is more a question of how his mechanics affect his command. He has trouble repeating his delivery and varies his timing. Some of this is a result of a long arm action in back. He also has a prominent head jerk as he releases the pitch and a cross-fire finish to his arm action. These qualities lead to an inconsistent release point and problems finishing up. This is not conducive to the fastball command necessary to be am effective big league starter. Cosart’s power curveball (78-80 mph) shows some tight spin and deep break but it’s mostly useful as a chase pitch only. He also telegraphs the curve with a pronounced difference in his arm action. There’s no real feel for an off speed offering here. Cosart mixes in a straight change but they were all hard, straight and up in my viewing. The ultimate profile here looks to me to be a relief arm but at age 23 he’s still capable of making adjustments that would fix some of the holes in his game.

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Over the last week or so we’ve done plenty of articles discussing the impending move of the Houston Astros to the American League and how it will impact those in the fantasy baseball community.  But no matter how many times we attempt to look on the bright side and find the silver lining in it all, there’s one common thing that seems to come through in every piece.  It’s like that early montage in the movie Major League where the Indians’ fan base is looking at their 40 man roster in disbelief — from some guy asking who Mitchell Friedman is to the groundskeepers’ claims that “these guys are sh*tty”.  There’s almost no love for the 2012 Astros and very little hope for the club moving forward.  However, just like the old fantasy adage (is there such a thing?) that states that even closers on bad teams can be good and helpful, the same can be said about everyday players from Houston.  Just because the team is in relative shambles, doesn’t mean that you can’t find some helpful players at a bargain cost.

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