I'll be interested to see Lance's breakdown on Hugus. Ignoring the ERA, the walks, while improved over his freshman year, are high for my liking.
First off, it's always humbling to me that people give two hoots about what I think/write, so thank you for that.
Hand above, this is a second player I had highlighted in the transfer portal as a guy to look at that Miami has now grabbed in the portal. Will Smith being the other.
Now, this isn't the same conviction as with Smith, but more of a projection. The predictive stats are just ok for Hugus (whereas the descriptive stats are pretty poor).
What you like with Hugus is his baseline athleticism is elite for a D1 pitcher. Teams track your rotational acceleration and bat speed etc. and Hugus was at 80 mph max bat speed and 70 mph average bat speed in high school, both markers are excellent for that age. Athleticism + rotational acceleration forecast projection for a pitcher.
Add to that, generally a ball of clay you want to see for a pitcher is a 6-3, 175 pound kid coming out of high school and he is close to on the money there (at 6-2, but with good extension).
You need more than just markers to take a guy with poor numbers and he has actualization of the markers in the form of 2,800 rpm spin rates on the curveball and 2,500 on the fastball.
Layman terms: he can really spin the baseball because he's so athletic and his rotational acceleration is plus plus.
What's that mean for his baseball performance? A high spin fastball at the top of the zone with play up all by itself, but pair it with a high spin curveball and you've got a really difficult combination because the curveball comes out of the hand and appears to "go up" at release, meaning it looks exactly like the fastball at the top of the zone.
Training as a pitcher only, his first order of business will be to get more consistent with the location of his curveball. You see that he allowed a ton of slug (hard contact) at Cincinnati because he left the curveball up too much and those are easy to get into the air. Fly balls are bad, in general (though you do expect to have a lower batting average on balls in play with them, they go for more slug and all home runs are not ground balls, obviously).
This is a tools-based projection on an elite athlete with some present production, misses bats already, and has a real chance to make a leap as a pitcher-only in middle relief. Expect a bridge reliever in season one, in a role where you can get him out quickly if he can't locate the curveball, but also one where he can give multiple innings and frustrate an opponent when he's locating down.
You need kids like this to balance out a staff and if he takes a step in velocity and location, you have a lot more in there. He's already played at the Big-12 level and shown he can miss bats. I'm excited to see what the staff can do from a dev standpoint with him.
