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| (Eric Sorenson/College Baseball Today) |
Baseball-Reference Louisville Bio
Sean's one sentence analysis:
The Louisville righty has more potential than a standard Senior sign and could develop into a late inning bullpen arm.
Pre-draft rankings:
#279 in Baseball America's top 500
Thoughts from the community:
Self is a pretty big boy who can dial it up to 95 or 96. The variations of his fastball (his sinker and cutter) are much better than his heater, which is below average despite being thrown pretty hard. For someone with pretty good stuff, he's got really low strikeout numbers (23 K's in 31 and 2/3 innings this season, 141 K's in 215 and 1/3 innings in his career), but the Nats' minor league pitching coaches could be able to tweak him into a pitcher who knocks out more batters. In the Cape Cod League in 2010, Self threw 43 innings with a 2.30 ERA, only striking out 17 but with a miniscule 3 BB allowed as well.
"The 6-foot-3, 210-pounder's fastball has gone from 87-91 mph to 92-95 and his so-so slider has transformed into an 87-88 mph cutter. Self doesn't miss a lot of bats, but he doesn't beat himself with walks and he generates groundout after groundout." - Baseball America
"We’ve been watching him for two years. Has a hard slider and his fastball is 90-93. He began the season as Louisville’s setup man but eventually took over the closer role." – Nationals national crosschecker Jeff Zona
Scouting video from @alskor of @bullpenbanter.
Self signed for $25,000 according to Baseball America, which is $101,700 less than the slot amount for the 294th overall pick.
I liked what I saw in Aberdeen last night as Self bailed the DDs out of a Bryan Harper-induced eighth-inning jam to preserve a three-run lead and pick up his second save of the season. If that was a typical Self performance, the Nats made a pretty savvy ninth-round pickup.
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear from you, Hendo! From what it sounds, that is the kind of performance to get used to from Self. I think he'll miss more bats as he adds strength and velocity, but he's already good at inducing poor-quality contact.
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