Scouting Athletics Pitcher Trevor Cahill

Some seeds of worry were planted when Trevor Cahill stumbled through Spring Training. It’s true that he has some command issues that he needs to correct. He’s very young for his level, so that should come with experience. In the meantime, he’ll have to get by on the quality of his stuff and his advanced feel for pitching.

I’m not quite sure as it’s very difficult to conclude — you really a need a lot of data to account for the major variance — but Cahill might be one of those pitchers with the unique ability to limit contact and consistently post lower BABIP against rates, especially if he has a top level defense behind him. His skill set fits the profile as a pitcher with that kind of ability.

The skill set includes a deep repertoire to work with, pitches with movement, pitches that break late, pitches that all come in on the same plan, no recognizable pattern to his pitch sequences, and a pitch that hitters consistently pound in the ground. The only thing missing is his command.

Cahill’s repertoire includes two fastballs (a two-seamer and four-seamer), a hammer curveball, a slider, and a change-up.

I recall a lot of fans being disappointed with the velocity of Cahill’s fastball, but the lower the velocity, the heavier the sink. His four-seamer he doesn’t throw as much — in fact, I haven’t seen his fastball go over 92 mph at the major league level, but unless the gun from the Olympics game last Summer was off, it’s a mid-90′s pitch with some arm-side run. Cahill struggles to throw his mid-70′s curveball for strikes, but he’s able to generate swings-and-misses because of how late it breaks. Hitters will consistently find themselves swinging at pitches in the dirt — especially when behind in the count — because of how late the pitch breaks. Cahill’s four-seamer, which was clocked at 96 mph, is on the left, while the curveball is on the right. He’s going against Mariners prospect Michael Saunders:

Cahill is much more comfortable using the two-seamer. Hitters will either swing over top of the heavy pitch or pound it in the ground. He’ll occasionally leave the pitch up in the zone, but hitters still struggle to lift the ball out of the park. More often than not, it’s a line drive in the gap at most.

As I said earlier, Cahill will subtract velocity for better sink and you can see how heavy the pitch is below on the left. Cahill’s most used breaking ball is his slider, which he can throw for strikes. It’s a little slurvy, but shows good depth and a bit of tilt as well. The pitch is on the right:

Mechanically, Cahill is a short strider. He stays over the rubber a little too long for my taste and he’ll sometimes land a little stiff on his front leg.

You see how Cahill sorta whips his arm forward? When Cahill is able to get over his front leg and achieve extension at release, his pitches get an extra element of life. When he’s not able to get over his front side, his pitches flatten out and he loses command.

It’s a lower probability that Cahill will reach his upside than left handed teammate Brett Anderson. However, Cahill still has No. 1 starter upside. He won’t reach that status unless he significantly improves his command.

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