Jose Campos

6’4 195 RH Pitcher

Sparknotes: Excellent fastball, potential for a nasty spilt, and a curveball he either needs to scrap or devote some serious time to.

The Body: My first thought when seeing this guy was an El Duque comp. Big legs, long arms sort of body. He still has room for growth on his frame. Good build.

Mechanics: His arm action is not what you would call smooth or textbook. The best way I can think of to describe it is ala Jose Contreras. Very long and loose but not blindingly quick. His lower half works very well as he puts those big legs to use and gets some good drive from legs. He is very tempered in his delivery. Nothing ever looks rushed… but it never looks smooth either. However. he repeats his delivery very well both out of the windup and stretch.

Fastball

4 seam–93-95 touched 96 once

2 seam–90-92

Wow. I didn’t believe my gun when I saw his first pitch arrive as a  95mph fastball. He erased any doubt by hitting that mark time and time again. He doesn’t look like he should be throwing hard so swings and misses were a plenty with this pitch. He spotted his 4 seam very well to both sides of the plate. He even touched 95 out of the stretch. I think there is still room for growth velocity wise. This was an easy 95 coming from a “rough” arm action. If he gets ironed out he could be hitting above 95 and rise quickly through the system.

He only threw his two seam to his arm side corner of the plate (inside to righties and away to lefties). The pitch didn’t have superb movement but it did have some sink right at the last second which led to a few broken bats. He did miss over the plate on a few occasions with his 2 seam but I hope it does not discourage him from throwing it. This pitch still has the potential to be a groundball inducing machine if he sticks with it.

Splitter:

87-88

There was rarely a need to throw this pitch as his plus plus fastball was more than enough to get outs. When he did throw it it turned out to be a nice pitch with above average movement. His split gets solid downward movement as it arrives at home. This pitch actually served as his change up because of the difference in velocity from his fastball. No hitters did anything worth noting on this pitch because they were either fooled by the change of speed or whiffing as the ball dived down in zone under their bats.

Curveball

73-77

When it worked it showed enough movement to avoid bats and keep the hitters honest by not allowing them to sit on a fastball. This is still a pitch in progress.  His curveball showed a big “hump” in its path to home plate. While this is fun to look at and can fool a hitter from time to time, more often than not it is a giveaway. Advanced hitters will see that hump and tee off. This is what happened to Campos against Eugene. He made the fatal mistake of throwing this pitch down and in to a lefty. The batter saw it early and just turned on it, launching the ball over the fence.