Dodgers Launch Angle: In Ben We Trust, Ben Casparius

been conspirac I'm going to go ahead and say it he has maybe this side of Bobby Miller maybe the best stuff of any of the young pitching prospects in the entire Dodgers organization his bag of offe stuff breaking balls is that good and now that his his fast ball is caught up now that it's hitting 98 not saying he's throwing at 98 every pitch but it's touching 98 and it's consistently 96 now now that it's fast is caught up to his breaking ball stuff it's giving him margin for error that's allowing him to feel like he can attack the Zone a little bit more is the stuff has always been there I think he might have the second best stuff of any of the young pitchers in the Dodgers organization you nailed it on the head though Austin for him it is all about staying consistent for me I think the biggest mental adjustment I made from my first year was just realizing like hey you know numbers are going to say a certain thing on paper but if you go out there with a certain objective whether it's a bullpen session and and like and you know I'll touch on a little more obviously but there was so much work that went into what was going on with my Arsenal and you know how we were going to attack lineups and navigate through a lineup but that's the whole thing it's all process oriented it's hey how can I use this pitch a little bit better so there were certain games where it was hey I'm going to be really precise with my fast ball or I'm going to you know fast ball needs to be in zone above 55% stuff like that so I I kind of and I kind of started realizing that you know you're going to there's going to be days where things are great and then it's like okay this wasn't great so let's get this here and here and just it's a building block of what really makes guys big league pitchers so and I realized that pretty early on I've been saying it for it seems like since July of last year this guy is throwing the ball really well the results are coming we saw it in the Arizona fall league he'd have a great outing he was the Arizona fall league pitcher of the week one week then the next out can give up three or four runs so it's been a little bit on and off from the results but I've been saying stay patient because the process is there he's throwing the ball better than he ever has been and the results are coming that's where again like the mental growth of just you know we're on the right path um back to the point about the vo I think I want to say last year I think average fast ball is 93.2 or in the low like low 93s and this year it was on average I think 94 and then the last month of the season I think it was above 95 so that's something that we were really taking a look at a deep dive like hey you know what like V just it's it is how it is it helps your stuff play the harder you throw the harder it is for guys to make adjustments and that's obviously going to make my my off speed stuff which is my bread and butter better so that was a big step up for me and now it's hey like when do we throw this when do we throw that you know I added the curve ball I know that's one of the big steps I took in double A just you know when are we going to use the curve ball it was only one of those it was a pitch this year where I think I was getting swings 10% of the time so in that case it's really important for me to land it in the zone and that developed and got better and better that was a big piece to the success I was having the last month and a half or two months of the season and then in stin in the fall league as well so it's just a learning game it's it's figuring out when to do what and you know taking a deep dive into the hitters and seeing you know how I can use my stuff to the best of my ability and to obviously you know disrupt what the guys are trying to do at the plate that's the beauty of minor leagues and I try to tell people this don't look at a box score and evaluate guys on this they're working on this they're trying to make a transition here so it doesn't you know the adjustments they're making don't always show up as far as the statistic goes Ben casparus I felt like last year at the end of last year he's throwing better than he ever had yeah I I completely agree with you so once again I was fortunate enough to be able to coach casparius for the first half of 2021 in Rancho went up to Great Lakes the second half last year endured some hardships for sure you know growing pains right that's kind of expected for everybody and then he went back to Great Lakes this year and absolutely dominated the league got up to us really early on in the year and was a seamless fit for us I you exactly what you said you you can't you can't compare how people are doing just on how many runs they're giving up and how many innings they're pitching a lot of these guys are on Extreme pitch counts number one so like you know their their ups are going to be extremely limited just from a workload aspect but on top of that casparius really hit his stride the last month and a half of the year and then he carried that over into the fall league and and it was awesome to see him get the opportunity to go pitch in the fall league he very well deserved it um but once again he has a fastball in the mid 90s was up to 98 this past year which was a PR for him which was cool to really see especially being at the end of the year didn't miss a single start last year and on top of that has a slider that is the centerpiece of his Arsenal and introduced multiple different pitches you know he went through an phase where he had the cutter to left but the cutter kind of dissipated and we turned that efforts into a curveball towards the end of the year and he has this change up that he works on so I mean he has an arsenal to get both sided hitters out and you know so had a couple hard outings when he first got up to us but you're when you're in a hitter friendly environment that's going to happen sure and he stayed the course and really dove into looking ahead to who he was going to face when he would go into his bullpens picking a couple hitters out just randomly and then looking them up on his own taking that game plan into his Bullpen and then working strictly counts and you know once again his his success towards the end of the year was the ability to throw his pitches around the Zone especially as fastball um his fastball control got a lot better throughout the year and on top of that he started increasing his vo which whenever you're starting to throw harder you're going to increase your margin of error regardless of the impact the give you more confidence to throw your fast ball in the zone when you get that more margin for error absolutely and on top of that too so like his fast ball is almost a complimentary piece to what his slider does he's a he's a little unique in terms of we talked about EMT who is you know fastball Centric um casparius has a really good fast ball but his slider is very good so like he almost can build off of his Arsenal from a different aspect than some of the other guys would just because he has the ability to spin a break ball at at an elite level Ben casparus really was the table setter really was the guy who went out there had his AAA debut pitch so incredibly imp impressive you saw the slider which a lot of people Rave about just how great just how dominant it is the fast ball was touching upwards of 97 the spin rate on his pitches were absolutely nasty yesterday and you take it a little bit for a grant it's all you don't know how accurate always some of that stuff are but a lot of his secondary pitches were getting close to almost 3,000 spin rate with his slider the curveball with everything that he's able to generate with all the different pitches that he's able to pitch with the spin that he's able to get you get incredibly excited if you're the Dodgers about Ben casparus now making the jump to Triple A I'm excited to see how he's able to how his stuff is able to translate against Triple A hitters and if it translates as well as we think it's going to you could be seeing Ben cirious being that part of that next wave of pitchers that are going to make their way to the daughters part of it is just trusting the coaching staff I mean they I mean you know how it is we pump out guys that are throwing upper 90s all the time it's something that you know buy into the process you know be willing to learn be willing to try different things in the middle of the week even if the start is in two days or so so I think just you know being able to absorb information and then just obviously just you know try on error in bullpens and see where it takes you and I think this guy is a limit being a Dodger