Jeremy Hefner- Potential Prospect or One Spot Start Wonder

Jeremy Hefner gets set to make his 1st career major league start against the team that drafted him back in 2007

If you follow me on twitter (@braddigan7789), you should be well informed that I am a big fan of Mets pitcher Jeremy Hefner (@JeremyHefner17).  If you don’t follow me, well then you should certainly get on that right away.  For about a month now, I have been flooding Hefner’s timeline with mentions of me saying he should have been brought up over Chris Schwinden and Rob Carson.  Last week, Sandy made me very happy by announcing that they would be calling up Hefner to meet them in Toronto for the interleague series against the Blue Jays.  Today, Hefner will be making his first career major league start.

Hefner started his career off well back in April with 3 relief innings against the Giants.  He faced 13 batters, allowing 3 hits and 1 walk.  All in all, Hefner started his career with 3 scoreless innings.  Hefner was sent back down to AAA Buffalo shortly after the game and i’ve been begging to see him pitch again ever since.

Hefner was drafted in the 5th round of the 2007 Amateur draft with the 159th overall pick by the San Diego Padres.  Some other notables from that round are Baltimore’s Jake Arrieta, Marlins Steve Cishek, Red Sox Will Middlebrooks, and Mets Zach Lutz.  Hefner had the chance to be a Met on 2 separate occasions, where he was drafted in the 46th round of the 2004 draft, and the 48th round of the 2005 draft.  Hefner did not sign on either occasion.

Hefner was selected off waivers by the Pittsburgh Pirates in November of 2011, and then claimed by the Mets off waivers just a month later.  Interesting enough, Hefner was a member of the Padres farm system while Paul DePodesta, now with the Mets, was the Executive Vice President for the Padres.

Hefner’s 6’4″ stature on the mound helps him get his fastball up to 90 MPH which is his average velocity for the 2012 season.  Hefner has pitched a total of 8 innings, allowing 7 hits and 2 earned runs with 5 strikeouts.  What I find the most impressive about Hefner is how he used the fastball to get ahead and then uses his slider as his out pitch.  His secondary pitches are excellent and he has really started to use his slider more often.

Another key about Hefner is his ability to change speeds.  As I mentioned before, Hefner has averaged around 90 MPH on the fastball.  His changeup comes in at around 83 MPH and his curveball at around 75 MPH.  His ability to change speeds at an average difference of 15 MPH gets batters off balance and he can use the fastball to set up his secondary pitches.

Hefner does need to improve his strikeout numbers.  They were very impressive when he was pitching for the Padres in low-A ball where he had over 10 K’s per 9.  Over the years, that number has dropped down significantly to a 4.86 in 7 starts for AAA Buffalo.  Although his K/9 has gone down, his BABIP has steadily improved.  In those 7 starts, his BABIP is an impressive .226.

His Ground ball to Fly ball rate in his 8 career major league innings is 1.86.  So if Hefner isn’t able to improve the strikeout numbers, the ability to keep the ball on the ground should help his cause.

There is only so much you can tell with numbers, and the key is going to be simply watching the kid pitch tonight.  I am very excited to watch his first career start and my fantasy team is excited as well.  If anyone is curious, Hefner is currently available in 98% of Yahoo fantasy baseball leagues, but if you’re in my league, you’re unfortunately in that 2% number.

Best of luck to Jeremy Hefner and I wish him a long and prosperous major league career.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQf20Us5eKc[/youtube]