PEN
Casey Mize, P
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Scouting report
There are pitchers ahead of Mize on the top 100 who have worse stuff, or whose repertoires aren't as deep, or who have a shorter track record of performance if we look back to Mize's time at Auburn. But we're sufficiently scared of Mize's injury history (a strain that required a PRP injection in college, shoulder inflammation in 2019) to slide him behind players of a similar talent. If he stays healthy, then he'll be a (WAR-based) No. 2 starter, capable of pitching at the top of a contender's rotation, and likely have dominant stretches over the next half decade. Mize's fastball doesn't have bat-missing carry but when he's totally healthy, it's hard and he locates it as well as his plus-plus splitter. We don't think his upper-80s "slider" has the length to miss bats and instead think it'll eventually be used to induce weak contact rather than as a putaway pitch. His curveball, which Mize has better demarcated from his "slider" since entering pro ball, might emerge as the finishing weapon. There remains a large swath of the industry that is fearful of cutter/splitter guys, and we don't know if that's justified but it certainly impacts how teams internally line up the Tigers prospects. What we do think is that players who have been hurt in the past are the ones most likely to get hurt again, and while we know it's begun to feel like every pitcher gets hurt at some point, there's more smoke here than in most other cases. We have a Masahiro Tanaka comp on Mize. (Alternate site, MLB)