ATL
Jhoan Duran, P
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Scouting report
Often exciting, and sometimes frustrating during his inconsistent early career with Arizona, both Duran and his stuff have matured since Minnesota acquired him as part of the Eduardo Escobar deal. His frame filled out and his velocity became more consistent start to start, resting in the 95-99 range and touching 101 throughout 2019. Duran also worked with better angle after the Twins acquired him, a change that improved the playability of his breaking ball without detracting from his changeup's movement, though that pitch seemed to be de-emphasized in 2019 even though it looked promising to my eye while he was with Arizona. His curveball will have more obvious humpback movement when he throws it for a strike, and has more two-plane tilt when he's trying to bury it down and away from righties. I'm doing something a little different with Duran's pitch data over on The Board since I've become aware that he has two very different types of fastballs, a four- and two-seamer with an unusual spin difference between the two. Duran works downhill rather than with flat angle, so I think the two-seamer (the org calls it a "splinker", as in splitter/sinker, and I have this pitch graded in the splitter column on The Board) will be his better fastball, and even though that pitch has the lower spin rate, it's the one you'll see represented on The Board. That amount of demarcation in spin and movement makes Duran a four-pitch starter prospect with elite velocity and fastball characteristics that will lead to less swing-and-miss than you'd expect given his velocity, similar to what Sixto Sánchez and Brusdar Graterol have exhibited during their respective big league tenures. Duran's delivery is very upright and kind of stiff, and he doesn't have pinpoint feel for location, instead just living in and around the strike zone enough to start. I think he's going to bully hitters with velo and sink en route to a fourth starter (2-ish WAR) outcome. (Alternate site)