Why Scouts Aren’t Ranking Taylor Jungmann in the Top 10 | The Golden Sombrero Baseball Blog | MLB, Fantasy, College & High School Baseball News

Why Scouts Aren’t Ranking Taylor Jungmann in the Top 10

Taylor Jungmann is currently 10-0 with a 0.90 ERA and a 5.79 K:BB in nearly 90 innings.  He features a fastball that sits in the low-90s that can reach above 95 mph when he needs/wants it.  His breaking ball is borderline-knockout currently, with a chance to pick up a little pace.  It currently is thrown in the high-70s with excellent depth and break in two planes.  His changeup grades as solid average to plus as well, although he doesn’t use it as often.  It is thrown in the 84-86 mph range with decent fade, though.  Most importantly, Jungmann commands all three pitches very well to both sides of the plate and has an athletic 6-foot-6, 220-pound frame that obviously projects.

I saw him throw last April in Austin against A&M with The Towel and Eat-a.  He worked in the low-90s that night and spotted everything well.  He uses his frame well to get on top of pitches, but his fastball finishes less explosively than guys like Gerrit Cole and Dylan Bundy.  Nevertheless, with his frame, arsenal, and results in the Big XII, why is Jungmann not a lock to land in the top 10 picks come June?

Knocks on Jungmann include but are not limited to an across-the-body delivery, a lack of lower body involvement, and a head bobble in his finish.  These criticisms are real and should be taken seriously, but my argument here is that none of these issues actually seem to impact the effort in his delivery.  The bobble occurs after he releases, so logically has no impact on his pitches.  He lands on line, so the across-the-body delivery probably is better described as just an illusion caused by where he starts on the rubber, which is on the extreme 3B side of the rubber.  The lack of lower body involvement in his delivery is most worrisome to me, but only because it is probably robbing him of a couple of mph’s.  A quality organization might be able to coax those out of him before he debuts in the Majors.

Basically, I view Jungmann as one of the top collegiate arms in a draft absolutely loaded with collegiate pitching depth.  After Cole, Hultzen, and Gray, Jungmann would be the next collegiate arm I would take.  A case can be made that Jed Bradley of Georgia Tech should go before Jungmann primarily due to handedness, but Jungmann has a far more developed third pitch and a better frame.  At this point, I think a good case can be made for Jungmann to be selected before Gray, but it is too close to call at this point between those two fireballing righties.  Regardless, Taylor Jungmann is comfortably inside my top-10 picks in this June’s draft.


Comments are closed.