Might as well have a grown to love thread to counter all the hate. Who would have ever thought a college pitcher who never had a sub 1.300 WHIP season would turn to a 2+ WAR pitcher in his first year? According to Prospects 1500, France had the following profile with no write up as the 48th best prospect in the Astros system : Tier 5: Players of interest, worth keeping an eye on, who have an outside chance of making their team’s 40-man roster Fangraphs in 2022: Houston’s lone internal addition was J.P. France, a 27-year old righty whose blink-and-you’ll-miss-it delivery messes with hitters’ timing. He throws two distinct fastballs with complementary movement profiles. All three of his additional offerings – a slider, a curveball, and a changeup – induced above-average whiff rates this season, as France issued 11 strikeouts per nine at Triple-A. He started the 2022 season as a starter, and his control over his extensive arsenal could allow for an eventual rotation spot, but he transitioned to the bullpen in the middle of the season, which may indicate he’s destined for a long relief role.
Yet another example of why I don't care about baseball's Top 100 prospects and so called experts disparaging the Astros farm system. If they can consistently churn out major league ready players that can contribute to a team with WS aspirations, I'll gladly accept that. JP, Chas, etc... keep proving everyone wrong.
The Astros have been incredibly lucky and unlucky this season. France, Chas, Diaz, Brown, and Meyers have combined for 6.7 more fWAR than FanGraphs projected in the preseason with more than a monthy to go.
Consolidating this from a few posts to put in one place. Vs LHBs France has a big 12-6 curve that destroys LHBs. A lot of whiffs and a lot of grounders. His changeup is basically a sweeper that goes the wrong direction and gives LHBs fits. Vs RHBs France's 4S fastball doesn't have any tailing action, doesn't get much rise, but wiggles. So far, he just throws this down the middle when he gets behind to avoid walks and depends on the wiggle for keeping it in the park, The wiggle has been winning. His cutter is 86 mph with great cutting action, but not much wiggle (though low active spin). I expect if he went to the Luis Garcia School of throwing the cutter outside, his Ks would jump a lot. Right now, batters are just not doing much with it even when he throws it in the zone a lot. His sweeper is garden variety and just used to keep hitters honest. Overall, I don't expect France to change unless batters start hitting the 4S out of the park more as throwing his cutter and 4S for strikes is limiting his pitch count. Though if batters do adjust to the 4S, I think using the cutter as a chase pitch will be a way to keep his ERA down and cause his FIP to more mirror his ERA.
It would have been a lot more if Chas and Diaz were allowed to play. Julks has played more games than them.
He is really good at keeping batters off balance. Very Grienke like. Obviously not change-up faster than fastball off-balance yet, but very good at mixing it up. I think what really sets him apart is that he never seems rattled. He is used to having people on base, and he pitches the same way regardless of the situation. He just doesn't have innings where everything falls apart like other pitchers.
Hard to wrap my mind around this Abreu 454 plate appearances, 634 OPS Dubon 398 plate appearances, 673 OPS Julks 312 plate appearances, 653 OPS Chas 320 plate appearances,, 918 OPS Diaz 280 plate appearances, 842 OPS Bregman and Tucker are over 500 plate appearances, Chas should be right there with them and not far behind. And if they were, there is no way to say how many games it would have made a difference in, but without a doubt we would have more wins and be in MUCH better position not just for the playoffs, but to potentially rest a couple of important arms down the stretch, instead of fighting for our playoff lives
I think Greinke throws a much wider pitch mix regardless of batter handedness. France has 5 pitches, but he really focuses on throwing three of them to a specific batter handedness. In other words, Greinke depends more on the variety of his pitch mix to keep the hitter off balance versus a given batter while France is much likelier to shove his nastier pitches for that batter type down the hitters throat.
I agree with you. I think the point I was trying to make is that none of his pitches are really nasty in themselves. None have a lot of movement other than his curveball and he's below average in velocity. He's effective because of where and when he throws his pitches.
His 86-87 mph cutter leads the majors in %Break vs Average at 137% more than average (i.e., he gets more than double the average horizontal movement). It ranks as the 11th best cutter by Stuff+. I'd say his cutter isn't putting up nasty results because he is putting it into the zone way too much and depending on his stuff. He has a near 40% whiff rate on his cutter when he keeps it out of the heart of the plate.
We seem to have a lot of pitchers in the org that throw the Garcia-style sweepy mid-80s cutter. I wonder if that's just by chance.
