You can learn a lot by looking beyond the raw numbers. Meet Justin Jarvis.
- Born: February 20, 2000
- B/T: Right/Right
- 6’2″, 183-lbs
- Drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 2018 MLB June Amateur Draft from Lake Norman HS (Mooresville, NC).
The Numbers
His raw numbers are listed above courtesy of baseball-reference.com. Let’s aggregate by year then focus on the important numbers for minor leaguers:
Ignoring the teenage years spent in Rookie and A-ball, in 2021 he spent the season in High-A and put up so-so numbers.
In 2022 he started at High-A and improved across the board, now into Good territory everywhere. So he was bumped to Double-A and he regressed across the board.
In 2023 he has been in Double-A again, and once again repeating a level has made him cross into Good or Excellent territory across the board.
Getting the idea he takes a while to get used to a level? But then he’s good.
Monthly Splits
He was sterling in April, no complaints at all.
In May his strikeouts were down, his walk rate inched up, and his WHIP suffered. Not terrible.
So far in June he has righted the ship once again, and is putting up pretty good numbers.
But what is interesting is he is playing in the Southern League, and that is the league where they were experimenting with an “enhanced grip” ball, aka a pre-tacked ball. Think that might affect a pitcher’s effectiveness? You betcha. So seeing strikeout rates rise across the league is not necessarily telling us that the pitchers are so much better. They might be, I mean Andrew Abbott started the season in this league and there were people who wanted him to prove it at higher levels, and he did.
The point is we have to view Southern League results cautiously.
But hold the presses, I read that a week ago the league was ditching the pre-tacked balls, so results from now on would be “normal” results. And how did Jarvis pitch yesterday, with a normal ball?
6 IP, 9 K, 1 BB, 4 H
Yeah, he was just fine.
Handedness K% and BB%
AA (vs RH): 30%K and 9%BB. (vs LH): 27%K and 7%BB.
Not seeing a big split. He dominates righties a bit more, but he has better control against lefties. Either way, those are good numbers.
The Scouts
- Rotowire: #262 on their Top 400
- Fantrax: Not on their Top 400
- RotoProspects: Not on Top 500
- Toolshed Fantasy ($): Not on Top 500
- PARSlist ($): 75.3 (SP3/SP4)
- PLIVE+: 99
Warnings
He hasn’t dominated Double-A, so the pre-tacked ball hardly turned him into an ace. He has a K-BB% of around 20%, so in Triple-A or the majors it presumably will be lower than ideal; think higher WHIPs.
And the scouts agree, mostly putting him lower in their rankings if at all, and qualitatively being marked by PARS and PLIVE+ as more of an SP4 than an SP2.
Conclusion
So what? An SP4 is still valuable. He has a average fastball in the 93-95 mph range, but it rides up in the strike zone. Then he has a really good slider and splitter, plus a curveball. He’s got starter’s stuff, he has the body frame to add another tick on the fastball, and he looks to be in Triple-A soon.
So sometime in 2024 we should expect to see Justin Jarvis in the Brewers’ clubhouse.
You know, he was left off the 40-man roster this past winter, exposed to the Rule 5 draft, and no one took him. Their loss is the Brewers’ gain.