Re: Noah Cameron is rumored for Donovan
Posted: 07 Dec 2025 21:30 pm
Take your batted ball c r a p and go home. When pitchers make quality pitches, their numbers go down. You can call it luck. I'll call it good pitching.mattmitchl44 wrote: ↑07 Dec 2025 19:37 pmHe had a BABIP of .241, which was almost .050 below league average. Probably not sustainable given that, of the 663 pitchers who have thrown at least 1000 ML innings since 1969, that would tie him for 2nd best in BABIP.CorneliusWolfe wrote: ↑07 Dec 2025 18:08 pm2.99 ERA and 1.09 WHIP in across 140 innings in his first year might suggest he could exceed the #4 starter expectation.mattmitchl44 wrote: ↑07 Dec 2025 18:00 pm FG's last write up on Cameron:
Cameron was drafted in the seventh round of the 2021 draft out of Central Arkansas not long after he had a Tommy John surgery. He had an encouraging 2023, his first full season, despite a 5.28 ERA, as he posted strong peripherals across 107.1 innings (28.3% K%, 7.5% BB%) and reached Double-A. His 2024 and early-2025 performance have been practically identical. Cameron worked 128.2 innings in 2024, and during the second half of the season was stretched out to six or seven innings per outing. This year, he made seven good Triple-A starts and was promoted to the bigs. His delivery is effortless and repeatable, and Cameron commands all four of his pitches, giving him an incredibly high floor as a prospect because he has basically no relief risk.
His best pitch is a changeup in the 80-84 mph range. It’s uncommon for pitchers with Cameron’s nearly perfect vertical arm slot to be able to turn over a changeup from this position, let alone a plus one, but even as he has climbed into the upper levels of the minors, this pitch has been generating plus miss. It succeeds more because of Cameron’s ability to locate it than its pure movement, and it’s also aided by how long he hides the baseball, and how loose and free his arm action is. The vertical nature of Cameron’s arm stroke creates backspinning ride on his fastball. It isn’t a speedy offering — it sits about 92 mph and will peak around 96 — but, again, deception and command season its effectiveness. The combination of his below-average velo and a top-of-the-zone approach to fastball location has made Cameron homer-prone for stretches in the minors, especially in 2023, when he allowed 19 bombs in 107.1 innings, and again so far this year. Seemingly in response to this, he’s upped his cutter usage in 2025, more as a way to stay off barrels than to miss bats.
Cameron also has an 80-84 mph 12-to-6 curveball, the shape of which mirrors that of his fastball. He will manipulate its direction somewhat against lefties to give it a little more of a slider look. The depth of his curveball and the quality of his changeup gives Cameron two ways to tilt with righties and generate whiffs. Against lefties, he becomes heavily reliant on his fastball. This guy is a very stable rotation piece with two plus attributes and two average ones. Though he lacks star-level stuff, Cameron is a stable, polished no. 4 starter prospect.
He also had 84.0% of his runners left on base, vs. a ML average of just 72.3%. And that 84.0% would be the best (by a wide margin since 2nd is Mariano Rivera at 80.4%) of those 663 pitchers since 1969.
So, yeah, a lot of fluky good "luck" in his results last year.
#Regressiontothemean
