Matt Thornton Scouting Report

This is the new mystery pitched we got in exchange for Borchard.
From what I’ve gathered, the biggest thing he has going for him is potential…lovely! Whenever people rave solely about a kid’s potential, odds are you’ve got a lame duck on your hand, a potential Joe Borchard. Let’s take a closer look though, before we write him off.

Raw stats – 5.21 ERA (gross), 0-4 record (W-L, are an overrated stat so I’ll ignore that) 13 HR (bad)

Stats don’t look that hot, but let’s keep going.

He’s a lefty. Mmmkay, so he’ll fill Damaso’s spot and be the lefty-specialist. So, since he’s the lefty specialist let’s see how he did against them;Vs. lefties last year, this guy gave up E-GAD! 0 runs. Wow, no runs in 26.2 innings. Maybe there is hope for him yet. He’s a hard thrower, that’s good. He can’t sniff the strike zone, that’s bad, but Coop might be able to straighten him out. 9 K/9, not bad. 6.63 BB/9, real bad.

I think to sum him up. He’s a hard throwing lefty, who can shut down lefty batters. His strike out rate is pretty good, but he’s hampered by an insane number of walks.

So if Coop gets him to throw strikes, we’ll be in good shape with Thornton, if not we essentially gave away Joe Borchard for free.

8 days 'til Opening Day!