Milwaukee Brewers Prospect Josh Hader Has A Consistency Problem

Milwaukee Brewers Prospect Josh Hader has been throwing flames through MiLB lineups start after start, striking out 46 through his first seven starts. But he’s only averaged 4.88 IP for each start, showing his lack of consistency.

There’s no doubt that Milwaukee Brewers Prospect Josh Hader has stuff. His primary pitch is his fastball that sits in the mid-90s and has been clocked as high as 98 MPH.  His slider has been thrown with success to both lefties and righties.

His K/9 rate so far is an incredible 11.94, and he’s only walked twelve batters this season and has posted a BB/rate of 3.12.

However, there’s more to quality pitching than tons of strikeouts and not a lot of walks.

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In 65 starts through his career, Hader has completed seven innings just four times. Too many times Hader has found himself in a 3-0 count having to get himself out of the jam.

In an outing where Hader threw four scoreless innings, he threw 83 pitches before being pulled from the game. A theme which has been familiar with Hader throughout his career.

That is, he has a tendency to throw a lot of pitches in short starts. Part of his strikeout success has come from his unique windup which has tended to throw batters off.

There is no doubt that Hader has been outshining other pitching prospects in the Brewers farm system. His consistency, however, is keeping him in the minors and as Minor League Ball points out, the success of his game lies with his deception from his windup.

There’s no doubt that Hader will be a major league starter. As his skills stand now, at best he will be an average starter (probably in the number three-five slot) or even a middle relief guy.

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He does, however, have the tools to be a quality starter and even an ace at some point, if he can become consistent.

Whether he becomes a quality starter is up to Hader in his final stage of development. The raw talent is there, and the Milwaukee Brewers have the system to turn him into a quality pitcher.

They’re rebuilding, so he has plenty of time to become consistent. They’ve also had prospects turn into quality starters-most recently Yovani Gallardo, who was an all-star and won the Silver Slugger award in 2010 with the Milwaukee Brewers.

Hader was one of four quality prospects acquired by the Milwaukee Brewers in the trade that sent Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers to Houston.