Prep Baseball Report

Prospect Review: Louisville, Georgia Tech


PBR/D1 Staff

Prospect notes on the Cardinals and the Yellow Jackets by Aaron Fitt of D1Baseball during his travels around the country this fall.

LOUISVILLE

There’s plenty of reasons to be excited about the 2020 Cards, but first and foremost is a truly elite pitching staff. It starts with junior lefthander Reid Detmers (13-4, 2.78, 167-33 K-BB in 113.1 IP). Detmers worked comfortably at 91-93 mph recently during Louisville’s fall world series. He looked in midseason form, breezing through 3.1 innings with six strikeouts, repeatedly buckling knees with his filthy downer curveball at 75-76 mph and a spin rate in the 2600-2800 range. He also mixed in a couple of good 80-81 changeups, even using one as a strikeout pitch.

Detmers will pitch on Fridays, and he’ll be followed in the rotation by two high-end power righthanders, in some order: junior Bobby Miller (7-1, 3.83) and senior Luke Smith (6-1, 4.24). Scouts who have seen Miller this fall have reported that his stuff is more electric than ever, with a fastball that has reached 98 mph and a newly developed 88-92 cutter to complement his low-80s curveball and solid changeup. It’s top-half-of-the-first-round stuff; he just needs to repeat his delivery a bit more consistently and take one more step with his command.

Smith had an uneven regular season last spring working mostly as a midweek starter, but he exploded onto the prospect scene in the postseason. He showed overpowering stuff over eight innings of one-run, three-hit ball against eventual national champion Vanderbilt in the CWS bracket final, before the Commodores rallied to win in the ninth. Smith received plenty of criticism for letting his emotions get to him late in that game, but that was also a sign of his intense competitiveness, which is an asset for him when channeled right.

The Cards also have a fourth established big arm anchoring the bullpen in junior lefthander Michael Kirian (3-1, 1.69, 42-9 K-BB in 32 IP), who came out of the chute...

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