Ryan
Johnson

Overpowered Sam Houston State with 15 strikeouts and just one walk in a 110-pitch complete game. The 6-foot-6, 215-pound righty reminds me of Mark Fidrych (Detroit Tigers, 1970s) from my childhood as “The Bird'' worked feverishly fast, paced behind the mound, and filled the strike zone with a live fastball and a devil of a slider. Now Johnson doesn’t talk to the ball or pat the dirt on the mound like Fidrych, but he does pace intensely like a tiger at the zoo and presents a much different look to the hitter. With funk to his slinging arm action and a max effort delivery, he has a quick slide step and push-through instead of a traditional leg lift. He works super quick and disrupts hitters' timing. His electric heater just eats up hitters, especially when he follows it up with a slider or three. It touched 97 mph and mostly sat in the 93-95 range with plus life. Surprisingly, with such a high level of effort, Johnson is able to locate his heater on the edges of the plate, rarely missing in the middle of the zone. His low-80s slider was double-plus at times with explosive, late sweep under left-handed hitters bats for sword swings throughout the night. The Bearkats’ batters knew it was coming, but could not do anything with it. His cutter was also a plus pitch in the upper-80s. Even though Johnson doesn’t throw a changeup to slow left-handed hitter’s bats, he really doesn’t need one with his current repertoire. His ability to locate his power fastball to his arm side and both his cutter and slider to his glove side proved difficult to combat. At one point Johnson retired 16 in a row and had 12 strikeouts through seven innings on just 80 pitches. To date this season Johnson has walked just five and struck out 64 in 42 innings. He ranks in the 97th percentile of all D1 college pitchers with 70.4% of his pitches for strikes, while his chase rate (total pitches swung at outside the zone / total pitches thrown outside the zone) of 35% ranks in the 100th percentile. For reference, the D1 average is 21.6%. He will be an interesting case study as a college starting pitcher who traditionally projects as a late-inning reliever at the pro level, due to his max effort delivery. However, many thought the same regarding Max Scherzer who fell out of the top ten overall in the 2006 draft due to similar concerns. Johnson will not be picked in the top half of the first round, but after watching this outing, a starting role in pro ball is not out of the question. Regardless of the predictions of a future role, Johnson has three plus to better pitches and will be considered for selection on Day One this summer.