Red Sox prospect Isaac Coffey doesn’t throw hard. That’s one of the reasons the 22-year-old right-handed pitcher was unsure if any MLB team would draft him in 2022.
He expected to be either a late-round pick at best or an undrafted free agent signee. But the Red Sox selected him at the midway point, taking him in the 10th round (309th overall) out of Oral Roberts.
“I don’t have the velocity that a lot of guys do,” Coffey said during a recent phone interview with MassLive. “It’s very below average velocity. That’s for sure. That’s something we’re working on obviously. But knowing those things, I wasn’t expecting even the 10th round. It came as a little bit of a surprise for me. But that was pretty cool, for sure.”
His fastball sits in the upper-80s and low-90s. Still, Coffey is dominating like a power pitcher at High-A Greenville. He leads the South Atlantic League with 62 strikeouts in 43 ⅔ innings (12.6 strikeouts per nine innings).
“I felt like I had something to prove, for sure,” Coffey said. “Everybody’s got to have that mental edge and that confidence.”
Coffey, who signed for $7,500, has a 2.89 ERA and 0.98 WHIP in eight starts. Opponents are batting only .218 against him. Has he surprised even himself with how well he has pitched?
“Part of me is a little bit surprised but part of me knows I can do this and knows I can dominate at this level,” Coffey said. “And it’s just putting these days together every day. It’s a long season. So it’s putting these days together to ultimately get moved up. I’d say yeah, a little bit surprised but at the same time not.”
The sidearmer throws a four-seam fastball, changeup, slider and cutter.
“I create a horizontal spread that’s not seen too often,” Coffey said. “A lot of guys (work) north and south. I have the east and west. And so I think that helps a little bit, for sure.”
He said command also has helped him increase his strikeout rate. Coffey has the fewest walks (7) of any South Atlantic League pitcher who has thrown more than 40 innings.
“I think leading to all the strikeouts is really getting ahead,” Coffey said. “You’ve got to get to (two strikes) before you can strike a guy out. And that’s being able to get there early and get there without having two or three balls already so you can actually expand out of the strike zone. … And just keeping the hitters uncomfortable and having a steady mix with all four pitches.”
From a three-quarter arm slot to sidearm
Coffey was a two-way player at Oral Roberts. He played third base and first base in addition to pitching.
He threw from a three-quarter arm slot his freshman year when he tossed 61 ⅓ innings and then again during his sophomore year when he logged only 3 innings because COVID shortened the season.
“Going into my junior year, my pitching coach was watching me take ground balls at third base,” he said. “I was kind of slinging it from a little bit more of a sidearm (angle), a little subby (submarine). And he said it looked more natural.”
Coffey and his coaches decided to experiment with some different arm angles during a bullpen session.
“We settled in between where I was and sidearm,” Coffey said. “Then my senior year, I kind of naturally got a little bit lower. It wasn’t intentional or anything. So that’s kind of where I’m at now. It’s basically sidearm.”
Coffey posted a .363 on-base percentage in 131 games (325 plate appearances) at Oral Roberts. But the coaching staff wanted him to focus more on pitching by his junior season in 2021.
“They kind of wanted me to be the guy on the mound, the Friday night guy,” Coffey said. “And they wanted to protect me a little bit. So I just stopped hitting as much. I would come in for pinch hits or I’d start against lefties mostly in the DH spot.”
He posted a 2.81 ERA, 92 strikeouts, 13 walks and a .225 batting average against in 14 starts (86 ⅓ innings) as a junior in 2021.
“I had a good year on the mound. It was kind of like, ‘All right. Most likely I’ll be a pitcher,’” he said. “I still wanted to hit though. I got less ABs my senior year but I still got to get in there too, and that was fun.”
Adding a sweeping slider, cutter
Coffey threw a fastball, curveball, slider and changeup during college. He eliminated his curveball this past offseason and developed a new type of slider.
“It’s more of a sweeping slider straight across basically,” he said.
He also added a cutter to his mix this past offseason.
His changeup has always been his best secondary pitch. It’s his go-to pitch, even against right-handed batters. He said he’ll “throw it to anybody.”
“Usually changeups don’t have a lot of spin,” Coffey said. “I’ve got a lot of spin on mine and I throw it with a four-seam changeup grip basically. And I think the spin, it just looks exactly like my fastball. It’s got good depth on it. So I can throw my fastball up in the zone and I throw my changeup off of that and it will be down in the zone. It will get swings-and-misses but it mostly gets soft contact. Just a good speed differential. It doesn’t get squared up too often.”
He has good feel for his new slider and cutter, which he has used to keep hitters off his fastball.
“And then finishing with the fastball or finishing with the slider or even the changeup,” he said. “I think getting ahead is huge and having conviction with every pitch I throw is huge, too.”
Adding fastball velocity
Coffey experimented with a two-seam/sinker grip during spring training but the pitch didn’t move as much as his four-seam fastball does.
“With the arm slot, it just has natural run and a little bit of carry,” he said about his four-seamer.
He sat around 90-91 mph with his fastball during spring training. But his fastball velocity dipped to 87-89 mph at the start of this season. He studied video after his fifth start to see if something in his mechanics was causing the velocity drop.
“I was leaning over a little bit too much and I wasn’t allowing my arm to really rotate and my body to rotate and have that room to rotate,” he said. “So we made that change and just started thinking about staying back and staying upright a little bit more.”
He has sat 89-91 mph in his past three starts.
“And in each outing, it’s climbed a little bit,” he said.
The Red Sox have ways they think they can increase Coffey’s velocity. Boston obviously has had success with sidearmers. John Schreiber’s velocity significantly ticked up after Boston claimed him off waivers from the Tigers. The hope is for Wyatt Mills, a sidearmer who Boston acquired from the Royals in the offseason, to take the same path as Schreiber. But Mills has been sidelined so far this season with a flexor injury.
“There’s a drill package that the coaches and some guys in the organization have put together for me,” Coffey said about ways to increase velo. “And we’ve been hammering that. And it also comes down to how strong you are and the stuff in the weight room and mobility. So that’s been an emphasis even during the season — getting more mobile, being stronger and hammering down those drills.”
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What Coffey lacks in velocity right now he makes up for in command.
He averaged 1.8 walks per nine innings in college. He has averaged 1.8 walks per nine innings in pro ball, including 1.4 walks per nine innings this year.
“The command has always been a part of who I am as a pitcher, for sure,” Coffey said. “Not walking guys and just getting that first pitch strike and getting ahead of the batter.”
Full article can be found at: https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2023/05/red-sox-sidearm-prospect-leads-league-in-ks-i-had-something-to-prove.html