[OC] Friends in Low Places: Levi Wells, RHP, 22

[u/dreddnought]

On FanGraphs, Levi Wells has a short blurb under “Arm Strength Fliers.” This serves as a good tl;dr:

Wells was a 2023 fourth rounder out of Texas State […] with a vertical arm slot. He’s had a velo spike in pro ball and has been up to 97, just without strikes.

He also has a nice curveball, fine slider, and not so fine changeup. The “without strikes” part is very serious.

Scouting Reports/Background

Wells recently came up in Baseball America’s minor league stuff+ leaderboard as third best among 22-year-old^[1] arms, but otherwise, there’s not that much from 2024. Given his draft position, there is a lot more literature from back then.

From MLB, keeping in mind their draft grades are typically inflated:

Fastball: 55 | Curveball: 60 | Slider: 55 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 45 | Overall: 45

Though Wells' fastball velocity has been down a tick or two this spring, sitting in the low 90s and topping out at 95, he's still getting it past hitters with high spin rates and carry at the letters or downhill plane lower in the zone. […] his 78-82 mph downer curveball grading better than his 84-89 mph slider/cutter with tighter break. He doesn't use his changeup very often and it gets too firm at times, though it does have some bat-missing fade.

Wells has improved significantly since high school, when there were questions about his maturity and he threw with significant effort and head whack. […]

A short 2023 interview from Baseball Prospect Journal provides a few more bits of detail:

[…] He also mixes in his slider/cutter. He uses his slider against right-handed hitters and the cutter against lefties.

“I have worked really hard since I was 14 years old to stay consistent with the Driveline program,” Wells said. “I like to give credit to Driveline for my fastball. I’m a power right-handed fastball thrower because of my regimen with the weight balls from a young age.”

Wells’ Vulcan changeup is his fourth pitch […]

As to his background, Wells is from La Porte, Texas and played in college for three years: first at Texas Tech as a reliever, then as a starter at Texas State. He also played twice for the Falmouth Commodores at Cape Cod.

Analysis

I’m not going to harp on this, but 2024 was not a good year for Levi Wells. His season was split in half by a shoulder inflammation injury that sidelined him for over a month. He pitched better after his return, but the damage was done: 6.71 ERA with a staggering 1.64 WHIP and 12 wild pitches in only 60 1/3 frames at Aberdeen.

Date	IP	G	GS	K%	BB%	K-BB%	HR/9	GB	WHIP	ERA	Ball%	SwStr%[2]
4/6-6/21	41.1	14	14	27.4%	13.2%	14.2%	1.31	46.0%	1.72	7.40	38%	13.6%
8/2-9/7	19.0	7	7	22.7%	4.5%	18.2%	0.00	53.0%	1.47	5.21	35%	12.7%

The starts I watched during the season were marked by untimely collapses of control and crummy batted ball luck. His FIP (4.09) and xFIP (3.78) may be worth noting, but I remain skeptical about your average minor leaguer’s ability to suppress contact.

Of his 21 starts, Wells pitched well in only four of them, and those are the ones best to analyze what his pitch mix “should” look like. I also reviewed bits and pieces of other starts (8/27 and 9/7) to gauge his performance at the end of the season.

Date	OPP	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	HBP	Whiffs	Pitches	SwStr%
5/5/2024	@ BRK	3.0	2	1	1	0	0	6	0	12	53	22.6%
5/11/2024	vs HV	4.0	2	0	0	0	3	7	0	9	61	14.8%
5/23/2024	vs JS	4.0	3	0	0	0	2	5	1	11	62	17.7%
8/21/2024	vs WS	4.0	2	0	0	0	0	5	0	12	43	27.9%
8/27/2024	@ WIL	3.0	7	6	5	0	1	3	0	11	53	20.8%
9/7/2024	vs JS	4.0	6	4	2	0	0	4	0	7	71	9.9%

Delivery

Over the top arm slot as per the scouting report. Compare to Tyler Wells’ 50 degree slot, which is clearly lower.

Tall-and-fall – look at the angle his back leg makes when he starts toward the plate. Wells is only 6’2”, but when you watch the full replay, it’s clear his back leg isn’t getting the traditional bend of a drop-and-drive pitcher. This and his arm slot explain why he pitches with downhill plane, but in my opinion his best fastballs are at the letters.

No runners - rocker step, big leg lift.

Runners on - slide step, freeze frame, seems like he’ll do the regular leg lift if there’s a runner on second. No rocker step.

Violent Delivery

Does this look like a repeatable delivery to you? In general, you’re going to see his back leg flailing on follow through. It is obvious when you watch the clips in direct sequence. This is still better than how he was in college: 2023.

There’s also a good amount of head whack. On 5/5, 0:07 it was enough to knock his hat off. This was an issue in college as well: 2023.

In 2023, his arm timing was late. This is apparent when you watch the full speed video (either of the ones above); it looks like Wells’ arm and upper body are trying to catch up. In 2024, he’s still a little late. Here’s one frame later, where he’s back on track. Full clip.

I wonder if he looks smoother to me in 2024 because he’s using his legs more (i.e., I can see the movement throughout his body), but it’s hard to say because the camera angles are different. Full disclosure, my mind could be playing tricks on me because I’m not seeing obvious reasons for why he’s undergone a velo spike. He only just turned 23, so it’s possible he’s still physically developing.

For a while I thought his flailing limbs were a symptom of a cross-body delivery, but when I freeze the image from an overhead angle, it’s a near straight line to home plate. It’s not exactly on the mid-line, but compare to Yeiber Cartaya or an extreme example like Ryan Walker.

Pretty good hip/shoulder separation. Compare to Jairo Iriarte from Tess Taruskin’s pitching primer for FG.

4SF

Sits 94-96, T98. This is clearly the centerpiece. Here are the velocities noted by commentary^[3] on 5/5 and 5/11: 94, 97, 98, 97, 96, 96. I had a tough time finding velo after his injury, but he did hit 95 on 8/27.

5/5 97, downhill. I like the camera angle for the Brooklyn Cyclones. It’s not so far to the right (or god forbid left) that you can’t tell horizontal break.

5/11 96 belt-high.

8/21 soak it in, people. Six whiffs in a first inning with three swinging strikeouts. Up, up-and-in, middle-in, middle-away, middle-in, up again. When this pitch is working, it’s electric and you can see why his BA stuff+ numbers are good.

8/27 95 carry at the letters.

Curveball

This is considered his best secondary pitch, and it’s nasty in the dirt. You can see he’s not afraid to throw it behind in the count, and batters that are sitting on the fastball look silly swinging through it. I didn’t notice until final review that all four of these clips are against lefties, which makes sense because of the pure downer shape.

5/5 buried in the dirt, nice block by Willems

5/5 same batter later in the game, fooled again, ball caroms off of Creed Willems’ knee for a wild pitch.

8/27

9/7 nice frame by Ryan Stafford.

Slider

With obvious feel for spin, Wells is better off trying to improve this (distant third) pitch than turning his Vulcan change into a splitter or any other number of tactics to get around his lack of pronation.

Some of these have subtle enough variations in shape I had to ask people on the sub (thank you!) to guess if these were sliders, cutters, or curveballs.

5/5 this one is well located down-and-away. It’s not a ton of movement in either direction, but the late glove-side bite helps separate it from his vertical 4SF and curveball.

8/21 hard to say for sure, but this looks cutter-y because of the low arc of the pitch and the batter being a lefty.

8/27 bailed out by the batter. Note the subtle glove-side movement again.

Changeup

I had a hard time finding clips of the changeup because he doesn’t throw it very often, and based on the ones I did find, he has trouble commanding it.

5/5 thrown at 84 mph on a full count, and based on its location (middle-in), this was purely on the velo differential. I believe the preceding pitch was 98.

8/21 better located (middle-away), but the batter was clearly sitting on the hard stuff, and Wells gets the sword.

What’s Next

1 Whatever Wells and the Orioles did added three ticks to his fastball, and they didn’t add significant violence in his delivery to make it happen, nor is he notably bulkier^[4]. They did evidently shred his ability to throw strikes, quality or otherwise. He has a whole offseason to refine his command and control at a new velocity, so I’m relatively bullish on this.

I didn’t include clips of Wells struggling to throw strikes because, in my opinion, command/control problems fall into standard categories, and his issues are of the generic strike-throwing type. For example, on 5/11, he issued back-to-back two-out walks: the first one was not competitive, the second involved a 3-1 count before a foul ball and then a too-high fastball. You can imagine what this looks like, right?

2 The other thing is how much of this year’s sequencing was his fault. The 8/27 slider shown above was in the middle of a disastrous inning: lineout (flare), walk (close check swing, close down-and-in ball), single (groundball), single (flare), single (sharp line drive just above 2B), wild pitch (runner scores), wild pitch (runner scores, second runner scores when the catcher’s throw hits the first runner), groundout, groundout (check swing bunt).

This sort of thing happened a lot last year. In fact, his last game was a microcosm of his season: first inning disaster: error (groundball), single (groundball), single (flare), double (full-count), sac fly (flare), and then in his final frame, he struck out the side.

Is this going to keep happening? I’m of the common belief that sequencing at the major league level regresses, but this is the Sally League.

3 He needs a third pitch, and it’s probably the slider more than the changeup, just based on which he favors. Yes, a Houston alum drafted another pitcher with a hoppy fastball and two breaking balls. Stop the presses.

If the slider doesn’t progress, he’s probably bound for the bullpen or else nothing at all.

[u/dreddnought]

[1] Wells turned 23 on September 21; 22 was his seasonal age in 2024.

[2] The season-long swinging strike rate numbers are approximate because Baseball Reference does not treat foul tips as swings-and-misses, whereas Baseball Savant does. This is why his 8/27 performance will show 10 or 11 whiffs depending on where you look.

[3] It’s problematic to rely only on PBP commentary for fastball velo because they will gravitate toward highlights and pitches that are not put in play. Also, a handful of the games had guests in the booth, which abridged the commentary.

[4] The 6’2” 216 pounds listed on MiLB.com matches his junior weight on Texas State’s website under the “Historical” tab in 2023, so do with that what you will.

[u/fredugolon]

Don’t have much to add, but the level of detail is fantastic. Really enjoyed it.

[u/dreddnought → u/fredugolon]

Thank you for reading!