Writer’s note: This will be a recurrent series over the course of the year.  The goal is to take a look at a guy in the system who is doing something interesting either positive or negative, or just plain interesting.  The format may change but the goal is to not just look at the surface stats.  Given that information out of minor league camp is limited I will kick this off with a guy on track to break camp with the big league club.

I will kick off this series with the marquee prospect in the 2009 Cliff Lee trade to Seattle.  I will start off by saying I could watch Aumont pitch for days, the stuff is just so great that it is hard to not be enamored with it.  With that I acknowledge Aumont has some developmental challenges in front of him.

What do we have here:

Aumont is large and is not a great baseball athlete.  His delivery has a tendency to fall apart and affect his command.  Aumont has three 60-70 grade pitches, but out of the bullpen he has shortened the arsenal to really include only the fastball and curveball.

Fastball – PitchFx actually classifies it as a sinker most of the time.  The first thing that comes to mind is that it is hard, averaging 95.7 mph, but has been clocked as high as 98 mph.  The second big thing is the large movement to the pitch, PitchFx has it breaking 11.4″ towards the arm side, comparatively Halladay’s 2-seam fastball a similar pitch has about 9.7″ of break armside at a much lower velocity. Continue reading Prospect Spotlight: Phillippe Aumont →