A year ago, Dinelson Lamet was heading the Lake Elsinore Storm rotation. Thursday, he'll make his big league debut for the San Diego Padres. Here's a look at what you can expect from the hard-throwing righty.
Dinelson Lamet looks the part of a starting big league pitcher. The 24-year-old Dominican is 6'4" and about 30 pounds heavier than his listed weight of 187. He has a low-effort delivery that produces a fastball that sits easily at 94-95 and can touch higher than that, and when he's on, his slider is a devastating out pitch.
The Padres signed Lamet in 2014 after problems with his documentation kept him from signing with the Phillies two years earlier, and the big righty made exactly two appearances for their DSL club that summer.
From the time he arrived stateside in 2015, he was on the radar as a prospect. But he was very much a work in progress. After being heavily protected through his first two months of professional ball, the Padres loosened the reins on him in June, and over the second half of the season, he put together a 2.05 ERA with a 66:22 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 61 innings.
As player development director Sam Geaney told us after the year, "He made great strides in terms of becoming a pitcher and in his preparation between starts."
That progress earned him the number 12 spot on our Top 20 list heading into last season.
From day one of the 2016 season, it was clear he was not going to be challenged in the Cal League. When we talked to him last May, he talked about the transition to working deeper into games and getting control of the things that are required of a pitcher in game situations.
Lamet's performance in Elsinore earned him a promotion to Double-A last June. He had a hiccup out of the gate, allowing 10 runs over 15 innings in his first three starts, but then he found his rhythm on June 25. Over the next two months he posted a 3.04 ERA with nearly four times as many strikeouts as walks.
He impressed enough that he was named our Pitching Prospect of the Year at San Antonio, and was given the chance to join El Paso for their playoff push at the end of the year.
Coming into this year, we kept Lamet at number 12 on our top 20 list, wanting to see if he could deploy his change-up effectively enough to stave off talk about a potential move to the bullpen.
By the time I got to El Paso to see him mid-April, such concerns seemed pretty silly.
While he still has bouts of wildness, and he's not needed to rely on his change-up too often in game situations, as I got on film in our most recent interview with him, he was showing it consistently in his bullpen work.
Lamet has the potential to be the whole package as a middle-of-the-rotation workhorse. He has big velocity, an impressive presence on the mound, and he has supreme conviction in his stuff.
He will certainly be challenged to show that he can keep left-handed hitters in particular in check by deploying the change-up consistently, but he has nothing left to prove at the minor league level.
There is no reason Lamet can not establish himself as a long-term contributor to the Padres' starting rotation as they await the arrival more widely-heralded pitching prospects from lower in the system starting next year.
Dinelson Lamet looks the part of a starting big league pitcher. The 24-year-old Dominican is 6'4" and about 30 pounds heavier than his listed weight of 187. He has a low-effort delivery that produces a fastball that sits easily at 94-95 and can touch higher than that, and when he's on, his slider is a devastating out pitch.
The Padres signed Lamet in 2014 after problems with his documentation kept him from signing with the Phillies two years earlier, and the big righty made exactly two appearances for their DSL club that summer.
From the time he arrived stateside in 2015, he was on the radar as a prospect. But he was very much a work in progress. After being heavily protected through his first two months of professional ball, the Padres loosened the reins on him in June, and over the second half of the season, he put together a 2.05 ERA with a 66:22 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 61 innings.
As player development director Sam Geaney told us after the year, "He made great strides in terms of becoming a pitcher and in his preparation between starts."
That progress earned him the number 12 spot on our Top 20 list heading into last season.
From day one of the 2016 season, it was clear he was not going to be challenged in the Cal League. When we talked to him last May, he talked about the transition to working deeper into games and getting control of the things that are required of a pitcher in game situations.
Lamet's performance in Elsinore earned him a promotion to Double-A last June. He had a hiccup out of the gate, allowing 10 runs over 15 innings in his first three starts, but then he found his rhythm on June 25. Over the next two months he posted a 3.04 ERA with nearly four times as many strikeouts as walks.
He impressed enough that he was named our Pitching Prospect of the Year at San Antonio, and was given the chance to join El Paso for their playoff push at the end of the year.
Coming into this year, we kept Lamet at number 12 on our top 20 list, wanting to see if he could deploy his change-up effectively enough to stave off talk about a potential move to the bullpen.
By the time I got to El Paso to see him mid-April, such concerns seemed pretty silly.
While he still has bouts of wildness, and he's not needed to rely on his change-up too often in game situations, as I got on film in our most recent interview with him, he was showing it consistently in his bullpen work.
Lamet has the potential to be the whole package as a middle-of-the-rotation workhorse. He has big velocity, an impressive presence on the mound, and he has supreme conviction in his stuff.
He will certainly be challenged to show that he can keep left-handed hitters in particular in check by deploying the change-up consistently, but he has nothing left to prove at the minor league level.
There is no reason Lamet can not establish himself as a long-term contributor to the Padres' starting rotation as they await the arrival more widely-heralded pitching prospects from lower in the system starting next year.
