NORTH PORT, Fla. – Last July, the Braves drafted right-hander Blake Burkhalter. Around seven months later, he was in big-league camp as a non-roster invitee and is preparing for his first full season of professional baseball.
“It was a good experience to get my feet wet a little bit,” Burkhalter said of last year, when he pitched in Low A a couple times.
In college at Auburn, Burkhalter worked with pitching coach Tim Hudson (Yes, that Tim Hudson). The former Braves All-Star pitcher taught Burkhalter a lot. This spring, Burkhalter is working on a new pitch while continuing to fine-tune his arsenal.
“Just a bunch of experience and (a sense of) kind of how the game’s played in professional baseball as opposed to college baseball and stuff like that,” Burkhalter said when asked what he hopes to gain from this year. “I can hone in on all my skills.”
The 22-year-old Burkhalter is ranked No. 22 on MLB Pipeline’s list of top Braves prospects. But because he was drafted out of college, and thus might be more experienced, he could reach the majors within the next few seasons.
Here’s what you need to know about where Burkhalter, who on Wednesday was reassigned to minor-league camp, stands this spring.
His best pitch is his cutter
At the end of Burkhalter’s sophomore season, Hudson came to him with a thought.
“Burky, you need to pick up another pitch,” Hudson said. “Work on this cutter in the offseason.”
Burkhalter threw the pitch all offseason. “It was kind of an iffy pitch,” he said. “It was kind of getting better toward the end.” But he continued throwing it as he attempted to gain feel for the new offering.
“Man, it’s a feel pitch,” Hudson told Burkhalter. “You’ll get a feel for it, but it takes a while.”
During the summer before his junior year, Burkhalter couldn’t get movement on the pitch.
“I finally kind of felt a little bit of stuff, felt that wrist movement,” Burkhalter said.
Now, it feels natural.
The Braves view him as a starter
When the Braves selected Burkhalter with the No. 76 overall pick in the draft – the compensation pick they received for losing Freddie Freeman – the righty had just completed three seasons as a reliever.
Over 51 collegiate appearances, all in relief, Burkhalter posted a 3.01 ERA. He amassed 16 saves last season, which ended with him becoming Auburn’s first All-America reliever since 2005.
The Braves, however, view him as a starter, which he alludes to when answering a question about how quickly he could eventually move through the system because he’s older than pitchers drafted out of high school.
“I think it’s gonna all come down to how I pitch on the field,” Burkhalter said. “I would like to move quicker, and there’s a chance that if I move into a reliever role that I could move quicker. But they want me to start right now, so I’ll see how that goes for now. I think I’m gonna enjoy starting, so see how that goes.”
He’s working on a slider
Three weeks ago, Burkhalter picked up a slider. It’s a work in progress, but it’s coming along.
“I knew I needed something off my cutter, something with my depth,” he said. “I was kind of thinking curveball, but I could never get a feel for it and (team employees) said, ‘You can work a slider into this, it’ll play well with a cutter.’ But it’s kind of difficult to keep it separate (from a cutter) at times – the movement profile comes out the same.”
Burkhalter throws a cutter, four-seam fastball, changeup and slider. He said his second-best pitch – after the cutter, of course – is his four-seam fastball.
“I don’t know why I didn’t trust it a lot, but I’ve come to find out here that it’s a really good pitch up in the zone and it’s really effective, so they want me to trust my four-seam a lot more than I do now,” Burkhalter said. “So that’s something I’m working on.”
The Braves have told Burkhalter the metrics are good on his four-seamer. Specifically, he releases it low, so even if it goes downhill, it looks like it’s flat to hitters because of his low release point.
In Burkhalter’s spring debut, which came Sunday in Tampa, he pitched a scoreless inning, striking out two batters and walking one. His fastball got up to 97.7 mph on the stadium radar gun.
Burkhalter said his fastball velocity sat around 93-95 mph and then increased to 94-96 mph. Toward the end of last season, he was up to 95-97 mph. Burkhalter said he put on weight this offseason, so the velocity on his fastball and his cutter – the cutter which can be 89-90 mph – could tick up this season.
Huddy’s lessons
So, what’s it like having a former major-leaguer – and an All-Star, at that – as your pitching coach?
For one, it helps.
“You come into college and you’re kind of wondering if your stuff’s gonna be good enough to get the hitters out,” Burkhalter said. “Huddy’s like, ‘Man, if you’re all here, your stuff’s good enough, you gotta attack the zone and get ahead.’
“And then pitch sequencing and stuff like that. He’d help you with that stuff too. So in between innings and stuff, I’d be like, ‘Huddy, what are you thinking about these guys coming up?’ We’d obviously do a scouting report before the game but (this was) more like ‘Alright, these guys are doing this (in) this game, I think you’re gonna have trouble with your fastball, he’s gonna have trouble with your changeup.’”
Then there are the stories, and the lessons that came from them.
“He would tell us any kind of story in the ‘pen,” Burkhalter said. “He was full of stories, full of knowledge. We really enjoyed being around him. You can ask him anything. He was really approachable. But we just really enjoyed him around the field there. He taught a lot of guys a lot of things. It was a lot of the mental side of baseball and what you could expect here in pro ball.
“It’s just something you can’t get from any other pitching coach that hadn’t played that hadn’t played that many years in the big leagues like he did, so it was an awesome time.”
