Why you should be excited about Emmet Sheehan's debut
The top pitching prospect is being promoted from Double-A to the majors.
In a fairly shocking move, the Dodgers are calling up Emmet Sheehan straight from Double-A to make his debut tonight against San Francisco. Juan Toribio of MLB.com was first on the news late last night.
Dave Roberts had said after last night’s win that the Dodgers would be calling up an arm for the series opener against the Giants, but he did not name who it would be. As everyone on Twitter speculated, names like Gavin Stone, Matt Andriese and Landon Knack were thrown around the most. Stone and Andriese were both on full rest and Knack has nearly three years of Double-A experience under his belt.
Sheehan seemed like an unlikely candidate to say the least. Sheehan is just 23 years old and has only pitched in 14 total games at the Double-A level. He has thrown just 137 innings as a pro. Additionally, Sheehan was not going to be eligible for the Rule 5 draft until after the 2024 season, meaning the Dodgers would not have to protect him with a 40-man roster spot for nearly a year and a half.
News broke last week that Sheehan and Landon Knack were both being promoted to Triple-A, meaning the Dodgers likely called an audible very recently to instead send Sheehan to Los Angeles. He will now be thrown right into the fire, facing off in the premier rivalry against the Giants as his introduction to the major leagues.
The Dodgers took Sheehan in the sixth round of the 2021 MLB Draft out of Boston College. He showed some promise there, striking out over 12 batters per nine innings, but the results were not fully there. That allowed the Dodgers to snag Sheehan with the 192nd pick, where he is looking like a huge steal.
Sheehan has a unique approach on the mound. Despite a large 6-foot-5, 220 pound frame, Sheehan throws from a lower arm slot that is one of the keys to his success. His fastball has played among the best in the minor leagues because of how well it works out of his less typical arm slot. Sheehan’s delivery looks like he is really down low in his legs and then the ball explodes out of his hand. The high fastball out of his hand generates an absurd amount of whiffs, completely overmatching hitters from both sides of the plate.
Since entering the organization, Sheehan has gained velocity on his fastball that is a big part of the dominance he has found. “When I came to the Dodgers last year they had me on a prep-routine program, doing all this extra stuff I hadn’t really heard about. I think the mobility/stability aspect of it has been huge for me,” Sheehan said in an interview with David Laurila of FanGraphs last August. Sheehan’s fastball now rides in the upper 90s, and he might even end up touching triple digits occasionally in his career.
The pitch that made the most headlines last year for Sheehan was his changeup. The Dodgers have a plethora of right-handers with absurdly good changeups, and Sheehan’s is near the very top. It has a double digits velocity difference from his fastball and dives underneath barrels consistently with around 18 inches of horizontal break. Paired off of his electric fastball, his changeup is an absolute weapon against left-handed hitters.
Sheehan has made changes to his slider since getting to the Dodgers, and it has become his third most used pitch, overtaking his curveball. He throws the slider hard, riding it into the upper 80s. That velocity plays well as a middle ground between his hard fastball and slower changeup, rather than the power changeup some big leaguers are throwing now. His slider plays primarily as a put-away pitch against righties, but he throws it for strikeouts against left handers occasionally as well, usually making it look a bit more cutter-ish in those situations.
In-zone whiffs are one of Sheehan’s specialties, generating them at a level that is extremely rare. He leads all of full-season Minor League Baseball in swinging strike percentage, turning in an absurd 19.7% clip so far this season. The ability to get hitters to whiff that often is a direct contributor to his strikeout rate that eclipses 40%. Even when batters can manage make contact, they are only hitting .131 against Sheehan.
The style that Sheehan pitches with is different from the way many pitchers approach getting outs. He has ground ball rates that are low and have only gotten lower as his career has gone on. That is largely due to the frequency with which he throws his fastball up in the zone. That is where it is effective, and even though that might mean allowing more flyballs and, in turn, home runs, Sheehan has stuck with it and gotten huge results.
Sheehan was very impressive in his first full season as a pro last year. He spent the majority of the campaign in High-A, where he posted a 38.7% strikeout rate and began to turn heads. He was promoted to Tulsa late in the year before showing out in the Arizona Fall League. Now, after beginning 2023 back in Double-A, he has been one of the best pitchers in professional baseball.
Through 12 games on the mound, Sheehan is 4-1 with a 1.86 ERA, which is third best among minor leaguers with at least 50 innings. Sheehan has gotten more strikeouts while allowing less baserunners than any other time in his career. His 0.88 WHIP is a testament to how efficiently he has carved through the competition in 2023.
The biggest thing to watch in this jump for Sheehan will be how he handles the better plate discipline of major-league hitters. His walk rate of 10.9% has still left some doubt about his strike throwing consistency, and it will be even tougher for him to generate chases on the big stage. Sheehan’s big stuff will hopefully help him keep generating whiffs even as he learns to reign his pitches into the strike zone more consistently.
While the Dodgers’ promotion of Sheehan to the majors is certainly aggressive, there is not much to suggest he isn’t ready for the challenge. Los Angeles evidently sees something very special in the right-hander and trusts him to help a struggling pitching staff immediately. Sheehan’s athletic style on the mound is fun to watch, and fans in Los Angeles will be officially introduced to the rising star tonight in the Ravine.