Projecting Brendan McCurry, The Return for Jed Lowrie

On Thanksgiving Eve, the Athletics acquired infielder Jed Lowrie from the Astros in exchange for minor league reliever Brendan McCurry. If you haven’t already, you should check out Jeff Sullivan’s piece on Lowrie. This abbreviated missive focuses not on Lowrie, but on the minor league reliever who’s headed to Houston.

An undersized reliever, McCurry fell all the way to the 22nd round in 2014’s amateur draft, but his minor league performance has since lifted him to fringe prospect status. McCurry worked in relief at High-A and Double-A last season, where he pitched exceptionally well. He struck out 32% of his batters faced last season, and finished up with a 2.44 ERA.

McCurry’s numbers are excellent, but plenty of minor league relievers put up excellent numbers, especially in the lower levels. Throw in that he’s nearly 24, and he’s about as fringy as they come. KATOH forecasts McCurry for a mere 0.7 WAR through his age-28 season, making him the 771st highest-ranked prospect. Going by the stats, at least, most organizations have multiple relief prospects just as interesting as McCurry, if not more interesting. His Mahalanobis distance comps help illustrate how rarely guys like this become anything more than Triple-A depth.

Brendan McCurry’s Mahalanobis Comps
Name Year Mah Dist IP WAR
1 Austin House 2014 0.23 0 0
2 Seth Frankoff 2013 0.28 0 0
3 Adam Kolarek 2012 0.37 0 0
4 Randy Fontanez 2013 0.42 0 0
5 Zack Thornton 2012 0.47 0 0
6 Cody Ege 2014 0.59 0 0
7 Grant Dayton 2012 0.71 0 0
8 Seth Rosin 2012 0.73 6 0
9 Robert Bell 2009 0.76 0 0
10 Rob Musgrave 2010 0.77 0 0
11 Zach Quate 2010 0.82 0 0
12 Ricky Brooks 2008 0.91 0 0
13 Cody Winiarski 2013 1.08 0 0
14 Mason Mcvay 2014 1.1 0 0
15 Kyle Bellamy 2010 1.12 0 0
16 C.C. Lee 2009 1.12 34 0
17 Jose Valdez 2012 1.22 0 0
18 Christopher Nunn 2014 1.24 0 0
19 Hector Neris 2012 1.25 41 0
20 Justin Kaye 2000 1.31 3 0





Chris works in economic development by day, but spends most of his nights thinking about baseball. He writes for Pinstripe Pundits, FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. He's also on the twitter machine: @_chris_mitchell None of the views expressed in his articles reflect those of his daytime employer.

3 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
jj
8 years ago

Interestingly, if you find this sort of thing interesting, some of his top comps were in Oakland’s system too: House, Frankoff, and Thornton.