I know he’s only pitched a grand total of four minor league innings, but I’ve had a growing fascination with 2nd round pick David Kopp as of late.
Background:
Background is about all we have on Kopp right now. He lettered four times in baseball at Coral Springs High School in FL. Baseball America ranked him the 76th best high school prospect in 2004 and he signed with Clemson. They also had this blurb-
“Clemson signee RHP David Kopp has shown one of the state’s better breaking balls, a sweeping slider that handcuffs lefthanded hitters. His 87-89 mph fastball, three-quarters slot and projectable 6-foot-3, 185-pound frame reminds some of Cardinals starter Jason Marquis.”
Not a Bipolar Betty comparison! Marquis actually was a top 100 prospect once, so don’t get your Superoos in a bunch.
Scouting:
BA rated Kopp the 81st best national prospect going into the 2007 draft. Here’s his scouting report from BA:
…Somewhat enigmatic, Kopp has been inconsistent with his control and velocity, but at his best he flashed middle-of-the-rotation stuff. He stayed behind and on top of the ball better during his delivery this spring and improved his direction to the plate. His fastball ranges from 91-96 mph, sitting at 92. He gets sink and run from his three-quarters arm slot, though he doesn’t repeat his release point. His changeup is a weapon, but his 81-83 mph slider shows potential of becoming a legitimate put-away pitch. He needs to improve his mental approach and confidence, especially in tight situations. Kopp has more upside than the typical college righthander…
and here’s the one from MiLB.com (w/video)
Kopp throws his fastball in the 89-93 mph range and can sit comfortably at 92 mph. Kopp’s slider is average right now, but projects to be an above-average pitch. Like the slide, the changeup is average now with the chance to be better in the future. His command, especially of his fastball is below-average. He’s got average makeup. He pitches backwards at times — which isn’t his fault — but he’s improved with that over time. Kopp has a Steve Trachsel body type with some room to grow. Kopp doesn’t get much attention because of teammate Daniel Moskos, but he does have the possibility of three very good Major League offerings. His command and delivery have been a mess in the past, but he’s improved on the delivery and has shown the ability to get better over time. Moskos clearly will be the first Clemson pitcher selected, but teams would do well not to look past the second.
Aaron Fitt also had this snippet in a recent chat of his:
His stuff at Clemson was very good…[he] runs his fastball up to 94 mph, and it’s effortless. He never completely put it together in college, but he could take off in pro ball if he can stay healthy.
Pitching mechanics guru Chris O’Leary was kind enough share a frame by frame look at Kopp’s delivery, check it out. Any of you coaches or ex-players can feel free to weigh in.
The lack of fastball command an obvious strike on his resume, but the the possibility of possessing three above average offerings is intriguing. I’m giving Kopp this profile is that like Clayton Mortensen, Kopp has some unevenness with performance and what his upside. The Cardinals obviously were impressed with his mechanics and stuff, taking him in the 2nd round. Also like Mortensen, Kopp is a groundball machine.
Performance:
Here are some of his college numbers.
His unimpressive strikeout rate caused me to howl some on draft day, but that’s a pretty outstanding ground out to fly out ratio. In 4 innings with Batavia Kopp walked three, struck out three and only 10% of the balls he allowed in play were not grounders.
Be sure to also check out his collegesplits stat page.
The Future:
I also asked O’Leary of what he thought of Kopp, and he summed it well, saying, “It’s impossible to guarantee that a pitcher is going to be successful, because there are so many variables involved. However, David Kopp has two things going for him that I think increase the odds he will be successful. First, he has classic mechanics that resemble those of Greg Maddux and Justin Verlander. Second, he has tremendous tailing movement on his fastball. Now, let’s see if he can pull everything else into place.”
The axiomatic answer is we’ll know a lot more after this season. He suffered an ankle injury and that’s why he was limited to just 4 innings. I’m going out on a limb and will forecast that he’ll our top 15 going into 2009. On the other hand, the Marquis comparisons and enigmatic label make me a little squirmish about that prediction.
Filed under: David Kopp, prospect profiles
erik
azruavatar
fewgoodcards
roarke49
theredbaaron
I’m often at odds with O’Leary, but I, too, have been beating on Kopp, particularly from a delivery standpoint. Just take a look at that video; he doesn’t have any of those stressful, torquey positions you see from so many other pitchers.
I haven’t seen enough of Kopp actually pitching to speak to the quality of movement he posseses, but his numbers seem to indicate a lot of weak contact. Even if he doesn’t put it all together in a big way, I think he’ll have the durability to munch a bunch of innings, if nothing else. Personally, however, I think Kopp is going to end up being much better than that. I think he should be able to repeat his delivery effectively once he finishes growing into himself. And a pitcher who repeats his delivery consistently is a pitcher who can put the ball where he wants it. I’m on the Kopp bandwagon, big time.
The Cardinals seem to have focused specifically on some late bloomers in this last draft. It’s a shame Aaron Crow probably won’t be on the board when they pick this season; he would fit in well with this current philosophy.
Also, I don’t know if it’s been posted around here yet, but BA has its overall system rankings out; the Cards come in at #13. (Boy, how much better would the farm look with Porcello sitting up there at #2?).
Speaking of Kopp, he’s not in the top 30, which is understandable, considering how little he’s played in the pros. (Although Jess Todd came in at eleven!). Riportella didn’t make the cut either; another of my favourites to make a name for himself this year.
Whoops. Todd is 12. Would have been 11 w/o Barton, is what I was thinking to myself. They put Barton all the way up at four, btw. I was a little surprised to see him THAT high. Hopefully, he really is that good.
13th huh?
That’s encouraging.
Yet another reason why I can’t wait for baseball to start again - a chance to see what Kopp can bring to the table. These Prospect Profiles are awesome. You guys really do some great work!
reb baron-where did you get your BA 2008 Handbook? The stores here don’t have it until February 11, or so they’ve told me. Did you order it online. Feel free to post the whole list here, and maybe some comments you found noteworthy. i’m dying to get my hands on it.
I would take a Jason Marquis. He was always a pretty good prospect. Maybe Kopp can be Marquis with a better mental approach. The 3 pitches sound very promising.
Whether Kopp amounts to a middle rotation starter or not, it’s just good to hear that the system has players who have the potential to amount to big league regulars.
I feel like it’s been a while since the Cards have had more than four or five guys who honestly projected to the big leagues.
That number 13 overall ranking shows we’re trending in the right direction.
I like the look of the delivery. It reminds of Lincecum only because they chatted up how he arches his back and brings his shoulder through after the hips rotate. Anyways I’m a rookie at pitching mechanics but he looks very fluid and smooth. Nice article. I can’t wait for the season I have all the team sites in my bookmarks and will be checking up on the prospects regularly.
I fogot. How do I add an avatar pic?
avatar pics via this link: http://site.gravatar.com/
This kid is good. Real good. He played on the same team as my son so I got to see him pitch 2 or 3 times. I would not be suprised to see him have a great year if he stays healthy. His sinker is above average, and he is deceptive with different arm angles, when I saw him his change was exceptional.
kopp was one of my favorites in last year’s draft. i too was worried about the strikeouts, but then i saw his draft video and was like wow. i thought he had one of the best fastballs i saw on any of the draft videos as he was cranking mid-90’s with ease and it had movement. another thing i liked is that he is built like a freaking ox. now i know he was shut down over the summer, but he looks like an innings eater. while the strikeouts were low, one thing i did like about his stats is that his walk rate was really pretty low for a guy that had that kind of movement on his fastball. if he can keep throwing strikes, the movement and velocity on his fastball will do a lot of the work for him.
another thing, baseball america was reporting on draft day that there were several teams that had kopp as their back-up pick at the end of the first round. obviously other teams saw his talent, and i am very interested to see what he can do this year.
He looks like Dan Haren in the frame-by-frame to me.
He has very good mechanics. Not quite Haren good. I think Haren’s arm lags behind his shoulder rotation a bit more. This would add a couple MPH’s to the gun, but it really isn’t a big deal. He might be a little bit straight up and down at the start of his motion. I think gomez would say that he really isn’t maxing his momemtum without his hips moving to the plate at the top of the leg lift. I personally think what he is doing os fine because he has such good timing through-out his motion. If he is repeating these mechnics then these are really good.
Agreed on the Dan Haren comparison…also a bit of Carpenter in the way he really sits down on his back leg.
I just reread my initial post; it should read,”I’ve been beating the drum on Kopp for awhile,” not just,”beating on Kopp.”. See, kids, this is why you shouldn’t go posting in a fog at that time of the morning.
Unfortunately it appears he doesn’t have Dan Haren’s splitter. I knew Danny would be something special every time he buckled a knee with that thing.
Erik-
You get a couple weeks’ lead time if you order it directly from them.
Thanks again for another great profile.
I guess the question I have is how a player w/ a mid 90´s fastball that has good movement along with two secondary pitches strike out so few. With that repetoire it would seem like he should have been K´ing a ton of guys in college.
Thanks Erik et. al. for the info on Kopp. He’s a guy I knew virtually nothing about other than that he was a 2nd rounder. One more guy to follow in a system that does seem to have a bunch of very interesting question marks. This will be a very telling year as far as how well the brain trust has planned for the long term.
Here’s the complete top 30:
1 Razzle Dazzle OF
2 Chris Perez RHP
3 Bryan Anderson C
4 Brian Barton OF
5 Jaime Garcia LHP
6 Adam Ottavino RHP
7 Pete Kozma SS
8 Clayton MortensonRHP
9 Mitchell Boggs RHP
10 Tyler Herron RHP
11 Jon Jay OF
12 Jess Todd RHP
13 Joe Mather OF
14 Kenny Maiques RHP
15 Allen Craig 3B/1B
16 P.J. Walters RHP
17 Jose Martinez SS/2B
18 Brad Furnish LHP
19 Kyle McClellan RHP
20 Blake Hawksworth RHP
21 Jarret Hoffpauir 2B
22 Mark Worrell RHP
23 Mike Parisi RHP
24 Jason Motte RHP
25 Mark McCormick RHP
26 Blake King RHP
27 Mark Hamilton 1B
28 Luke Gregerson RHP
29 Tyler Greene SS
30 Luis De La Cruz C
Nice to see a guy like De La Cruz getting a little ink; he hasn’t shown us a whole lot yet, but the tools are very real. A couple of surprises to me:
I’m a little surprised to see Blake King make this list. He’s got a really nice arm, but I was thinking that his performance this past season wasn’t worth getting excited about.
Mark McCormick is still on the list. How long can this guy go without doing anything before he’s forgotten about? Personally, I think he may finally stay healthy and show something this season, but I don’t know if I would put him on a top 30 list as of right now.
As I said up above, I’m pretty shocked to see Jess Todd up that high. They’re projecting him strictly as a reliever, though, and thus predicting a very swift rise. He’s got the, the frame, repeatable mechanics, and a wicked slider to move quickly. Of course, if the organisation decides to try and convert him to a starter, his timetable extends out considerably. You can basically exchange everything in the scouting report for Todd with the report on Maiques, by the way. Reliever, he should fly. Starter, things will slow down considerably.
As we already knew, there’s an awful lot of right handed pitchers in that group, particularly of the reliever variety. The team seems to have done a very nice job of finding pitching talent, but, outside of a couple guys, the position prospect cupboard is awfully bare.
It didn’t occur to me at the time how hard that would be to read without numbers. Erik or Azru, could one of you guys edit that and put in numbers? I think it would help a bunch.
A few interesting things in that list for me. Is Barton that good or are our other prospects weaker than we think? Hope it’s the former. Motte, Martinez and Gregerson seem too low but Mather, Kozma and Furnish too high. Glad to see Maiques relatively high. I wouldn’t list Hamilton at all but would include Ingram. It is interesting that even the high twenties on the list are interesting prospects. That combined with the 13th ranking give me hope that we’re on the right track.
rhsuper, your son is not too bad himself
where’s freese on that prospect list? did his trade come too late to be included, or do they just have absolutely no idea where to put and him and conveniently left him off the list, hoping no one would spot their mistake?
Jackson-
Freese is on the Padres’, (who clock in at 12) list. He’s #28.
Easy-
Barton is a really solid prospect. He came in at #5 in a very good Indians system last year. Outside of the health concerns he comes with, there really isn’t much not to like about him. I will say, though, it probably does say a little something about the overall weakness of the Cards’ position prospects, that he jumped in so high.
barton was also a top 100 prospect
Thanks a few good cards
ok, rhsuper, so who’s your son?
thnx for posting the list red baron, i really am dying to get my handbook. i’ve been $-strapped for a while, but was able to order it today along with Deric Mckamey’s minor league analyst 2008. hopefully i’ll have it soon.
kopp works better with wood. he was a pitching leader on the cape in 2006.
I think he works with the philosophy, it’s better to induce the grounder in one pitch than 3-5 for a strikeout.
let’s just say one of the best pitching prospects in the cardinals organization.