CHARLESTON, WV – When the Pirates drafted James Marvel in the 36th round in 2015, he came with a heavy sinker and a caveat: recovering from Tommy John surgery. In fact, Marvel stepped away from baseball for two years, starting his last game with Duke University on March 9, 2014, and making his return on June 18, 2016, with the Morgantown Black Bears. As a result, there has been a shroud of mystery around Marvel. In 2017, he’s finally showing us what he can do.
Marvel has shown promise since that first start with the Black Bears. To date, that appearance has been the high water mark for his career. He needed only 64 pitches to work through six shutout innings, and he had pinpoint command, racking up five strikeouts without a single walk.
His results for the remainder of 2016 were mixed. He never saw another clean sheet, and he never had another walk-less game. He was prone to gap line drives leading to doubles or triples, and opposing batters had a .317 slugging percentage off him. He, like many pitchers recovering from Tommy John, had iffy control on his fastball while he hadn’t developed his secondary pitches due to his time off.
Current West Virginia manager Wyatt Toregas worked with Marvel last year in Morgantown. When asked to evaluate his character as a starter in 2016, Toregas remarked, “As much as he wanted to compete every single day, sometimes his arm just wouldn’t cooperate.”
“There were nights when he’d come out, and he’d want to compete,” Toregas continued, “but his arm just wasn’t there, and he’d have dead arm.”
Despite those concerns, Marvel finished 2016 with a 1.19 WHIP and 3.88 FIP, slightly above average for most starters. His last three starts, when he worked a 1.63 GO/AO and a 2.81 ERA, served as a taste of the success he’d experience in 2017.
Marvel got the nod to ascend the mound on opening day for the West Virginia Power. He took the mound in the first half of a doubleheader on April 7. He finished a five-inning, four-hit shutout performance with six strikeouts, one shy of his career high at the time.
“[Arden] Pabst and I were on the same page,” he said after the start. “I didn’t have to shake him off too much.”
“I didn’t have to deviate from my game plan too much,” he continued. “Everything felt good.”
Everything has looked good for Marvel, as well. He has thrown 70 percent of his pitches for strikes, and he’s increased the velocity on his fastball from 88-90 in 2016 to 91-93 in 2017. He has been getting players to chase his breaking stuff to set up his fastball for strikeouts and has raised his K/9 to 5.90 through six starts, up a tad from 5.68 last year. His WHIP is down to 1.24, and his FIP (particularly important given that the Power seems spotty defensively) is 3.17.
The K/9 rate can partially be attributed to his better control and increase in velocity. Marvel’s fastball, which has always had a nice downward bite, is turning into a plus pitch that can get strikeouts along with the grounders.
“It’s closer to who I used to be before I had elbow surgery,” said Marvel. “It’s just, number one, having a full season under my belt, trusting myself, knowing I’m fully healthy, going through a full minor league season understanding how to manage my arm on a five-day rotation.”
While Marvel is inching closer to the potential he showed prior to his Tommy John surgery, he is also taking steps to become a prospect in the system.
Marvel worked to build his strength, endurance, and conditioning with Sparta Sports Performance in his native California during the off-season. He has shredded ten pounds from 2015 and is going deeper into games than ever before. On May 4, he crossed the six-inning threshold for the first time, and he is currently averaging just shy of five innings per start.
Even when Marvel does not pitch well on paper, he has confidence. In his fifth start, Marvel left the game after 3.2 innings, his worst start of 2017. The Rome Braves roughed him up to the tune of six earned runs in the fourth inning.
“The first three innings [in Rome] were as well as I threw the ball all year,” he said.
Toregas echoed that optimism. “He was throwing as hard as I’ve seen him throw his last start in Rome.”
With the Power holding a 1-0 lead, the wheels fell off in the fourth when he allowed a one-out single. Instead of attacking the next batter with his best stuff, he tried to work the perfect pitch. He ended up issuing a walk and then a hit-by-pitch to the subsequent batter. After that, all it took was one pitch over the middle to allow a grand slam. Marvel allowed another two singles and another two runs in the inning.
“I think I probably nitpicked the next guy [after the single] too much instead of doing what I was continuing to do,” Marvel reflected. “Maybe mix in a few changeups and breaking balls a little earlier.”
The astounding thing is, if you remove that six-run two-thirds of an inning, Marvel has quietly amassed some of the best statistics in the Pirates system. Without that mini collapse, his ERA would stand at 1.19, best among starters in the system, and his WHIP would register at 1.06, good for a tie for fourth with Josh Lindblom.
Marvel will continue to work on his changeup and breaking ball throughout 2017. These, after all, are the key to the future, now that he can control his fastball in a number of different scenarios. Yet, Marvel seems less concerned with the progress of these pitches than their efficacy within games.
He said, “It’s those outings where you don’t have one or two or possibly even three of those pitches where you’ve got to figure it out on the fly or figure out how to go deep into a game to give your team a chance to win.”
“It’s not so much one pitch over the others than it’s making sure I’m more consistent with all of them.”
That consistency comes from repetition. As of May 4, Marvel is approximately halfway to his innings total from 2016, and his easy, repeatable delivery gives him ample opportunity to work with each pitch in his arsenal.
Manager Wyatt Toregas would like to see some more development with Marvel’s changeup. “If he could get a changeup with some down movement that comes off his sinker, he could get a little more swing-and-miss,” he said. For a pitcher who already generates ground balls and averages approximately five strikeouts per game, this could separate Marvel from the crowd.
Consistency also comes from the ability to go deep into games. Marvel worked on his endurance, which, ironically, comes from the legs, not the arm, in the off-season.
“I was working on some stuff in spring training,” he explained. “We were working on getting into my legs more in my delivery.”
Toregas went into further depth regarding the benefits of powerful legs as a part of the delivery. “He’s looking for ways to preserve his arm,” Toregas said. “Using your legs will do that, as well as give you more power.”
These small adjustments have worked out well, the latest evidence being Marvel’s fantastic performance against Hickory on May 4. Marvel notched his first six-inning start of 2017 and shined. Seventy-six percent of his pitches went for strikes. He recorded a career-high eight strikeouts without allowing a walk. His only earned run came on a one-out sacrifice fly, and he battled back to strike out the next batter with a man on third.
Marvel will likely be overshadowed by Luis Escobar in the West Virginia rotation for the remainder of the year, but if he can sustain this level of performance, he has a legitimate chance to develop into a consistent, confident prospect. If nothing else, he will get the opportunity to show the Pirates what he can do now that the cloud of Tommy John has lifted from overhead.
