This Prospect With An ‘Electric’ Arm Should Get Plenty of Maddux Time

The Los Angeles Angels have a lot of exciting young prospects coming up through the pipeline, and they’re still trying to figure out roles for all of them. The fan base, meanwhile, is holding their collective breath, hoping the team doesn’t rush half of them to the majors and ruin some careers in the process.

One of the more intriguing arms belongs to Walbert Urena, whose arm was referred to as “electric” by Nick San Miguel of Halo Hangout in a piece he wrote about the 22-year old right-hander. The velocity certainly justifies the descriptor, as Urena has regularly hit the high 90s since he was signed by the Angels, and his strikeout rate is 8.4K/9 so far in his minor league career.

Urena isn’t ready, though, as San Miguel was quick to add. His curveball and changeup still have “a ways to go” before he can have enough of a repertoire to consistently get outs and log innings. Urena has already taken a no-hitter into the eighth inning at Double A, but he’s also walked 73 batters in 28 starts over 141 innings, so he’s clearly used to pitching with plenty of traffic on the base paths.

San Miguel did have an intriguing idea, though—have Urena let it rip as a reliever in spring training, and see if he’s “wildly” effective. With that lack of command, hitters definitely wouldn’t dig in against him.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of idea that often gets prospects hurt, and for the Angels right now, the idea is to acquire pitchers with injury histories and rehabilitation them, not add them to that list.

The Angels do value him, though. They put Urena on the 40-man roster in November to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft, so they clearly see the potential here. There are those in the organization who believe Urena could have made his major league debut last season, but it’s probably good that that didn’t happen.

New pitching coach Mike Maddux has plenty on his plate with all the reclamation projects the Angels have signed this offseason, but hopefully the Halos are smart enough to give him plenty of time to work with Urena.

Maddux does things the right way, and if he can accelerate Urena’s development, so much the better, and the new pitching coach is also ideally qualified to make the call on whether Urena should be developed as a starter or a reliever.