2011 Indians Top 50 Prospects: #24 Matt Packer

Matt Packer - Left-handed Pitcher
Born: 08/28/1987 - Height: 6'0" - Weight: 200 - Bats: Left - Throws: Left

(Photo: Ken Carr)

History: Packer was selected by the Indians in the 32nd round of the 2009 Draft out of the University of Virginia. His sophomore season in 2008 he led all of college baseball in ERA (1.14), but had velocity issues and a disappointing 2009 year which saw his draft stock plummet. After being drafted, he was a summer follow by Indians area scout Bob Mayer. He had seen Packer at his best in 2008 and his worst in 2009, so he went to the Cape Cod League to see which version the Indians would be getting if they made an offer to sign him. After seeing him pitch in the Cape Cod League all summer they liked what they saw and signed him just before the August signing deadline. Last year he finished the season 1st in the Indians organization in ERA (2.04) and 5th in strikeouts (123), and he ranked 1st in the Midwest League in ERA at the time of his promotion to Double-A Akron in early August.

Strengths: Packer is a versatile, athletic left-handed pitcher who has a deep four pitch mix of a fastball, slider, curveball, and changeup. His fastball sits at 89-91 MPH and touched 93 MPH a few times last season. He had seen a drop in his velocity in 2009 during his junior season at Virginia, but his velocity came back last season thanks to a subtle delivery adjustment that he made. His changeup is his best offering as it really has a lot of deception and depth to it where it really dives. His slider is an above average offering with good swing and miss ability. His developing curveball is still a work in progress, but has shown improvement since being drafted.

Packer is not very big nor is he an over-powering pitcher and instead relies on his intelligence, strike throwing ability, limiting walks, and pitching to contact by using the sinking action on his pitches to pile up groundball outs. He shows an elite feel for his fastball, slider and changeup where he throws them all for strikes and has excellent command and movement down in the zone. He is aggressive on the mound with a good plan, and has a nice compact windup with good arm action that creates some deception in his delivery. He understands how to pitch, and shows good composure on the mound. He controls the running game well, and has an outstanding pickoff move.

Packer is versatile where he could end up as a starter or reliever. He opened last season in the bullpen, but showed four good pitches and command of all four of them in his bullpen sessions and in games to where six weeks into the season the Indians eventually decided to move him into the rotation to see how he could do. He shined in a starting role, which made the Indians shift their gears to develop him as a starter. His incredible walk-to-strikeout rate at Low-A Lake County forced the Indians to move him up to Double-A Akron in August to make what was initially planned to only be a spot start in order to see what he could do, but after he impressed in his Double-A debut going 7.0 strong innings allowing 1 run, 6 hits, 1 walk and 6 strikeouts they decided to keep him there the remainder of the season and he performed well. As a result he completely skipped High-A Kinston, and unless he pitches poorly this upcoming season will likely never throw a pitch at the advanced Single-A level which is unheard of.

Opportunities: Even with the success Packer had last year, he still has a ways to go to be considered a finished product as a pitcher. He mainly worked with a fastball-changeup mix at Lake County last year, and upon moving up to Akron he didn’t even throw his curveball at all. He will need to work his curveball in at the higher levels and develop the pitch so he is more consistently able to throw first pitch strikes with it and most importantly change the eye level of the hitters. He is small for a starter, so he needs to get stronger. He did some extra work in Instructional League in the fall to improve his strength and conditioning in order to help him be prepared to start 27 or more games this season and throw 150-170 innings. He is also working through a few small adjustments to clean up his pitching mechanics and fine tune the mental part of his game as a pitcher with how he pitches to certain batters and better hitting his spots.

Outlook: The Indians consider Packer's fastball-slider-changeup combination to be as good as Jeremy Sowers and Scott Lewis when they were just entering their pro careers. His excellent command, ability to command four different pitches, and his very promising showing at Akron has him now considered as a legitimate big league pitching prospect and one of the Indians best pitching prospects, something that was inconceivable at this time last year. He snuck up on everyone last year and had very low expectations for him going into the season, but going forward the expectations will increase ten fold. It was just one great season, so he will need to put together another good year this season from a development and performance perspective to truly be considered the real deal. He will open the 2011 season at Akron, and due to the depth of starting pitching in the higher levels he should spend most of his season there; however, if he continues to pitch like he did last year he should finish the season at Triple-A Columbus.

Year	Age	Team	Lvl	W	L	ERA	G	GS	IP	H	ER	HR	BB	SO	AVG	BB/9	K/9	WHIP
2009	21	Mahoning Valley	A-	0	0	2.38	5	0	11.1	8	3	1	1	13	.186	0.8	10.3	0.79
2010	22	Lake County	A	8	5	1.60	24	13	95.2	77	17	4	13	92	.218	1.2	8.7	0.94
2010	22	Akron	AA	1	2	3.16	6	5	37.0	35	13	3	9	31	.267	2.2	7.5	1.19
		MiLB Totals		9	7	2.06	35	18	144.0	120	33	8	23	136	.227	1.4	8.5	0.99

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