Wei-En Lin is establishing himself as a prospect to watch in the Athletics system. The reason is largely two-fold. Signed by the AL West club out of Taiwan last summer, the 19-year-old southpaw has been opening eyes with an impressive combination of strike-throwing and an ability to miss bats. Over 77 1/3 innings between Low-A Stockton and High-A Lansing, Lin has logged a 33.8% strikeout rate and a 5.5% walk rate. Recently added to The Board with a 40+ FV, he currently ranks 14th in the A’s system.
His arsenal comprises a four-seam fastball, a slider, a curveball, and a changeup, the last of which Lugnuts pitching coach Dave Burba considers the best of the bunch. The erstwhile big league hurler described the pitch as “dirty,” adding that Lin not only gets good action with it, he delivers it with good arm speed. Eric Longenhagen likes it as well. Asked for his assessment, our lead prospect analyst shared the following:
His changeup is good. It has big parachute action, and it really dies as it reaches the plate. It’s slow, like 76 mph on average, and that’s weird enough to create some uncertainty as to how it will play against big leaguers. It definitely has bat-missing movement, though.
The pitch in question is gripped in an atypical manner. When I talked to Lin last week, I learned that he stopped throwing a splitter at the end of May and now attacks hitters with a Vulcan.
“Our pitching coach in Low-A Stockton, Jim Gott, told me that my splitter is not good for my arm,” explained Lin (Lin speaks some English, but conducted most of this interview through interpreter Danny Sung). “He also thought my splitter was too hard to control, so they took it away. I switched to a Vulcan changeup, which I feel I can control better.”
Lin’s curveball grip is also new this year. Described by Longenhagen as having “pretty good snap to it,” it is now of the spiked variety. As the young left-hander put it — sans translation — “I have switched to a knuckle.”
Adding a more horizontal offering to his arsenal is one of his objectives. Lin’s 82-mph slider is cutter-ish, and he “wants a big one, a slider-sweeper.”
And then there is his four-seam fastball, which lacks elite velocity but nonetheless grades out as above average. Lin topped out at 93.6 when I saw him pitch at West Michigan — he was reportedly reaching 95 earlier in the year — but as Eric explained, giddy-up isn’t what makes it effective.
“His fastball definitely plays,” Eric opined. “It rides, reportedly up to 18 inches. It has tough angle to the top of the zone, generating a swing-and-miss rate above 30%. He also throws a ton of strikes with it — he has a 75% strike rate with the fastball.”
Lin’s overall strike percentages definitely jumped out to me when I looked at his game logs. In his last game in Low-A before being promoted to Lansing in mid-June, he threw 25 of 37 pitched for strikes while retiring all nine batters he faced, six of them by way of the strikeout. Two outings earlier, he’d thrown 29 of 36 pitches for strikes. Those weren’t exactly outliers. Lin’s ledger is laden with zone-filling excellence.
Of course, the extent to which it qualifies as excellence is subjective. As I suspected he might, Burba cited just that when I asked what he considers the fast-rising prospect’s next step in the development process.
“Learn how to execute off-speed pitches out of the zone,” the pitching coach told me. “That’s mostly where he’s been getting beat. He’s throwing too many strikes in leverage counts — not necessarily chase pitches, or strike-to-ball pitches where a hitter has to make a swing decision. They are pitches in the zone where the hitter has to swing, and some of those are getting hit hard, and others are getting flared over the infield with protect swings. But at his age, and with his ability, it’s coming.”
Lin acknowledged the need to work more out of the zone when I asked if he has actually been throwing too many strikes. But while he’s been “doing better with that” compared to Stockton, it’s not as though he’s in danger of morphing into Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams or Matt Young. Recent Lansing outings include 27 strikes out of 35 pitches, and 25 strikes out of 34 pitches.
Acclimating to professional baseball in an MLB organization is certainly a contributing factor to his high strike totals, though learning how not to throw strikes is preferable to an innate inability to find the zone. Prior to coming over to the U.S., overwhelming opposing batters wasn’t much a problem. That’s one of the reasons he’s here and not pitching back in Taiwan in the Chinese Professional Baseball League. Lin is simply too talented to have stayed close to home. Not that there weren’t overseas offers. Japan’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks showed particular interest, but Lin ultimately opted to come stateside, choosing the A’s over a handful of other MLB organizations.
He admits that his first pro season has been challenging. Lin shared that he has felt fatigued as the season is nearing its end, which is a reason he intends to add weight to his 6-foot-2 frame. Currently 196 pounds, he would like to bump that up to 210. He also recognizes that continued adjustments to his arsenal and attack plan will be necessary if he hopes to continue to have success. As good as he’s been, the level of competition is only going to get better.
“There is still a lot to learn,” said Lin, who has a 3.84 ERA and a 3.17 FIP to go with his aforementioned numbers. “The data is deeper here than [in Taiwan]. There is TrackMan. The hitters are also more powerful, and they make contact. That makes pitching more of a challenge. It is good to pitching here, though. I am enjoying it.”
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