Two weeks ago I did an article on who I believed were the 10 best hitting prospects that you could buy a 1st Bowman autograph of for under $10. Since finding these deep sleepers is an area that interests many of you I’ve decided to run it back and do the same thing for pitchers. Only three things need to be true for a player to qualify for this list: they must be a non-debuted prospect, they must have a 1st Bowman base chrome autograph under $10 on average, and they can’t be on the injured list. Since there are a few players currently on the IL that I do like as long-term stashes I’ll give you a few of those names along with our honorable mentions before we get into the top 10.

Injured but good stashes: Anderson Brito (TB), Landon Harmon (WAS), Alejandro Rosario (WAS), David Davalillo (TEX), Cameron Millar (KC)

Honorable Mentions: Cade Obermueller (PHI), Jose Urbina (TB), Marcus Phillips (BOS), Bryce Cunningham (NYY), Daniel Eagen (ARI), Matthew Fisher (PHI), J.D. Thompson (MIL), Mavis Graves (PHI) Jackson Humphries (CLE), Matt Wilkinson (SF)

Lot of names in that Honorable Mentions category that were close to taking the 10th spot but I’m going to go with Angels 3rd round pick from last year’s draft Nate Snead. The name of the game here is velocity. Snead was a reliever all three years in college (one at Wichita St., two at Tennessee) but the Angels selected him with every intention of trying him out as a starter. With 16 starts under hit belt as a professional I’d say that the experiment has shown some promise early on. While it’s not uncommon for college relievers turned starters to spend a good amount of time in Single-A, Snead was assigned to High-A right out of the gate, where in his first 7 professional starts he had a 2.80 ERA, 2.42 FIP, 9.93 K/9, and 1.53 BB/9. When you hear “reliever” your mind naturally goes to control issues but his 4.4% walk rate over his first 35.1 innings was extremely encouraging.

Since then he’s been promoted to Double-A and he’s struggled to find the same success, seeing his opponent’s contact rates go up by almost 8% compared to where they were at the previous level. It’s a bit of an odd profile. Usually the reliever turned starter mold I’m looking at is like a Michael Lombardi where they have wipeout stuff but struggle to throw strikes. Snead has been the opposite, not walking a ton of guy but also not striking out a ton. He touched 100 mph with his fastball in college and that’s part of what gives me hope for his cards, being able to do that just puts you in another category of “exciting” for the Bowman folks. Even though he throws gas the pitch shapes aren’t great so when he leaves it in the zone against better AA hitters they’re putting the bat on it. Fastball-curveball is the combo that worked best for him in college but he’s added a slider, cutter, and changeup to the mix too which need some refinement. This is a play on ability alone. It’s a tough ask to expect a guy who spent his last three years as a reliever to go out and give you 6 innings against AA hitters in his first few months as a pro. The hobby loves high octane fastballs though and he’s got one. If he can improve the life on it and get more comfortable with his secondaries as he continues to progress I think he could be a nice high upside sleeper.