Scouting the Draft: Comping Nick Swiney

Usually when we try to find a comparison player for a college draft pick, we scour the stat lines for similar college perfomances.  I decided to take a different tack with Giants Compensation Pick #67 overall, LHP Nick Swiney.  I decided to take what we know about his stuff and try to find MLB pitchers with a similar repertoire.  Here's what we know about Swiney's stuff:  He throws what appears to be a 4-seam fastball 91-93 MPH to both sides of the plate and likes to throw it up in the zone.  He also has a plus curveball and plus changeup which can both be out-pitches for him.  As near as I can tell, he does not throw any other pitches, not a slider, not a cutter, not a splitter(unless the changeup is a split change).  Now, in the Sabes/Righetti regime, the first thing the Giants pitching coaches would do with Swiney is teach him a cutter to give him a 4'th pitch and voila!  The FZ regime does not seem to be quite as enamored by the cutter, or even slider for that matter.  They seem to be harkening back to the old-school Dodgers under Ron Perranoski who refused to teach their pitching prospects the slider or sinker, preferring the classic 4-seam/Curve/Change combo so I am going to assume the Giants development guys will just concentrate on polishing up Swiney's current repertoire which seems to have an excellent chance of playing at the MLB level.

I then went to Fangraphs and looked up all every significant LHP I could find on every MLB roster(there actually aren't than many) and scrolled down their player page to the sections listing pitch types and percentages.  I was looking for for LHP's with similar repertoires.  To my surprise, I did not find that many.  Almost every LHP in the game either has 4 pitches which include a slider or cutter or they go FB/Slider/Change or FB/Curve/Slider, or they are 2-pitch guys like Drew Pomeranz.  I only came up with 4 names who have the classic 3 pitches and throw each of their secondary pitches at least 15% of the time:

Gio Gonzalez
The late Tyler Skaggs
Early Cole Hamels
Jesus Luzardo.

Luzardo's FB averages about 96 MPH so that's probably not a great comp for Swiney.  I believe Hamels threw a lot harder when he was younger too.  That leaves Gio and the late Tyler Skaggs as comps I was able to find.  Skaggs seemed to be coming into his own before his tragic death, so the performance part is a favorable comp.  Gio has been your classic #4 SP practically his whole career, but sure has been durable.  If Swiney has half of Gio's career, he would be a very successful Comp round pick. I seem to recall the reason why Perranoski hated the slider is he believed it was in injury inducer.  I would point out that current evidence suggests the #1 cause of arm injuries is velocity over 93 MPH, which could also explain some of the Giants recent draft decisions.  Of course, Swiney might be just like most other drafted pitchers and add a slider or cutter to his repertoire.  Then the comps are wide open, but a lefty with solid fastball command and two plus secondary pitches is a heckuva place to start.