Michael Fulmer Has Been Breaking Out For The Binghamton Mets

Image from this interview

After a late start to the season, Michael Fulmer is putting up huge numbers with Binghamton recently, and his time with the B-Mets compares favorably to the current group of Mets aces.

            Since being selected with the 44^th pick of the 2011 draft, Michael Fulmer’s career has been a bit up-and-down. Everything has generally looked up for the young power righty when he’s been healthy, but there are always question marks when a pitcher deals with injuries, and Fulmer has had surgery each of the past two seasons. He was limited to just 9 starts in 2013 after knee surgery early in the season, and then had bone chips removed after one brief start with Binghamton in August, 2014. Now that he’s back to full health again, he’s back to dominating, this time with the B-Mets in AA.

Despite the recent injury woes, Keith Law had him 15^th in the Mets system this past offseason, suggesting that he’s shown 3 above-average pitches, but that he may end up limited to a power reliever’s role if his knee injury persist. He did put 70-grades on his fastball and slider though, and those pitches have been starring for him lately. Fulmer also has a well-rated curveball in his arsenal, but he’s been ‘staying away from the curveball’ to avoid elbow problems.

As with most young pitchers, Fulmer’s changeup has always lagged behind the rest of his arsenal, but he recently said, “I feel confident in it right now. It’s been the best it ever has in my career. It has great movement and it makes my fastball jump a little more out of my hands.” In that radio interview, Fulmer also says, “I learned it in 2012 with Savannah, our pitching coordinator Ron Romanick taught me and it just kind of stuck. I’ve tried many different changeups, but that’s the only one that had the velocity I wanted and the depth I wanted on the movement. So I kind of stuck with it and worked on it every offseason as much as I could, and I think now I’m finally to the point where I’m comfortable throwing it with runners in scoring position.” Fulmer hasn’t even needed to use the pitch at times during his recent run of success, but it has good velocity separation from his fastball (~10 MPH), and is a distant third option behind his 1-2 fastball/slider punch.

After starting the season late to make sure he was at full health, Fulmer made one start for St. Lucie (7 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 9 SO, HR) before he was promoted up to Binghamton for good. His first 6 starts with Binghamton this year were fine (32.2 IP, 3.86 ERA, 4.06 FIP, 15.3 K%: 9.7 BB%), but he wasn’t exactly putting up the big numbers that would get Mets fans excited. That has changed lately, as his last 6 starts have been on a different level (37.1 IP, 0.48 ERA, 1.79 FIP, 29.1 K%: 3.6 BB%), pushing him to the top of the Mets starting depth in my mind. While he didn’t make any mid-season rankings (not surprising), John Sickels of MinorLeagueBall suggested he was low 100’s on his list right now, and he’ll make offseason lists if he keeps up his current pace.

For fun, the 2 tables below compare the AA numbers of the Mets bright young studs at the majors with what Michael Fulmer has done there this season. Note that these comparisons are just for fun, and are NOT meant to suggest that Fulmer will ascend to the majors and put up comparable numbers to the Mets studs. There have been countless players to put up better AA numbers than Jacob deGrom, but few have gone on to have as much success in their career as deGrom has had in the past year alone.

Table 1 – Comparing Michael Fulmer’s first half with Binghamton to some notable Mets starters to graduate over the past few seasons, stats from Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference

Player	AA Age	IP	ERA	FIP	K%	BB%
Matt Harvey	22	59.2	4.53	3.45	24.7	8.9
Zack Wheeler	22	116	3.26	2.81	24.7	9.1
Rafael Montero	22	66.2	2.43	2.00	27.6	3.8
Jacob deGrom	25	60	4.80	3.82	16.9	7.7
Noah Syndergaard	20	54	3.00	3.36	32.2	5.6
Steven Matz	23	71.1	2.27	2.64	24	4.9
Michael Fulmer	22	70	2.06	2.85	22.1	6.7
Fulmer (Last 6)	-	37.1	0.48	1.79	29.1	3.6

Player	H	BABIP	OPS	Swinging Strike %	HR/9
Matt Harvey	58	.327	.714	10.4ª	0.60
Zack Wheeler	92	.299	.606	12.1	0.16
Rafael Montero	51	.277	.502	9.0	0.27
Jacob deGrom	69	.340	.819	12.1	0.60
Noah Syndergaard	46	.304	.662	16.6	1.33
Steven Matz	66	.317	.638	10.9	0.38
Michael Fulmer	59	.281	.616	13.5	0.39
Fulmer (Last 6)	25	.261	.492	15.2	0.24

ªPitch data only available for 3 starts

            Matt Harvey was with the B-Mets before gameday was installed across all AA stadiums, so his swinging strike rate data is incomplete. Including his one appearance with the B-Mets from 2014, Fulmer has already thrown more AA innings than everyone else on this list except Zack Wheeler. His swinging strike rate is second on the list to Noah Syndergaard (Harvey’s could be higher too), and his recent run coincides with a big bump in this department, which suggests he’s not just getting lucky lately (although his 0.48 ERA during this recent stretch has been boosted by a 87.4 LOB%, which will be hard to sustain). It’s interesting to compare the K% and swinging strike rates of Rafael Montero and Jacob deGrom, as Montero had the better K numbers in AA, but deGrom had the better swinging strike rate, and he’s emerged as the better overall pitcher.

            Moving forward, I will be keeping a close eye on Fulmer’s changeup use and effectiveness, as a usable third pitch is generally needed to start in the majors. The impressive mid-90’s heat has stayed with him deep into his starts this year, but now he needs to prove that he can stay healthy given a starter’s load over a full season. He’s proving too good for AA right now, so it’ll be interesting to see how long until he forces his way into the Las Vegas rotation. The 51s current rotation is Matt Bowman, Luis Cessa, Dillon Gee, Darin Gorski, and Logan Verrett (with Tyler Pill on the 7-day DL), but they could always switch to a 6-man rotation, or just move either Gorski or Verrett to the pen (who knows where a healthy Rafael Montero ends up, but he began his rehab stint with an appearance for the GCL Mets Tuesday afternoon and could figure into that mix too). For now, it looks like Fulmer will continue to pitch for Binghamton, as he’s the scheduled starter for Thursday’s matchup with the Trenton Thunder. You can get a better idea of how he’s fared from start-to-start in the recaps posted below, with GIF’s posted from all starts with CF camera coverage – the home starts occasionally use the CF camera, but most road starts exclusively use that view to show the pitch action.

Astromets Mind Recaps: May 9^th, May 15^th, May 22^nd, May 29^th, June 5^th, June 12^th, June 18^th, June 24^th, June 29^th, July 4^th, July 9^th

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