Keider Montero’s future is his to command

Keider Montero went somewhat overlooked for years, but the rookie’s recent success with Tigers has finally put him on the map. There is still work ahead to establish himself as a full-time rotation member. There is also some possibility that his best future path to major league success lies through the bullpen. However, the recently turned 24-year-old right-hander very much resembles the case of Reese Olson at this time last season, and those similarities offer hope that Montero can follow suit and develop into a fine major league starting pitcher.

The Venezuelan born Montero was signed by the Tigers as a 16-year-old way back in 2016. He first came to my attention watching him pitch for the old Connecticut Tigers in short season A-ball back in 2019 when he was 18. A few glimpses from the rather threadbare broadcasts that year showed a balanced young pitcher with a low to mid 90’s fastball and a nasty tilting curveball who threw a ton of strikes for his age and experience level and wasn’t afraid to pitch inside. Research showed that Montero was spinning that breaking ball at over 3000 rpms at his best, and so there was plenty of reason to keep him in mind as the most notable teenaged arm in the system prior to Jackson Jobe’s arrival.

Montero pitched fairly well at High-A in 2021, but a mediocre strikeout rate and terrible luck on balls in play left him with poor numbers overall. He repeated the High-A level in 2022 with 103 ²⁄₃ innings of work, and while there were signs of progress, he still wasn’t particularly impressive apart from the raw data on his stuff.

On the other hand, Montero was young for that level of competition and held his own pretty well. He also saw some gains in his fastball, occasionally popping 97-98 mph while sitting 93-95 mph much of the time. He was also proving durable, defying impressions that might have been formed by a quick glance at his listed 6’1”, 145 pound stature. For whatever reason they’ve never updated those measurements and he probably hasn’t weighed 145 since he signed at age 16. There was at very least a setup man developing, but projections as a starter were still murky until the 2023 season.

The breakout

Going into 2023, Tigers VP of player development, Ryan Garko made a lot of changes after his first season running the farm system. One crucial one that both Garko and Montero have stated made a big difference was getting the full yearly player development plans translated for native Spanish speakers so they could better grasp the concepts and the reasoning behind those adjustments, rather than taking information second hand through their coaches alone. One would think translating development plans was an obvious move, but it still isn’t necessarily common practice around the league from what I can gather.

This paid huge dividends as Montero made a leap last season to become a much better pitching prospect and one that should’ve been much more highly regarded nationally than he was.

Montero looked to have built up his legs a little more and was throwing harder, able to sit consistently at 95-96 mph without quite as much overt effort as he had as a younger prospect. Crucially, he was finally able to differentiate the movement and velocity on the slider and curveball into two distinct plus offerings rather than sometimes blurring them together. But the biggest adjustment was the switch to a split changeup grip in a similar move to that made by top pitching prospect Jackson Jobe. That pitch took a big leap as Montero’s 2023 season progressed and by mid-summer it was flashing plus with more consistency. Suddenly a starting projection was very much on the menu.

As a result, Montero’s strikeout rate went through the roof from the very start of the season, and he moved to Double-A Erie in late April still punching out hitters at a 29.6 percent clip. He allowed too many walks, but he now featured four better than average pitches and was throwing more and more quality strikes. The positive trends continued as he advanced all the way to Triple-A, his third level on the year.

There was still plenty of work to be done. His fastball command was still subpar at times and the walks and home runs allowed to left-handers continued to plague him. Montero’s penchant for cruising along for a few innings, locating his stuff and generally looking very good, and then suddenly losing his command and blowing up for an inning before locking it back down, remained intact. He had the same issues this spring in Triple-A and we saw some of that in his first two major league outings.

And then suddenly it seems like a switch has flipped in his two starts since joining the Tigers on a regular basis. Close observers of the Tigers system may be getting a bit of deja vu here, as this is very similar to how things went for Reese Olson prior to his breakout last season.

The Reese Olson comp

Montero and Olson are certainly different pitchers stylistically, but there are some obvious similarities in their scouting reports as prospects and path to their major league debuts. That the Tigers pitching coaches were able to help Olson make the jump and keep improving lends more credence to the idea that they’re currently doing the same for Montero.

The first thing to observe in comparison, is that both are a little bit to the smaller side of the typical starting pitcher these days. Neither was particularly well regarded until they put things together at the Double-A level. Not to say they were neglected in player development, but they weren’t top priority guys until they’d had some success in the upper minors.

Olson was at least known for the 3000 rpms on his breaking ball, but even the Milwaukee Brewers, who generally develop players pretty well, gave him away for two months of a mediocre lefty reliever. Meanwhile Montero went wholly unnoted among the national prospect sites despite metrics that leapt off the page until as late as last summer. No doubt both came through the minor leagues knowing they had a lot to prove. And indeed both pitchers draw high grades for their drive and their willingness to learn and take adjustments out to the mound and implement them well.

As pitchers, they’re similar because they each possess a deep quiver of nasty secondary pitches rather than an elite fastball, and really had to learn to command their full pitch mix well to succeed at the major league level. Olson has made that leap now. Montero is just getting his first shot.

Finally, both were both home run prone and walked too many guys in the upper minors. They had wipeout stuff, but struggled to locate fastballs effectively, particularly inside to the left-handed hitters that were their bane. Improving their fastball command was the step required to avoid the big mistakes and succeed as major league starters.

The Fetter Factor

Tigers pitching coach Chris Fetter, and his assistants, Robin Lund and Juan Nieves, are building a pretty good reputation as one of the top coaching staffs for pitchers in the league these days. Not every issue is solvable, and to a degree you either have the stuff or you don’t by the time you start working with them, but they’ve had a really impressive run of successes over the last few years, and none more than Olson.

Much like Montero, through 10 starts for the Toledo Mud Hens in April-May 2023, Reese Olson had a 5.40 walk rate per nine. Not good. The home run rate was 1.23 per nine innings, which wasn’t terrible but is bound to get worse upon the jump to the major leagues. Olson needed to be more consistent, particularly with his fastball, and he needed to be able to spot it to both sides of the plate.

The Tigers moved him over to the third base side of the rubber and worked on his lower half to help him stop flying open toward first base. He had better angle inside to lefties for the fastball as a result. Throwing more across the plate toward a hitter increases the hitters’ perception of the velocity of the pitch because it’s coming toward their head rather than out away from them. Obviously it’s important to pitch inside at least a little bit so that they can’t camp out over the plate comfortably. The better lead leg blocking helped Olson stay balanced and drive on target more consistently. He spotted his fastball more effectively and the results came pretty quickly last summer.

Olson’s walks plummeted and he was able to keep the home runs from becoming a problem. They’ve made a few tweaks and have him using the sinker more than the fourseamer now this season, and throwing more changeups. Still, the consistency in spotting the fastball to all parts of the zone and pitching effectively inside to left-handers were the keys to making a successful leap to the majors.

Suddenly the Tigers have a 24-year-old starter with solid strikeout to walk numbers who doesn’t give up many home runs. A 3.22 ERA and a 2.96 FIP to back it says Olson has arrived as a long-term frontline starter for the Tigers.

The same issues have to be conquered by Keider Montero. A year younger than Olson, he’s in a very similar spot where he has to learn to be more consistent and locate to both sides of the plate to reach his ceiling as a good frontline starting pitcher. Just don’t judge his ability to do that by his minor league walk rates. With the automated balls and strikes system, the strike zone is much tighter down there and it’s presented a challenge in figuring out how a Triple-A pitcher’s strike throwing will translate at the major league level.

Montero generally throws a lot of strikes and he has the lower half strength, flexibility, and balance to keep improving his command. The refinements required are fairly subtle and in the meantime, Chris Fetter is pretty good at game planning to his pitchers’ strengths. Judging by his last two starts, he’s well on his way, but there will likely be some rough patches to come.

So far, the Tigers seem to be working on some similar things as they did with Olson. Montero had already moved to the third base side of the rubber in the minor leagues. The work they’re doing seems to have more to do with his lower half, and much like Olson, trying to stay closed and on target deeper into his delivery rather than flying open and dropping his arm slot to the detriment of the movement on his fastball. Somewhat basic stuff on the surface, but we know that the Tigers’ major league pitching coaches are capable of going deep into underlying causes to help a pitcher improve.

Jerry Mackinem, writing for Tigers Minor League Report, had a piece up last week discussing Montero’s adjustments and mentioned his improved extension. This is all related to adjusting his stride and his lead leg block. You can see game by game with the Tigers and his intervening outings in Toledo, that trying to develop Montero’s extension is one of the key things they’re working on.

We can assume there’s a lot of detail going into this, because Lund, a longtime professor of biomechanics before becoming a pitching coach full-time, and Fetter, are known to get into the muscle by muscle detail of each pitcher’s kinetic chain, combining mechanical adjustments with specific training work to improve strength and flexibility in a pitcher’s small, stabilization muscles as well as the major power plant muscles like the quads, glutes, hamstrings, etc. But it all comes down to the same thing, which is helping the pitcher repeat their delivery better and build a platform from which to locate effectively to all parts of the strike zone. They seem to know what they’re doing.

Another key for Montero is simply using his fastball a little less. He’s shown increased consistency with his changeup, and with two good breaking balls, he doesn’t need to go out and throw 50 percent fastballs or more. Keeping that deep pitch mix with the ability to throw quality first pitch strikes with all of them is another big key to making sure the home runs stay under wraps to a reasonable extent.

Montero faces another early test against the Dodgers

It’s hard to know what to expect from Montero coming into his Saturday outing against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Even as a longtime booster, I wouldn’t expect consistent success yet just four starts into his major league career. But now that we’ve seen that he can handle a quality major league lineup it’s much easier to be confident that he’ll take the next step and become a good regular member of the Tigers’ rotation. Of course it’s Montero’s confidence that’s important, and putting together back-to-back good starts is confirmation for him that he belongs. Facing the Los Angeles Dodgers this afternoon will be another good test after mastering a quality Guardians lineup stacked with lefties the last time out.

Keider Montero isn’t a sure thing as a starting pitcher, but it feels like his multi-start call-up came at just the right point for him. The opportunity to work multiple cycles of starts, recovery, throwing, bullpen, with the Tigers coaches and training staff seems really well timed. As he’s settled in with growing confirmation and confidence that his stuff plays well at the major league level, things have come together well against the Twins and Guardians.

Most impressive about Montero’s start on Monday against the Guardians was the fact that he took on a good lineup fully stacked with left-handed hitters and was able to bully them with the fastball. He used everything in his bag to throw a high rate of first pitch strikes, was able to carve up some hitters with breaking balls and the changeup, but also just reared back and trusted himself to spot a good fastball repeatedly to some tough left-handed hitters and executed with confidence. The result was a ton of weak contact and his usual good ratio of whiffs even if the Guardians are a hard team to pile up strikeouts against.

In the postgame, A.J. Hinch repeatedly emphasized Montero’s eagerness to learn and his ability to translate adjustments into game performance and pitch with confidence. There is more to learn, but what we’ve seen the last two starts is a young pitcher with very good stuff learning how to execute against major league hitters, and it’s been impressive.

Against the Dodgers, Montero needs to set things up with his fastball without making many big mistakes. That’s one key for him. That will open things up for his breaking stuff away from right-handers, and hopefully more of his changeup. He’s only throwing the split change 11.4 percent of the time in the major leagues, yet it has an outstanding 58.3 percent whiff rate, so another key is to lean into that pitch more.

The track record of the Tigers pitching coaches, and Montero’s steady development over the past year, says he’s got a very good chance of succeeding and eventually sticking as a long-term member of the Tigers’ rotation. His ability to keep improving despite adversity over the last few years bodes well for his odds. Hopefully he can get a good long look with the Tigers this summer and prove he’s ready to hold down a spot in the rotation going forward.