Getting to Know Astros RHP J.B. Bukauskas

Astros RHP J.B. Bukauskas, currently ranked the #8 prospect in the Astros system by MLB Pipeline, is definitely on the quiet side. When I talked with him last week by phone, he answered the questions I posed politely, but was not terribly expansive on any given topic. So I reached out to one of his many pitching coaches for the 2018 season to get his take on the Astros 2017 first round pick.

J.B. Bukauskas - September 2018

Photo by Jayne Hansen

2018 Buies Creek Pitching Coach Drew French agreed that it is a little tough to get Bukauskas to open up, but found him to be very insightful and well-spoken when he did. "J.B. is an incredibly humble individual which I think bodes well for his makeup and mentality especially when it comes to development. He possesses a lot of the intangible things where it’s easy to see his track to the big leagues. Obviously we love his arm and fastball velocity as well as his slider. He has a really good changeup that he is working on utilizing more, which has shown to be a great weapon vs both bat sides. Because of his stint on the DL during the 2018 season we had a lot of ground to make up in a short amount of time and he was a great student/soldier to get him up to speed. Most of the work with him was solidifying his cutter and then working command to hitter weakness more frequently to get him ready for AA/Fall League. It’s not a surprise that he had the success he had in during the 2018 campaign and is showing very well against some of the best prospects in the game right now in Arizona," said French.

As noted by French, Bukauskas spent significant time on the DL in 2018. After making two starts for the Low A Quad Cities team in April, Bukauskas was shelved for two months. Although the Astros front office wasn't forthcoming regarding his status at the time, it eventually came out that Bukauskas was involved in an automobile accident during Spring Training, but was thought to be healthy enough to start the season on time. However, an initially undiscovered disk problem which mimicked an oblique injury derailed him until late June.

After making quick work of a rehab stint and two additional starts for Quad Cities, Bukauskas moved on to High A Buies Creek where he compiled a 1.61 ERA and a 0.929 WHIP over five starts (13 BB:31 K in 28 IP) and was rewarded with a promotion to AA Corpus Christi to close out the season, collecting one final regular season start and one postseason start. Although Bukauskas got a late start to his season, his participation in the Arizona Fall League should ultimately enable him to log over 90 innings (including that postseason start) before he shuts things down for the offseason.

And Bukauskas has had a very successful Arizona Fall League campaign thus far, going 1-1 with a 2.61 ERA and a 1.355 WHIP in 5 starts (9 BB:20 K in 20.2 IP) with one additional start anticipated before the AFL season ends next Thursday. I spoke with Bukauskas the day after his fourth start of the fall season and he was particularly pleased with his fastball velocity and its swing-and-miss potential during that start. His slider was sharp as well, but he allowed his only run (unearned) of that appearance thanks to an errant cutter "that caught too much of the middle of the plate" and resulted in an RBI triple.

Bukauskas's prospect rankings hinge largely on his mid to high 90's fastball and his excellent slider, but he has been working hard these past few months to incorporate his changeup more effectively and to fine-tune the cutter which is a fairly new pitch for him. Although Bukauskas has had mixed success with the cutter so far, he can see it as a potential weapon. "I do like using it a lot. It's kind of like a new toy. I'm starting to see how it works, when to use it, when not to use it. There's growing pains, but I really like it a lot. I think it's going to end up benefiting me down the road," said Bukauskas. Despite the delayed start to his season, Bukauskas is happy with the progress that he has made with his pitch arsenal and cites that as the biggest accomplishment of his 2018 campaign.

MLB Pipeline calls both his fastball and his slider "plus-plus" pitches, but notes that Bukauskas "sometimes falls in love with the slider too much and loses fastball command." I asked Bukauskas about that characterization and he responded, "It's kind of a day-to-day thing. You have a day where one thing isn't working. You kind of have to lean on something else. You've got to go ahead and do it in order to have a competitive outing. I think that's something that people might not see if they don't see every outing or watch every time. Some days, in order to get through the outing, sometimes you do have to lean more on the slider, sometimes more on the fastball, sometimes more on the changeup. I wouldn't say that I always lean more on the slider. It just depends on the day. The days where you have everything going I think are the ones where you can be really dominant, but sometimes you just don't have certain things. ... I think that the fastball command has definitely improved. I'm still trying to get good pitch usage for all my pitches, a good percentage. It's definitely not like college where I threw 50% sliders; it's probably more proportionate now."

The other concern that some prospect pundits have regarding Bukauskas is what they call his "high effort delivery." Of his delivery, Bukauskas said, "It's always been kind of unique. Growing up, it's always looked like that, where I kind of have a leg swing and a kick, but it's pretty repeatable for me because I've done it for so long and it's one of the things -- I don't know if you'd say that it's deceptive or kind of makes me unique but I think that the only thing that we would really try to adjust is working on the rhythm and the tempo of it, not really changing the actual motion per se, but more of the speed or the rhythm through the delivery." Bukauskas sees that adjusted tempo as helping him, making his delivery more repeatable and improving his command.

Although it might be a bit premature to ask about 2019 goals when Bukauskas hasn't quite finished up his 2018 season yet, he humored me with an answer to the query anyway. "Just developing myself as a player is more important to me [than objective goals] because I know that if I do those things, the rest will take care of itself. Whether it's developing pitches, working on pitch sequencing, things like that I think will benefit me rather than looking at the end goal. It's very cliché, but thinking about the process to get there rather than the end goal is probably more important for me."

One of Bukauskas's intangibles is his ability to focus on the task at hand and shrug off the things that don't go right. "I don't show a lot of emotion. Stick with what you're trying to do and try not to deviate too much from it. That's just always been one of those things. I don't show a ton of emotion in general, but especially not out there," said Bukauskas. Whether he is on the field or off the field, Bukauskas projects an aura of calm and quiet that somewhat masks the focus, thoughtfulness and competitive nature that lie beneath the surface.