George Klassen
RHP
11-19-22 - 2023 MLB Draft: an early look at the Big Ten
http://dugoutedgebaseball.blogspot.com/2022/11/2023-mlb-draft-early-look-at-big-ten.html?m=1&s=03
8. RHP George Klassen, Minnesota.
Bat: R. Throw: R. 6'2", 170 lbs. Born 1/26/2002. Hometown: Port Washington, WI.
2022: 0-2, 14.09 ERA, 2.61 WHIP, 8/14 K/BB in 7.2 innings.
Now this is a profile you don't see every day, as George Klassen exists on the opposite end of the spectrum from Jason Savacool. He missed his freshman season with Tommy John surgery, then stumbled to 7.2 extremely ineffective innings in 2022 as he walked or hit 42% of the hitters he faced. You read that correctly – that's fourteen walks and seven hit batsmen in 7.2 innings. He did go to the Northwoods League this summer and showed better with a 5.16 ERA and a 43/16 strikeout to walk ratio over 29.2 innings (good for a much better 12.4% walk rate), but the track record remains sparse. As you may have guessed, though, the stuff is off the charts. Klassen sits in the upper 90's with his fastball and has run it as high as 102, coming in with explosive life that puts it up there with fellow Golden Gopher righty Max Meyer for the best heater the conference has ever seen, at least if you ignore command. Klassen also adds a hard slider that can really fool hitters cheating on the heat, making for a deadly two pitch mix if he can stay ahead in the count. To this point, though, that hasn't been the case. The 6'2" righty has a very long arm path with a violent head whack that makes it extremely difficult to repeat his release point, giving him bottom of the scale command on his worst days and still well below average on his best. As he gets further from that surgery, he'll hope to smooth out the delivery a little bit and it looks like he has begun to, but it's a pure relief look unless something drastic changes. If he can get to even 40 grade command, though, that fastball/slider combination could become diabolical out of the bullpen and he could be on his way to a high leverage relief role. I'm not confident he can make that happen, but the stuff is so loud that once the third round or so rolls around, it might be time to start thinking about rolling the dice.
10-27-22 - https://gophersports.com/news/2022/10/27/baseball-four-gophers-named-northwoods-league-top-mlb-prospects -
RHP George Klassen, a Port Washington, Wis., native, missed the entire 2021 season due to Tommy-John surgery before making his Gophers debut in 2022. The former Perfect Game All-American showed premium velocity this summer, reaching triple digits with regularity with multiple recordings of 102 mph, while showing a sharp, bat-misser of a slider in the mid- to upper-80s. The quality of his stuff and the potential he has to miss a ton of bats out of a big league bullpen, at the very least, make him the top prospect in the league from the 2022 season. He's coming off a 2022 season in which he made 11 appearances, striking out eight in 7.2 innings pitched.
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