{"id":5996,"date":"2017-05-17T16:21:09","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T20:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=5996"},"modified":"2025-09-16T11:10:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T15:10:23","slug":"hans-crouse-2017-mlb-draft-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2017\/05\/17\/hans-crouse-2017-mlb-draft-profile\/","title":{"rendered":"Hans Crouse 2017 MLB Draft Profile"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Prep arms are notoriously hard to project to the major leagues. The jump in competition from the high school level to the pros is vast; hitters, even in the lowest levels of the minors, have much greater understanding of the strike zone than any high school player. However, in every draft there are a few can&#8217;t-miss prep arms that teams will jump on, despite the risk. Hans Crouse projects to be one of those in 2017.<\/p>\n<h2>Hans Crouse 2017 MLB Draft Profile<\/h2>\n<h3>Overview<\/h3>\n<p>Hans Crouse hails froms Dana Point, California, where he pitches for Dana Hills High School. Crouse is tall, at 6&#8217;4\u201d, and weighs in at 185 pounds. He has room to grow and add muscle, which should help him maintain the fire he already throws. The 18-year-old bats lefty, but throws righty. Crouse was named a Rawlings-Perfect Game 2017 First-Team All-American, and a California All-Region First-Team member. He also received underclass first-team honors in 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.maxpreps.com\/athlete\/hans-crouse\/0yt3qk7tEeOZXQAmVebBJg\/gendersport\/baseball-stats.htm\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Crouse has pitched 183.1 innings in his varsity career<\/a>, to the tune of a 1.26 ERA, a .176 opponents batting average, 246 strikeouts, and just 61 walks. As a senior, he owns a 0.85 ERA, 91 strikeouts, and 14 walks in 57.1 innings. Crouse is committed to play for USC, but could go pro if drafted as high as he should be.<\/p>\n<h3>Strengths<\/h3>\n<p>Hans Crouse&#8217;s calling card is his fastball, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perfectgame.org\/players\/playerprofile.aspx?ID=427517\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">which sits in the mid-90s and can run up to 97<\/a> with good action. He mixes in an off-speed offering that can break all sorts of ways to throw hitters off. Crouse&#8217;s nasty arsenal, mixed with his fiery demeanor, make him someone most hitters would rather not face.<\/p>\n<h3>Weaknesses<\/h3>\n<p>Crouse needs to develop his arsenal a bit more if he wants to remain a starter when he gets to the pros. There&#8217;s every reason to think he can do that, as his current offerings are well-developed. However, if he can&#8217;t he could be a bullpen arm down the road. Since relief pitching has never been more valuable in the majors than it is right now, that wouldn&#8217;t be such a bad thing.<\/p>\n<p>Crouse also needs to refine his delivery and show that he can repeat it. That should come with time and training, and won&#8217;t be a real concern for most teams on draft day.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vZaxxPV-NnU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3>MLB Comparison<\/h3>\n<p><b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/l\/lackejo01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">John Lackey<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prep arms are notoriously hard to project to the major leagues. The jump in competition from the high school level to the pros is vast; hitters, even in the lowest levels of the minors, have much greater understanding of the strike zone than any high school player. However, in every draft there are a few [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":807,"featured_media":5907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,29143],"tags":[68,1298,69,1290],"class_list":["post-5996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-mlb-draft","tag-baseball","tag-hans-crouse","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-draft"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/807"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107312,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996\/revisions\/107312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}