Brad
Bass

6.13.17 - Drafted in the 7th round out of Notre Dame by the Detroit Tigers. 

5/17/14 - Ranked No. 2 in Illinois’ 2014 class, No. 3 overall. Notre Dame recruit, one of the top draft prospects in the Midwest. Highly projectable and athletic 6-foot-6, 215-pound frame, extremely athletic feet and arm for size.  Simple, repeatable delivery, balanced throughout. Should be a consistent strike-thrower at the next levels.  Delivery shows minimal effort, and height provides a good downward angle on fastball. Fails to load out of the stretch at times, getting quick with hips and lower half, affecting command. Fastball sat 87-88 touching 90 mph once in the first inning. Fastball sat 84-87 in final three innings. Threw slider in the 78-80 mph range. Slider varied at times showing depth, other times with cutter-like action and not much depth, when he dropped arm slot a bit and got around it. Missed away to right handers with slider, did a better job of staying on top and getting vertical plane on slider to left handed hitters. More of a contact pitch to miss barrels than a swing and miss pitch on this day. Two of three strikeouts came on sliders. Flashed changeup with good arm speed and arm side run in warm ups, seldom used in game action. Threw 90 pitches in four innings and exited presumably due to pitch count, but not helped out by several Lincoln-Way Central errors which extended innings. Should dominate more with stuff, even if it was down a tick from what he has previously shown.   

4/6/14 - Ranked No. 2 in Illinois’ 2014 class, No. 3 overall. Notre Dame recruit, one of the top draft prospects in the Midwest. Highly projectable and athletic 6-foot-6, 215-pound frame, extremely athletic feet and arm for size. Second start of the season. Pounded the strike zone with fastball and slider all game. Fastball sat 87-89 in the first, touched 90 twice out of stretch. Velocity dipped to 86-89 in second; 84-88 in fourth. Works downhill extremely well, lived in the bottom half of zone with arm-side sink. Athletic, repeatable delivery, arm works cleanly and easily. Lot more velocity to come, presumably. Slider has potential to be big swing-and-miss pitch in future. Currently it is very good, too. Showed impressive command of pitch, in 79-83 range, mostly 80-81. Easy to see slider in mid-80s sooner rather than later. Threw only a few changeups during his six-inning outing. For the game, yielded three runs, five hits, seven Ks, two walks (both in sixth when he was tiring).

5/25/13 - Few, if any prospect in the 2014 class, is more projectable than the 6-foot-6, 190-pound Bass. Athletic and loose, Bass certainly didn’t disappoint against North. He pitched seven innings, allowed no runs, three hits, struck out eight and walked two. His fastball sat in the 85-87 mph range, topping at 89. His slider was in the 74-76 range. Bass finished exceptionally strong, striking out six of the last nine batters he faced. Committed to Notre Dame.

No pitcher in the Midwest Future Games has more upside than the 6-foot-6, 190-pound Bass. He has an athletic, sturdy frame, long arms and legs, and, above all, has a big-time arm. Bass’s fastball regularly touched 90 mph, topping at 91, with serious tilt. It’s heavy and hard, and you don’t need to have a Walt Disney-like imagination to project it being in the mid-to-upper-90 range in the near future. (I can’t remember thinking that about an incoming junior from Illinois, ever.) Bass’s secondary stuff needs refinement, but so what. His 78 mph breaking ball is still harder than most junior’s fastballs.