Talent Opens Doors. Durability Keeps Them Open.
Cincinnati Reds top pitching prospect Rhett Lowder is back on the mound this spring after a frustrating year that included elbow issues and an oblique injury that derailed his 2025 season.
And in the same spring training rotation conversation, the Reds are also showcasing another premium arm: Chase Burns, a top prospect who’s already getting real looks as the club sorts out its staff.
This matters, because it’s not just a Reds story.
It’s a modern pitching story.
I wrote about Lowder last year and the hopeful adjustment he, and a lot of high-end prospects, can make to extend their careers. Then I watched his first outing this spring and, to my eye, he still looked like the same pitcher. Same type of finish. Same trend that’s been trained into pitchers across the last decade.
The lead-leg block, the recoil, the “snap” finish that looks aggressive on video and plays well in pitching labs, but too often shows up later as a durability problem.
This is for all the current top pitching prospects, and the former pitching prospects reading this too.
Because if you’ve been labeled a “top prospect,” you already checked the first box:
You have the stuff.
Now the real question is whether you can sustain results at the highest level long enough to earn the second, third, and fourth contracts—the ones that define careers.
The uncomfortable number most pitchers don’t want to hear
In my ongoing case study on top pitching prospects since 2013, only about 5% have been able to accumulate 200+ MLB innings with the team that drafted them.
Read that again.
For this generation, being “a guy” isn’t about touching 98.
It’s about staying available.
What the “finish” is really telling you
Burns and Lowder represent two top-level pitching prospects with a finish that embodies the last decade of pitchers that exhibit “stuff” but poor finishes and high rates of injuries.
The image I’m referencing (Burns and Lowder compared to former Reds greats Tom Seaver and Mario Soto) shows a stark contrast in how pitchers finish the delivery.
Here’s the point as simply as I can say it:
If you are going to throw with high velocity for any meaningful length of time, your upper mass and throwing arm have to be able to extend over your center of mass—more parallel—so the shoulder and elbow can decelerate with the support of more muscle, more mass, and better alignment.
When the finish is built around a hard block + recoil pattern, the arm is forced to “solve” deceleration with less support. It may work for a while. Sometimes it works for a long while.
But recent history has been loud: without a finish that allows true deceleration support, don’t expect to stack innings year after year.
History already taught us this lesson
Mario Soto isn’t a myth. He’s a real blueprint.
Soto threw 1,730.1 MLB innings, struck out 1,449, and spent his peak years anchoring Cincinnati’s rotation.
And Tom Seaver’s longevity speaks for itself—he was a first-ballot Hall of Famer with one of the highest voting percentages in history.
That doesn’t mean every modern pitcher has to look like Seaver or Soto.
It does mean the principle still applies:
Power is easy to sell.
Durability is what gets paid.
A message to the “can’t-miss” arms
Burns and Lowder are talented enough to be special. Burns is already flashing the kind of weapons that make organizations dream.
But the goal can’t just be “get to the show.”
The goal is:
Stay in the show
Take the ball every fifth day
Hold velocity deep
Repeat mechanics without paying for it later
Earn the contracts that change a life
In baseball, talent opens doors.
Durability keeps them open.
You already have the stuff. Now build the career.
Join the DVS M.V.P. Program and train the patterns that help you stack innings, sustain velocity, and stay healthy.
