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Dylan Bundy is a walking lesson in prospect volatility. After rocketing through the Baltimore Orioles farm system and reaching the major leagues at age 19 in 2012, he blew out his elbow and sat out a full season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. Bundy returned in 2014 and showed flashes of his old self before suffering another (relatively minor) setback.

Despite his checkered injury history, Bundy has everything you could want in a frontline starter. His fastball is overwhelming, his curveball is tantalizing, and his changeup is surprisingly mature. He’s stocked with a full arsenal to attack both right and left-handed hitters, and I haven’t even mentioned what might be his best pitch! Bundy occasionally throws a devastating cutter, but it’s recently disappeared, likely on arm-saving orders from the Baltimore brass.

Brooks Baseball only has data on 43 pitches from Bundy’s brief stints with the Orioles in 2012, but it’s worth noting that in a sample about half the size of a typical start, he touched 95 mph with his fastball, dropped to 77 mph with his curveball, and showed excellent movement up, down, and to both sides of the plate.

Bundy has flashed some of the best stuff in the minor leagues, but until he fully regains his pre-surgery form, we can’t quite be sure if it’s ever going to come all the way back.

Pundits

There was a time when Bundy was the consensus best pitching prospect in baseball. He’s fallen significantly from that perch over the last two-plus years, but the fact that he’s already ascended back into the Top 20 on MLB.com’s list speaks to his indefatigable talent and dogged work ethic. Keith Law ranks Bundy slightly lower at ESPN, but 26th overall and top ten among right-handed pitchers is still nothing to sneeze at. If he continues to round into something resembling his pre-injury form, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see him climb a few spots in mid-season rankings updates.

From MLB.com:

“Before a lat strain shut him down in early August, Bundy was slowly regaining the stuff he showed in 2012. He was throwing his fastball in the mid to upper 90s pre-surgery, though he was a tick or two below that upon his return. His secondary stuff was inconsistent, not uncommon post-surgery. With more time, both his curve and changeup should be at least above-average pitches. His command should also improve the farther removed from injury he gets.”

From Keith Law:

“He seemed like a sure-fire No. 1 starter before his injury, with a great delivery that generated power from his legs and a major league out pitch in the cutter. This spring will probably tell us whether that ceiling remains.”

Production

There’s just not a ton to go on here. Given that Bundy has only pitched a total of 18.1 innings above High-A, there’s really not a whole lot that we can learn from looking at his stats. Sure, he’s consistently dominated overmatched hitters in the low minors, but that’s what we’d expect from any pitcher who was picked fourth overall in the Amateur Draft. His fantastic strikeout rates lend some hard evidence to scouts’ drool-soaked notes, but a couple clicks on YouTube can accomplish the same thing (the three-pitch sequence starting at 1:48 is just unfair).

Projections

As it is with most young pitchers, Steamer is tentative with Bundy. I can’t say I disagree. With essentially zero experience against big league-quality hitters, it’d be foolish to predict that he’ll immediately start blowing people away. That said, if he spends his early summer dominating a higher level of the minors, this projection may prove a bit too conservative. There’s just not enough reliable data here to build a projection in which I’d be confident. I’ll watch his performance early in the 2015 season and draw my conclusions from there.

Prediction

The talent is clearly still there and the elbow surgery is now nearly two years in the past. Even Bundy himself seems to feel like his injury may turn out to be a valuable learning experience. It has delayed his arrival to the major leagues, but I don’t feel like it’s really stunted his development as a pitcher.

Though I’m sure the Orioles can feel the breath of the reloading Red Sox and rehabbing Yankees on the back of their collective neck, I believe they’ll resist the temptation to rush Bundy, no matter how well he pitches to start this season. They’ve imposed strict post-TJ pitch limits on him and don’t figure to relent now.

That said, Baltimore’s big league rotation isn’t exactly loaded. Miguel Gonzalez is miscast as anything more than a swingman and Kevin Gausman has yet to prove out his own prospect pedigree at the MLB level. I’d expect to see some turnover at those spots in the rotation, but I’m not confident that Baltimore will decide that Bundy is its best option. I would confidently bet on Bundy reaching the majors at some point this season, but if there’s an opportunity for a longer term role in the rotation, I’m not sure the O’s will give Bundy a shot. It’s really tough to succeed as a big league starter on a strict pitch limit.

The reality is that we won’t really know anything until we see Bundy pitch and see how the Orioles handle him. If they cut him loose and he pitches well, he could be in the major league rotation by June. If they keep the kid gloves on and/or Bundy struggles at all, he could be limited to an espresso shot in September.

He’s worth watching, but in anything other than the deepest AL-only leagues, he’s probably not worth drafting yet.