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  "description": "Welcome back for the second edition of Under the Hood, and this week, I will be focusing on one of the Arizona Diamondbacks' hottest rising pitching prospects, Junior Ciprian. Ciprian was a 2023 international free agent signing by Arizona at the age of 18 and boasts a projectable 6'3\" frame with a pair of equally tantalizing offerings.\n\nCiprian is in the midst of a very dominant stretch in the California League this season, and in the process, he's finding himself getting deeper into starts than",
  "path": "/under-the-hood-2-junior-ciprian/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-26T18:26:23.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.prospectslive.com",
  "textContent": "Welcome back for the second edition of Under the Hood, and this week, I will be focusing on one of the Arizona Diamondbacks' hottest rising pitching prospects, Junior Ciprian. Ciprian was a 2023 international free agent signing by Arizona at the age of 18 and boasts a projectable 6'3\" frame with a pair of equally tantalizing offerings.\n\nCiprian is in the midst of a very dominant stretch in the California League this season, and in the process, he's finding himself getting deeper into starts than he ever had previously. Upon his promotion to Single-A Visalia last August, Ciprian was going two to four innings maximum, and it wasn't until his final start of last season that Ciprian worked into the fifth inning. In 2026, the freshly turned 21 year-old is working consistently into the fourth inning and beyond, and he's seeing his velocity maintain.\n\n## **MECHANICS**\n\nThis will be where we spend the bulk of our time. Ciprian boasts a pair of pretty nasty offerings with an explosive fastball and slider, but his mechanics are holding him back from getting the most out of those offerings right now. Ciprian is a big spinner, seeing rates north of 2500 across the two offerings, but he's still hardly throwing his changeup and is purely out-stuffing a lot of batters he's facing in the low minors.\n\nCiprian's weight transfer is clunky right now. He loads up on his back leg with sustainable force to transfer forward, but his plant leg stops it in its tracks. Ciprian gets tremendous rotation through his hips and has an explosive, repeatable arm action, but you'll notice the front leg lock and almost recoil just prior to release.\n\nThe lead leg block to this extremity is nothing new, and you'll see it utilized by athletic pitchers like Ciprian, Spencer Strider probably being the most famous example. However, Ciprian is not getting his hips through by the time the leg blocks, and in doing so, that front leg recoils a bit and doesn't efficiently transfer his energy forward into his release. He's leaving a lot of meat on the bone in terms of maximizing his extension and by creating a leaning action to the upper body, and this happens because his upper half is left to do the bulk of that energy transfer, creating a lean in his release.\n\n0:00\n\n/0:12\n\n1×\n\nCiprian's upper half is noticeably stacked on that plant leg, causing imbalance through his release. It keeps Ciprian's release height high on every pitch, but more importantly, it keeps the effectiveness of his fastball at about 70% of what it could become. When Ciprian misses, it's always up, and he can really struggle to locate his fastball consistently anywhere that isn't up in the zone. While his fastball does work best the more vertical it can climb as it plays at its flattest up there, it's still not terribly VAA friendly because of the higher release point. If Ciprian can keep the train rolling down the tracks and not come to a screeching halt, he will unlock some more arm side tail on his 4-seamer and help him continue to flesh out the changeup he so desperately needs.\n\n## **ARSENAL**\n\n### **FOUR-SEAM FASTBALL: 94-97 T99**\n\nThe fastball has a lot of potential. Ciprian is a very good athlete on the mound, and his rotational force and repeatable arm action create the heater's explosiveness. Ciprian's four-seamer does not get the amount of swings and misses you'd anticipate, hovering right around a 20% whiff rate this season, and a lot of that comes down to the aforementioned mechanical inefficiencies that both make his heater a bit one-dimensional up in the zone but also kill some of his ability to generate arm-side movement. It is worth noting that it appears Ciprian is working along the outside of the ball in his hand which can dampen some arm-side movement intrinsically.\n\nIf Ciprian could get a more fluid, balanced motion towards the mound, his fastball would immediately take off as he'd find it a lot easier to locate across the zone. Though Ciprian has cut down his walks a fair bit this season, a lot of his command inconsistency stem from his fastball. He can spend a whole inning at times just trying to rein it in from well above the zone, but when he can get it rolling with consistency along the top rail and especially on the outer third to left-handed bats, he becomes a very tough at-bat as it sets up his best pitch, his slider.\n\n### **SLIDER: 86-89**\n\nThis is the good stuff. Where a lot of Ciprian's future outlook blossoms stems from his slider. Ciprian is throwing his slider close to 34% and at a near even split by handedness, and he's pumping whiff rates north of 50% with it.\n\nThe shape on this pitch, beyond its gaudy swing and miss numbers, is the most notable part here. The average right-handed starting pitcher in the major leagues generates 1.6 inches of induced vertical break. Ciprian's vertical shape is living closer to that of a cutter with substantially less horizontal action. His arm speed is so good, and the spin he creates only helps create the sharp dropping depth on it, and if you were game for a comparison, it comes close to mirroring Dylan Cease's slider with a bit less drop.\n\nUnlike his fastball, the slider does and will continue to play even through the mechanical inefficiencies. He's found an excellent shape for it, and he's comfortably throwing it in any count to either handedness, and its sharp vertical drop lets him tunnel with his riding fastball, something he's shown the ability to do at times this season.\n\n### **CHANGEUP: 88-90**\n\nCiprian only started developing his changeup late last season, and even now, he hardly throws it. When he does, it's been exclusively to left-handed hitters, and while generating a fair amount of arm-side action on it, it shows the tendency to float rather than find depth.\n\n## **OUTLOOK**\n\n### **SP4-5, HIGH LEVERAGE RELIEVER**\n\nIt all comes down to cleaning up things mechanically for Ciprian, and that has to come before filling out the arsenal here. If Ciprian can create more consistent synergy between his upper body and his plant leg, he's going to see even more success than he has this season. His limited repertoire has only recently gotten him in trouble as teams are seeing him for the second or third time this season, but he's still running a remarkable .167 average against with 69 strikeouts in 61.1 innings as of this writing.",
  "title": "Under the Hood #2: Junior Ciprian",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-26T18:26:23.797Z"
}