Prospect Profile: Joel Machado Likely to End His Time as a Ghost in 2021

Cub prospect Joel Machado is kind of a ghost.

The Cubs signed the young lefty in 2018 as an international free agent. He was ranked as the number 28 prospect in that year’s international free agent class by MLB Pipeline. However, when it came time to pitch in 2019, Machado did not. 

Basic Info

Throws: Left

Age: 18 (February 9, 2002)

From: Barlovento, Venezuela

Height: 6′ 0″ 

Weight: 165

In the early pictures that I saw of Machado, he looked like pretty much like any a 16-year-old teenager. He looked wiry and far from being completely grown. 

Machado was set to debut in 2019 and went through the rigmarole of spring training but was shut down for the 2019 season where he supposedly was being assigned to the Arizona Rookie League. Arizona Phil  mentioned him a few times in extended spring training before he was shut down.

LHP Joel Machado was sitting 85-86 with his FB, but he had a solid CV and so-so CH that he was able to mix & match with his FB. 

In fact, Machado remained on the roster the entire year but never saw pitch one. 

Signed for $850,000, Machado was thought to be the top left-handed pitcher in the 2018 class. Here’s what Jesse Sanchez of MLB Pipeline wrote about him:

Machado is an athletic, projectable left-handed pitcher with good arm action and lots of room to grow. He made himself into a more appealing prospect after growing a couple of inches in height and adding close to 20 pounds while also increasing the velocity of his fastball from the 85-87 mph range to 89-90 in the last year. The teenager’s repertoire also features a changeup at 80-81 mph and a curveball that usually hovers in the 70-mph range. Both pitches are projected to be average or above average with the change ahead of the breaking ball right now.

I was able to find some video of him from 2018 that was published on YouTube by Baseball America’s Ben Badler.

How Machado pitches today is probably quite different as the Cubs probably improved his strength and conditioning and maybe even tinkered with his delivery a little bit. In fact, Rich Biesterfeld got a nice shot of Machado in the card below. You can see he’s filled out a bit and hopefully his velocity has increased with the weight gain.

In the video above, there’s something that I really liked about Machado and that was how easy the ball came out of his hand. He didn’t really seem to be a max effort guy at the age of 16. Most 16-year-olds are trying to throw the ball through the backstop and I didn’t get that sense from Machado.

If Machado is healthy this year, I would expect to see him begin the year in extended spring training and then judge from there. He’ll be 19 when regular spring training begins this year. That’s still a pretty young age to be sending somebody to Myrtle Beach unless they’re really advanced as a pitcher. Machado lacks the experience needed to survive in the Carolina League as a starter at this point in his career.

 As a result, Machado is more than likely to begin playing games in the Arizona Rookie League. If all goes well there, and he’s healthy, maybe he winds up in Myrtle Beach in August or September if minor league baseball is still playing at that point, which I think it will be.

There’s a huge difference between a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old physically. I would not be surprised to see a totally different pitcher in Machado at 19 than the one we saw at 16 back in Venezuela.