40 in 40: Levi Stoudt is back

The non-prodigal son returns

A local animal rescue found an abandoned baby bird. They raised it and nursed it to health. While the bird was never the biggest or strongest, it slowly grew into a perfectly average bird that could probably survive on its own. So the rescue team let the bird go to fly free and forge its own path. But the bird was scared to fly, just cruising slowly just above the ground. Until it was hit by a truck.

Miraculously, the bird survived, and the rescue team saved it again. The set to work, trying once again to turn the baby into a healthy adult.

And so it is with Levi Stoudt.

Mariners fans may remember Stoudt from when he was wrapped in a neat little bow and shipped off to Cincinnati in the deal that brought Luis Castillo to the emerald city. In college Stoudt looked to be a perfectly serviceable arm. And after the M’s took him in the 3rd round of the 2019 draft, he continued to be okay in Everett and Arkansas. Like a McDonalds hamburger, he was fine. Average. Good enough. If you had the computer generate a pitcher in MLB The Show, it would produce Levi Stoudt.

And then he was sent to Ohio.

Stoudt finished the 2022 season with Cincinnati's AAA affiliate, the Louisville Bats, and posted an astoundingly decent ERA of 3.32 in 6 games. It’s not that bad considering it was his first time above AA.

Unfortunely for Levi, the wheels promptly came off the Stoudt-mobile. He appeared in the majors for 4 games (2 starts) and in 10.1 innings he gifted the Reds’ opponents 11 earned runs. In July he was banished back to Louisville and didn’t fare much better, posting a 6.23 ERA in 82.1 IP.

The 31 major league batters he out do give him a Savant page, and while we should take this with a grain of salt, it is very blue.

I think the funniest part here is how bad everything is and then his almost exactly mediocre fastball velocity. He’s bad at being bad.

So last year Stoudt got called up, lit up, and then sent back down where he got lit up for the rest of the year. It’s not hard to guess why the Reds DFA’d him.

But now he’s back. So what does the Mariners’ front office see in him? Does he have some exciting secret weapon that we’re all dying to see in teal? Well:

At least, not yet. The alchemical abilities of the Mariners’ pitching lab are well known, and Stoudt would not be the first misfit toy to bounce back under the guidance of Pete Woodworth. He’s just 26 years old and now he’s returning to his first professional system. If there was any time for him to go from his replacement-level 2023 to becoming a league-average arm, this would be the time.

Maybe this is another case of Dipoto gazing longingly at a failing pitcher and softly muttering “I can fix him.” But there was something in Stoudt in 2019 that made the front office take him so high in the draft. He’ll certainly want to prove that something is still there in spring training.

For my money, Stoudt will likely start the year in Tacoma and cruise along posting respectable stats until injury or circumstances force the M’s to bring him up. As far as “break-glass-in-case-of-emergency” guys go, Stoudt’s not a bad one to have.

If you’d like to learn more, you can listen to an interview he gave on the LL podcast back in 2021.