The Brazilian righty signed with Toronto for $1.4 million in 2017. Known for his extremely advanced polish and pitchability as an amateur, he performed as advertised in the Appy League last summer as a 17-year-old. Pardinho is polished enough to be in full-season ball right now, though elbow soreness this March caused him to start 2019 in Extended Spring Training. He showed the same stuff and ability to execute in my backfields look, though at a near-maxed 5-foot-10, it’s fair to wonder how much more upside is left for Pardinho to unlock.

Pitching from a deliberate semi-windup, he repeats his delivery very well and throws consistent strikes with a low-90s fastball. Pardinho gets late hop up in the zone on a four-seamer, able to run a sinking variant down and armside. His heater ranged from 89-to-93 mph, sitting around 91 mph. There’s plenty of time to develop command at his age, and Pardinho has the pitchability to do it; even so, he’s unlikely to over be particularly overpowering and will need to improve his ability to spot the fastball down in the zone. His best off-speed is a hard upper-70s curve, a sharp downer that induced numerous swinging strikes. A low-80s changeup showed consistent separation and armside fade, backed by a true slider at 80-to-82 mph he wrinkles for another look. Pardinho’s ability to sequence pitches and land his off-speed for strikes early in counts was impressive, keeping hitters on their toes and unable to lock in on fringy velocity.

Pardinho will be interesting to watch develop through the lower levels of the minors. He’s the type of pitching prospect that often breezes through A-Ball and reaches upper-level competition early, but starts to be challenged more once he’s no longer significantly more polished than the competition. The feel and control profile could be good enough to still make him a back-rotation starter even without overpowering stuff. In the event his small, developed frame is able to grow into more velocity, he could finish better than that.