1 fatal flaw top Angels prospect Caden Dana must address in spring training

Caden Dana looks to be a dark-horse candidate to win the fifth starter job out of spring training. One of the Angels' most exciting prospects, the young hurler already got his feet wet last season, making Angels history along the way -- becoming the youngest pitcher in franchise history to record a win in his debut at 20-years-old.

The sky is the limit for Dana who is the Angels' no. 1 prospect, earning that label by tearing up AA last season to the tune of a 2.52 ERA in 135.2 innings pitched. He recorded an impressive 9.75 K/9 on the strength of his impressive four-pitch arsenal. That impressive repertoire features a lot of spin, both on his fastball and breaking pitches. The fastball sits in the mid-90s, which he combines with a curveball, slider, and change-up. His pitchability has long-wowed scouts and Angels evaluators.

With all that promise and an electric debut, Dana quickly fizzled last year struggling mightily in his second and third big league starts before seeing his season end as he was demoted and shut down. The final numbers weren't pretty, a 9.58 ERA that was the result of a whopping 4.35 HR/9 and an unimaginably bad 6.10 BB/9 over just 10.1 innings pitched. Dana struggled to fool hitters and saw his K/9 plummet to 6.97 while generating soft contact just 5.6% of the time.

While it's hard to draw any meaningful conclusions from such a tiny sample, the dramatic drop-off in performance is certainly cause for concern, especially when you consider what the underlying reason was.

A serious flaw was exposed in Caden Dana's game during his brief MLB debut

The good news is there's a very real reason why despite an electric array of pitches Dana was knocked around so badly during his second and third starts. The bad news is, it will take a lot of work to fix.

It was uncovered that during his cup of coffee, Dana was throwing each of his four pitches from a different arm slot carrying about a six-inch variation per pitch. If you're counting at home, that's four different arm slots for four different pitches.

Sometimes, pitchers will vary their arm slot intentionally as a means to disrupt and confuse opposing batters. Typically that strategy is reserved for crafty veterans who have been around the block, and the implementation is much different.

Rather than throwing each pitch from a different release point, a crafty veteran will throw the same pitch from multiple arm angles to confuse the hitter. That's not what Dana was doing, he was legitimately throwing each pitch from a consistent arm slot, just that the arm slot for each pitch was different, which negated any mystery or deception.

Once hitters caught on, it became easy for them to lay off pitches designed to get them to chase and easily crush those in the zone as you can see from his extremely elevated walk and home run rates. Essentially, Dana was tipping his pitches and hitters knew exactly what was coming.

The good news is his impressive debut shows his talent, but the bad news is that once batters picked up on his tell there wasn't much he could do to stop them.

This spring it will be paramount for him to correct the issue and get all four of his offerings coming from the same arm slot to regain the natural advantage of uncertainty that a pitcher possesses. While that seems like an easy fix, retraining that muscle memory while retaining control of the repertoire isn't exactly an easy feat.

For this reason, Dana's spring starts will be must-see TV for any Angels fan, and if he's able to correct the problem he could easily find his way into the opening day rotation. If not, it's back to the minors for some intensive work correcting this glaring flaw.

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