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Can a pitcher actually succeed as a starter (or at least stave off replacement level) without breaking 90 mph with his fastball?  Certain lefties, I suppose, have the capacity.  Outside of the end of Greg Maddux's career, though, there are vanishingly few examples of right handed starters making any kind of career out of junkballing.  That's the only way Freddy Garcia is going to make his bones at this point.  And, surprisingly, he's posted a well above average FIP in 6 starts so far, including 2 against the Red Sox and 1 against the Yankees.  What the hell, right? 

It's common knowledge that throwing hard is desirable and the Tigers, for one, have made a season out of throwing hard and harder.  How to pull off the opposite?  Fortunately for us, Dave Allen exists. 

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Good Stuff

The table is ripped from Kalk's tool database and meshes with what I've seen in the brooks pfx stuff, so I went with the one that charted an order of magnitude more pitches.  What we see is a pretty decent repertoire.  The fastball movement is pretty blah, but throws hard enough.  Judging from the brooks graphs, his velocity increases as the inning wears on.  He can get up to 95-96, but is usually in the 92-94 range.  That's plus velocity.  The slider doesn't look particularly good, but that's the hardest pitch to eyeball for me.  The Kalk database says 16% of all sliders went for whiffs, which is well above average. The change up looks more like I'd expect a splitter to look, but it gets an average whiff rate and doesn't get too beat up when put in play.  That's two plus pitches and an average one.  We'd expect perhaps some struggles against lefties, but more or less domination against RHB.  Remember the chart from the Dan Hudson BUO?

The suggestion is that an average fastball/slider combo will tear through a right handed lineup (this is actually my guess for the Sox woes against pitchers they haven't faced).  Assuming Snell's stuff has been more or less the same throughout his career, what's he done with it?

Undomination

Career vs. RHB: .265/.327/.425, .320 BABIP, ~ .333 wOBA against.

Career vs. LHB: .293/.385/.483, .325 BABIP, ~ .386 wOBA against.

Well, not that much it turns out.  Average righties stay average.  Average lefties turn into Jim Thome.  He's given up about 5 runs per 9 innings pitched over his career and it's become worse lately as his control has imploded.  Lookout Landing (ht: WU!) has speculated that there are mechanical issues, especially with his foot landing.  I'm not entirely sure there, since the slo-mo may be making it look worse than it is.  There's a lot of shock that goes into a pitching motion in the first place.  Still, it doesn't look great. 

The brooks pfx was somewhat suggestive, but they really aren't calibrated to doing that kind of analysis--the data hasn't been corrected.  In any case, the plots for each pitch type were very spread out and every individual pitch seemed to be doing something somewhat different than its similarly categorized brethren.  This may be a visual rendering of poor control: if you don't have repeatable mechanics, it's likely that your pitches will vary more than a pitcher with repeatable mechanics.  In any case, we can just point to Snell's walk rate, which for the last two seasons has been well above his career 4.12 BB/9 rate.  In addition, he's had an elevated BABIP for his career and he's going to make his 125th MLB start tonight.  Bad pitches get hit hard and are probably harder to defend.  His lack of command is hurting him in more ways than one.

Nonetheless, he's obviously talented.  It's why the M's acquired him when they had the chance.  Frankly, it's too bad the Sox weren't in the running for his services.  To echo some SSSers before the trade deadline, I'd be very interested to see what Coop could do with him.

This is Josh Fields' minor league translated WAR150.  His performance from his '04-'08 minor league seasons have been extrapolated out to 150 games, with defense eyeballed using his MLB UZR and minor league Total Zone ratings (which can be found on minor league splits).   His age 26 season is what he actually did in the MLB this year, more or less.

This is really just an excuse to point out Dan Szymborski's recently released minor league translations that go back 30 years.  They are very cool.  As larry noted, some prospects simply reach their ceiling early and fall by the wayside.  Knowing what we know now, Fields' probably ought to have been traded following '07.  It was far less clear at the time, obviously.  Just for kicks, here's Mike Cameron.

Again, the final season is actual major league performance.  I actually just plugged in +5 fielding runs above average, but really there's a good chance he was much better.  UZR only goes back to '02, his age 29 season.  Fielding skill peaks from 24-28 or so, and it may be younger in the OF where it's almost all about how fast your legs can carry you.  From '02 to '09, he's averaged 4 WAR per season, the level of play he established in his age 23 and 24 seasons.  Nothing against Paulie, but I'm pretty sure the Sox lost that trade.  I was all of 12 when it was made, so maybe there's something I'm missing.

Charts!

9/4:

Hooray brooksbaseball.net chart!

9/8:

The Fastball

Most impressive so far has been his fastball.  The movement is nothing spectacular; the spectrum of rise over run for major league fastballs is from about 1/2 to 2.  The smaller the ratio, the more groundballs expected.  The higher, the more swing-misses expected.  Hudson's is in the vicinity of 1, so it isn't doing anything special.  The velocity is where it's at.  Of the 40+ he's thrown in relief so far, just 2 appear to have been below 93 mph.  I can't offhand find the article I'm looking for that addressed the velocity dip in moving from relief to a starting gig.  Iirc, it was 1-2 mph.  He's averaged 93-95, which still leaves him in the plus range when/if he moves into the rotation.  The scouting reports larry's posted in the Sox minor league fanposts have been somewhat vague, though Baseball America and Jim mesh pretty well (paywall):

Hudson’s fastball ranged from 90-93 mph, mostly coming in at 91-92.

And:

Through the first three innings, Hudson’s fastball registered between 91-93 on the radar gun.  Over the last four, he was around 89-90, with an occasional 91.

There was some speculation that he may have fatigued somewhat, so extrapolating what we know so far is still something of a guessing game.  There's evidence that velocity increases up until age 29 for starting pitchers, so it's reasonable to project a plus fastball.  Ideally, he'd sit 92-93 and be able to add a little in 2 strike counts.  As Cheat noted last week his command of the pitch is good; true to form he's yet to walk a batter in his limited work.  All told, he should be able to induce weak contact and ground balls early in the count against average or worse RHB.  Finishing them off with the strikeout is another story.

The Offspeed

A typical right handed slider is somewhere between 5 and -5 inches in vertical movement and 0 to 5 horizontally.  Hudson's slider is pretty weird.  It's actually had some tail to it so far; I thought larry was joking about the screwball.  Maybe not?  I'm with Cheat on this one, though: it seems to be a marginal pitch and may help explain his flyball proclivities in the high minors and his MLB stint.  Bad pitches are worth more runs.  If they're worth more runs, they're being hit in the air (either as line drives or fly balls).  Really, though, he's not capitalizing on the best pitch available to a righty facing an RHB.  This sweet graph illustrates nicely (read the whole article):

Click to embiggen.  Anyway, Hudson's pitch choice alone (far more changes than sliders), assuming he's being rational, is a serious indictment of his slider.  Normally, fastball/slider combo alone is enough to get same-sided batters out.  It just so happens that those two pitches have the largest splits, necessitating a third when at a platoon disadvantage.  Hudson is atypical in this regard, though a plus change would certainly help offset the slider problem.  Hudson is already very comfortable with his, obviously, and it passes the pfx sniff test.  There is significantly more horizontal than vertical movement and the velocity disparity is sufficient.  It's got fade and he doesn't seem to have problems disguising it.

Putting It All Together

Jim noted a lot of K's via the fastball when he saw him in AAA, something that's very unlikely to hold up in the majors.  Something like 6% of fastballs end in whiffs, way less than half of all other pitches.  So we should expect his K rate to decline at least somewhat.  Additionally, he doesn't have a real out pitch to RHB -- he'll have smaller splits, but only because he's not dominating righties with a hard breaking ball.  Still, he should have enough velocity to get by and he's better prepared for opposite handed hitters than most young right handed starters.  Kevin Goldstein tagged him with a 3-starter ceiling.  That looks about right to me.

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I'm lonely! I'm oooold! I look like a leprechaun!

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Hooray www.brooksbaseball.net chart!

Paul Byrd is right handed and can't break 88 mph with his fastball.  He cuts it, lets it ride, adds, subtracts and all other manner of tricks befitting a "crafty veteran"...but he still can't break 88.  Jeff Manship's fastball was below average.  This is barely even major league.  He tries to make up for it with plus command, which he's demonstrated amply even into the twilight of his career.  In addition, he's got what looks like a change and a slider.  They're adequate pitches. 

In combination, his repertoire is something of a poor man's Carlos Torres: fewer whiffs, but he won't miss his spots with such frequency.  The end result is very few walks, particularly to right handed bats, and too many line drives and fly balls.  So extra base hits aren't hard to come by, but Byrd can still beat you by spacing them out properly.  The Red Sox won't have to keep him out there long with the expanded rosters and their bullpen depth, so making the most of Byrd's 5-ish innings will be key.  Without the Gentleman Masher to keep SSSer spirits up, the least the Sox can do is beat up on Paul Byrd and, just maybe, get a real winning streak going.

by Paul Battaglia - AP

Jeff Manship went to Notre Dame. Blegh.

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From Manship to Masset

Prior to the '08 season, Kevin Goldstein ranked Jeff Manship 3rd in the Twins solid-at-the-time system and had this to say:

Manship’s control surpasses anyone's in the system, and that’s saying quite a bit. His fastball has good enough (90-91 mph) velocity because of its sink and location, and his curveball is a true plus pitch, with both offerings generating plenty of ground balls when contact is made at all. He works very efficiently and quickly, and pitches with a fearlessness that borders on arrogance.

An 14th round pick out of college, he was getting all that he could out of his limited upside.  Fast forward to the '09 Twins list, and it turns out it wasn't enough.  He struggled in the upper levels and dropped to 11th in the system.  And instead of a potential mid-rotation starter, KG spoke of him as a back-end type:

Manship is a strike-thrower who uses his 89-91 mph sinker to generate ground balls and set up his plus curveball, which he'll throw at any point in the count. He's aggressive within the strike zone, and brings an intensity to the mound that scouts love.

A right handed pitcher who merely touches 91 mph needs either pinpoint control or a variety of offerings.  Manship appears to have neither and he projects poorly as a result.  He's had success in the minors by limiting walks and home runs, but the latter will likely be the problem in his transition to the majors.  Nick Blackburn comes to mind as a similar arm and he stopped the anemic White Sox offense anyway.  But Manship is limited further still with a lesser fastball and, likely, lesser control.  A curve will normally work to either handed batter, but his minor league K-rate doesn't back up KG's suggestion that it's a plus pitch.  His change is less relevant against a Thome-less White Sox team, but Goldstein still listed it as needing development.  Good command of a below average fastball and an average curve likely means future reliever.  His upside is Nick Blackburn.

Blackburn, of course, and a myriad of other fairly untalented right handed pitchers have had their way with the White Sox this year.  On the year, the Sox have managed a .250/.319/.404 (~.321 wOBA) mark against all righties faced and now they must soldier on without a Hall of Fame lefty.  I'd like for this to go well and maybe even finish strong in September.  Then again: draft pick!  That is to say, what's good for the team may not be good for our eyeballs.

What He Throws

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Blackburn has an easily identified fastball-slider-change-curve repertoire.  He throws the slider harder than I expected given his fastball velocity, though given the results from LHB he's obviously not using it as a cutter.  Blackburn's fastball is pretty mediocre at 90-92 mph with too much vertical movement to call it a proper sinker.  His slider doesn't really have the drop or slide to make it a plus pitch and the curve suffers similarly.  His change up is no better.  He's a legitimate four pitch pitcher, but I wouldn't call any of them better than average.  His off-speed stuff probably qualifies as distinctly below average.  There are plenty of starters with his fastball with much better K rates.

Vs. RHB

He's obviously got plenty of options to either side of the plate, but it's against righties that he's able to consistently get outs.  For his career, he's allowed a ~.326 wOBA against RHB (MLB average is about .335) and as the stats show, he does this by scrupulously avoiding the free pass.  Fewer than 3% of right handed PAs against Blackburn end in walks.  Aside from that, there's nothing impressive about his work.  He doesn't really suppress home runs despite his decent GB% nor is his BABIP anything special.  The platoon advantage really keeps him afloat here.

Vs. LHB

Obviously, LHB are really tagging him, to the tune of .364 wOBA against.  He's still quite good at limiting the free passes, but he simply gives up too many hard hit balls for that to matter.  His effectiveness is highly dependent on the righty/lefty split of the particular lineup he's facing and considering the slash line LHB put up, anyone that gets regular playing time and hit left handed should be in Ozzie's lineup.  Kotsay might even be defensible here, given Blackburn's weakness and the Sox' distinct lack of lefty bats.

In any case, he's given up 5 runs per 9 for his career and his tRA over the last two seasons lines up well with this.  He hasn't been lucky or unlucky; rather he's shown what he's got and barring the development of a real cutter or anything at all that can generate whiffs, he's unlikely to ever be anything more than this.  That said, he's still much better than replacement (and that's worth about a run over 6 IP) and the Sox have certainly been shut down by such pitchers in the past.  Worse pitchers, even.  Clearly, being in a division race was getting in the way of performance.  Now that they're out of it, I'm sure Blackburn will get what's coming to him.

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E.T. pitches for the Red Sox.

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Tazawa might have a classic RHP starter's arsenal: fastball, curve and a change.  The fastball sits 90-92 and it doesn't look like he's capable of adding a bit when he needs it.  The change might actually be a splitter, as the usual change has more horizontal movement and less vertical movement than the fastball.  I suspect a splitter gets the lesser horizontal movement shown on his chart.  And he's Japanese, so he's supposed to throw weird pitches.  See chart:

Hooray brooksbaseball.net chart!

It isn't obvious on the chart, but the pitches from about 5 inches vertical movement to 0 are the change/split.  The curve is off on its lonesome.  Alas.  Tazawa's fastball is just alright, certainly not plus, while the whiffs he's gotten so far don't speak very highly of the curve and change.  His minor league track record is pretty good, but not any better than Dan Hudson's.  Hudson's also 9 months younger and not expected to be ready until mid-late '10.  So it's not really clear that Tazawa's ready.  Through his first three starts, he's FIPing over 6 and has struck out just 1 fewer than he's walked...

...And now that I've watched his start against the Yankees, I'm more convinced that he isn't ready.  Or isn't especially good, in any case.  His fastball, despite Tim McCarver's insistence, was well above 88 mph.  As brooks pfx said, it's 90-92.  He consistently came in to LHB and got a couple outs jamming Yankee hitters who were looking away.  He had a very hard time throwing the curve for a strike early on  and pretty much refused to throw his splitter (it's a splitter according to McCarver, who can't read a radar gun, so take that fwiw) despite the Yankees lefty-heavy lineup.  The one time I saw him throw the splitter, he got a whiff from Posada.  The curve came in at a couple different speeds and he did really fool A-Rod once he started to find the plate with it.  McCarver speculated that some of its effectiveness was due to deception and indeed he does have that Japanese weirdness, but nothing that looked like it could throw off major league batters.  The pitch probably does have plus movement, but his inability to get it over reduced him to a one pitch pitcher for the first few innings.

Yankee hitters consistently hit long fly balls and line drives off the Monster.  Tazawa was very lucky to shut them out; If the Yankees had won the coin flips, they would have put up at least 3 or 4 in Tazawa's 6 IP.    He didn't show a true three pitch arsenal and if that continues, lefties should have an easy time.  Righties may have more to deal with, but if his command isn't there, he's going to either miss over the plate or cede the base on balls.  Which means there's a pretty good chance we avoid the sweep if Good Danks shows up.  According to BP, we've still got 10-20% chance at making the postseason.  In other words, we're not quite dead yet: