5 Characters In Search Of A Rotation

Sometimes I worry about the strangest things. You know how they say that given enough time, eventually a group of monkeys hitting keys at random would write the complete works of Shakespeare? It’s really depressing to me to realize that it is statistically 25 times more likely that they would write the precisely correct entire works only to get the very last letter wrong. Can you imagine if somehow a group of monkeys managed to stumble upon typing, without a single error, all of Shakespeare’s masterpieces, only to get to the last page of Hamlet and type, “The Enf”. This is why the Eyeball Scout hates stats: they’re too painful.

On the plus side, though, I have finally figured out what has been mysteriously depleting my bank account. It turns out I have been making the same “one time donation” every month, for the past five years, to the Alzheimer’s Foundation. (If this offends you, all I ask is that you wait 20 minutes before typing your nasty email.)

Oh, baseball. Right. It’s not yet Christmas, but Santa has already given away Stanton and Ozuna. The Astros say Yu Darvish was tipping his pitches in the World Series, but no word yet as to whether he was tipping them the customary 15%. The Rangers report that Martin Perez broke his right elbow while on his ranch, but the story sounds like an awful lot of bull.

Oh actual baseball analysis. Gotcha. We can do that. The A’s young rotation is as varied as it is a complete question mark. Like snowflakes the various candidates are all completely unalike, leaving fans to decide which unique profile might play best. Let’s have a gander (wait, that was Thanksgiving):

Daniel Mengden

In Mengden, you have the spice of life: variety. Mengden has the most complete arsenal of any of the A’s SPs, boasting a legitimate fastball (93MPH average, sometimes hits 95MPH), a slider, curve, and changeup, plus a two-seamer that he throws about 3% of the time at around 91MPH.

What Mengden has historically lacked is consistent command, and with this in mind Steamer projects him to walk 3.5 batters per 9 IPs in 2018, one reason his predicted ERA is an unsightly 4.79. That being said, Mengden’s 1.88 BB/9 IP in 2017 was highly encouraging and led to a scientifically impressive 3.14 ERA.

Profile: Varied arsenal, questionable command

Jharel Cotton

In Cotton, you have a plus-plus pitch, his changeup, and surprisingly good velocity (93.3 MPH career average), which you would think alone could make him an effective pitcher. Less consistent, but also sometimes impressive, are Cotton’s cutter and curve. On paper, the arsenal is there. So what’s the problem?

For one, Cotton’s fastball does not have great movement. As some fans have noted, like Sean Doolittle his fastball seems to become more hittable when thrown down in the zone, suggesting that perhaps he should take pages out of the books of Aaron Harang, Aaron Sele, and the 6’10” Chris Young, and zip his fastballs more across the letters. Cotton is very HR prone, which may relate directly to having a fastball with more velocity than movement. Cotton and Frankie Montas are crying buddies around the experience of throwing balls hard that are hit back harder. Finally, Cotton’s cutter and curve are inconsistently thrown, sometimes baffling hitters and at other times missing spots and not bats.

Profile: Good repertoire, straight fastball, HR prone

Paul Blackburn

All Blackburn did in the big leagues last season is get hitters out, and there is something to be profoundly said for that. A “ground ball machine” with excellent command and a variety of pitches he can spot, Blackburn is the epitome of a pitcher who “knows how to pitch”.

But oh, that K-rate. It’s not just scary, it’s historically quite predictive. Blackburn struck out all of 22 batters in 58.2 IP, for an almost comical 3.38 K/9IP rate. Pitchers just don’t get away with K-rates like that over time. They just don’t. Is Blackburn some weird exception, or can he somehow add 2-3 K/9IP to his game?

Steamer uses Occam’s Razor to suggest that the more likely answer is that in 2018, Blackburn’s ERA will balloon from last year’s 3.22 to 4.96. Ouch. Curse you, Ghost of Guillermo Moscoso!

Profile: Really knows how to pitch, can’t strike batters out

Jesse Hahn

Hey, he’s still here and he’s still young by ‘contract control’ standards. When you look up “enigma” in the dictionary, you don’t see a picture of Hahn because, well, dictionaries don’t actually do that. But if anyone can figure out what’s up with Hahn, the best anyone has been able to come up with so far is, “$10M arm, 10 cent head?”

The stuff is there. Hahn was excellent in 2015 when his sinker velocity was 93MPH — a late diving sinker that made him a ground ball machine who sometimes got through 6 IP on just over 60 pitches. Yet following an uptick in velocity of a full 2 MPH on his sinker, Hahn was much worse in 2016, then failed to master AAA hitters at the end of 2017.

Hahn brought back his slider in 2017 to be a 4-pitch pitcher with a decent changeup and signature 12-to-6 curve. Yet more pitches and more velocity have not been answers for him. In fact his two best seasons (one with San Diego, one with Oakland) have come when he threw his sinker at the lowest velocity (91.4 in 2014, 93.1 in 2015), compared to 2016 (95.1 MPH, 6.30 ERA) and 2017 (94.3 MPH, 5.30 ERA).

Profile: Has all the tools, doesn’t know how to use them

Andrew Triggs

Triggs is also younger by contract control than by age, but is also young in terms of starting pitching experience. That is partly because each of his two seasons starting have been interrupted by injury.

Most sidearming RHPs struggle too much against LH batters to succeed as starting pitchers, and just rely too much on deception in general to thrive multiple times through the order. Triggs was a revelation in being successful pretty deep into games when he got his first shot in the rotation, and he was off to an excellent start again in 2017 until injury derailed his performance, and soon his season.

Was Triggs’ initial success a mirage or was continued health his only barrier to thriving as a SP? Were his health problems related to starting, or just coincidental? Can he reliably mute LH batters, as his career .242/.307/.394 slash line against suggests that maybe he can?

Profile: Has succeed in short bursts, but hasn’t sustained results/health

So if one of these guys is going to take a big step forward, have a breakout season and help anchor a rotation that is in great need of another anchor, who do you think it will be and why? And who will be the other kind of anchor, sinking to the very bottom of the ocean of obscurity?