from Amazon
Friday, April 18, 2008
Do Teams Overalue Pitchers with Bad Control but Good Stuff
Just as teams (the ones who are not that smart at least) do not value hitters’ individual components properly (e.g. putting too much weight on the negative value of K’s, too much weight on BA, and other garbage stats like HR and RBI), so too do they overvalue pitchers with good stuff who walk a lot of batters.
Yes, it is true that a pitcher can improve his walk rate more easily than he can improve his “stuff” (I think), but still, a pitcher’s walk rate is (obviously) an integral part of his overall talent/value, a concept which seems to be illusive for some teams. And a pitcher with a high walk rate is very unlikely to be a major league caliber pitcher, unless he has an unusual ability at K’ing batters and/or keeping the ball in the ballpark.
I am writing this now because Toronto brought up one of their prospects, a former first round pick, David Purcey. In 06, Purcey pitched to 623 batters in the minors (AA and AAA at least), and his normalized (to 4.00 for a league average major league pitcher) MLE component ERA was 7.04. That is beyond bad. The average MLE normalized ERC in AA and AAA is around 5.10, which makes him almost 2 runs worse than the average AA and AAA pitcher, at least in 2007. That’s some prospect!
The reason for such a bad ERC is obvious. His walk rate was over twice the MLB average and his home run was more than 40% higher (and his K rate was not that good, at .86 times the average MLB rate). How is this guy even remotely a prospect? O.K. maybe 06 was a little bit of a fluke year, even with 623 TBF.
In 05, in AA, his normalized ERC was much better. 4.20, which is pretty decent for a prospect. Still, his MLE BB rate was almost 2 times the MLB average.
In high A ball, in 05, his walk rate was also atrocious.
But that is going backwards. In 07, he threw to 265 batters, and his walk rate was only 6% higher than the MLB average. Of course, the rest of his stats suffered (since his K rate was still below average), and his NERC was 5.69, again, terrible for a minor league prospect. But he finally got his control under control, so to speak. Yeah, right! 265 TBF a pitcher does not make! As if his 06, 05, and 04 do not exist.
This is a guy, supposedly with good stuff, and supposedly a top prospect out of high school (he was drafted high by the M’s) and then out of college, who clearly has no idea where his pitches are going, and has not improved his control a lick since starting professional ball in 2004.
So why is he starting a major league game for the Blue Jays, who think that they have a chance to compete this year? I have no idea, other than the fact that teams love guys with good stuff and somehow can completely overlook a critical component of his overall talent, which is control of course.
BTW, what did this guy do in his debut? Only walked 7 batters in 4 1/3 innings. The sad part is that because of a little “luck” he only let up 1 run, so everyone is going to say that, “He had a good debut, even though he was a little wild,” and he’ll probably get another start sometime soon. The fact is that he had a terrible debut, worse than expected, of course, but not too much worse. The guy does clearly not belong in the major leagues, and I would give him a 10% (WAG) chance to ever be en effective major league pitcher.
Completely off-topic, but I listen to XM radio a lot in my car, and of course, I listen to the MLB channels a lot. It has gotten to the point where the main “analysis” show, Dibble and Kennedy (both fairly intelligent guys), are completely unlistenable. It boggles my mind that they can be on 3 hours a day, every day, or whatever it is, and obviously they have a loyal listenership or they wouldn’t be on the radio, and do almost nothing but spout drivel after drivel.
Boggles my mind.