Q.  I don't get it.  How could he be missing more bats in the majors than in the minors?

A.  Some guys do.  This week Jeff Sullivan counted them up, and found about 1/8 of them do, in the pool he looked at.   It' s not impossible.

The very first thing that Bill Kreuger said, in the postgame after Doogie's first start was, "This looks like a guy who could be better in the majors than in the minors."

D-O-V touted this w/r/t pitchers like Freddy Garcia (AA/AAA) and Tim Lincecum (college).  It can happen.

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Q.  But how?

A.  Notice that Doogie is not striking out more hitters in the majors.  He's missing more bats.

So the S% is up by 50%, but the K/9 is down by 20%.  

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Q.  Meaning what?

A.  The easy thought is to assume that his K/9 will "correct" to his S%, but even if true, that wouldn't explain our little puzzle anyway.  Doogie's S% is up and we don't know why.

To me the default assumption is simple.  If a guy is getting few swinging strikes, but lots of strikeouts, then he is locking guys up -- getting lots of looking strikes.

That would make perfect sense, if AAA pitchers saw those baffling 2-inches-outside swerveballs and parachute changes and Nishiguchi overhand curves and just didn't swing at anything because they were so confused.

ML hitters, on the other hand, can deal with those pitches, so they do swing.  But they're tough pitches, so you get swings and misses.

That's my first assumption as to what's going on.

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Q.  So AAA hitters were overmatched.

A.  Absolutely.  They simply couldn't deal with Fister's game.

ML hitters can deal with Fister's game, but in so doing, you see some tries-and-failures (swinging strikes).

That's not to anoint Fister a HOF'er.  AAA hitters couldn't deal with Garrett Olson's game, either.

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Q.  The ML hitters are not doing worse than AAA hitters?

A.  The K/BB is wayyyyy down in the majors.  There are no miracles occuring here -- the batters' results have MORPHED at the next level, not gotten much worse.

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Q.  What would the saber-scope show as to his first 20 innings?

A.  The phrase "small sample size" gets bandied around a lot these days ;- ) but...

1.  Fister hasn't given us a sample of anything.  The teams he's faced have not given a representative sample of the entire AL hitter pool.

2.  The pitches that he's taken out to the mound, in only three starts, could not possibly have given us a representative "sample" of what his next 10,000 pitches will be. 

A sample is when you have 100,000 ball bearings, and then you take 100 of them randomly.  A real "sample" can indeed be of extremely small size.  The problem with Doogie's AL stats aren't that they're a small sample; the problem is that they are not a sample at all.

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Q.  But if they were a sample?

A.  He'd have a 2.21 ERA, a 4.27 FIP because his strand rate is sky-high, a 2.2 control ratio that portends success, and a .240 BABIP that will rise.

But, we haven't triangulated what he'll do.  First game he had a 4:4 control.  Next two he had an 8:1, which is what I hope he'll do.

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Q.  Supposing that Doogie throws six more great games?

A.  A lot of guys do.  Bobby Madritsch and Ryan Feierabend and the rookie Ryan Rowland-Smith and lots of guys have come up and looked great for 50 innings at the end of a year.

Doogie's results in terms of ERA -- good or bad -- won't matter a lot the next month.   What will matter, is just how good his control is.

Cheers,

Dr D