Q.  What would cause them to ignore xFIP on White?

A.  My guess is that it is the fact that White does not blow up on the mound.

Look, xFIP or no xFIP, there are many situations in baseball that require only that the new reliever throw strikes. 

When you are ahead of the Anaheim Angels 7-2, and you have a tremendous defense on the field, that is one of those times.  The question isn't a 4.00 xFIP vs a 5.00 xFIP.  The question is volatility vs reliability.   If Kanekoa Texiera had not BB'ed 2 hitters, and given up another 2 hits in one IP on Sunday, the Seattle Mariners win that game.

When you are up 3-4 runs, and your starter's getting hit, and the bottom of the other guys' lineup is arriving, all you need is strikes.  You don't need the guy who is great one day and lousy the next day.  You need the guy who is decent every day.

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Q.  How volatile was Texeira?

A.  Before he was cut, Kao-Kan got smacked around in 4 of his prior 5 outings.  Three of those meltdowns directly resulted in Mariners losses of close, important, games.

More to the point, he is a rookie out of AA and shouldn't be in the majors to start with.  You've got to consider whether four bad games might snowball into four more.

It is way off track to take a snapshot of his xFIP and declare that "this is who Kanekoa Texeira is."  We don't have any idea who Texeira is.  The people with the best idea of it, are afraid that he might be a rookie.

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Q.  But Texeria had a pretty good K rate, xFIP, etc etc.

A.  Looking backward, yeah.

This is a critical logical fallacy that SSI sees again and again.  Remember:  stats are backwards-looking!

6.8 strikeouts, 4.8 walks, and 0.0 homers is NOT who Kanekoa Texeira IS.   It is what he WAS.  What concerns the Mariners is what Texeira will BE NEXT.

Time and again cyber-Seattle does this:  "Look, Pitcher X does this well and that well and the other well."  How do we know?  All we know is what he's done in the past.  Pitchers are evolving organisms!

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None of that even speaks to (A) the abstract problem that hitters adjust to pitchers, the second time around the league...

or to (B) the practical issue that Kanekoa Texeira, specifically, is a "novelty" pitcher who benefitted from hitters' lack of familiarity with him.

It's not jumping at shadows to worry about what ML hitters would do with Tex's funky little slurve once they got used to it.  It's Wakamatsu's job to project what they will do with it.

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Part 3