Q.  Nobody who throws 97 can fail?  Brandon League is kinda like that, and he has disappointed.  There was Daniel Cabrera.

A.  Well, first of all, League has been effective.  His ERA and xFIP are 3.50 this year.  That's good.

But, yeah.  Where's the star, right. 

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Longtime STATS AOL guys will remember Scott Sanders, Paul Spoljaric and Bobby Ayala ...

Paul Spoljaric had just finished two seasons with 9k, 4bb and came to the Mariners having been one of the Jays' best relievers.  Unfortunately, the Mariners did not know how to sequence his pitches, and a lack of deception led to an instant implosion.

In other words, Spoljaric had a very easy-to-see fastball, a tendency to center it, and hitters could sit on that one fastball per AB.  The Mariners had no clue how to work around this Achilles' heel, and Spoljaric was toast the moment he went to a lesser org.

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Scott Sanders, in 1996, ran this flabbergasting line for the Padres:  157k, 48bb and 10hr in 144 innings!   Tell me that in the year 2010, if the Mariners landed a young pitcher with those TTO's for (say) Jason Vargas (Sterling Hitchcock) how it wouldn't be the joke of sabermetrics all winter...

Sanders had the same Achilles' heel:  terrible deception.  He showed the 94 FB early, he wayyyyy over-challenged with it, and once he got booked, hitters waited for that once-an-AB fat one.  He ran a 2.2 and 1.7 homer rate for the M's.

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Bobby Ayala was the same thing.  In 1997 the M's bullpen was one of the tragedies of American sports history, and late in 1997 an opposing scout spilled the beans:  "Bobby will center one fastball per at-bat for you.  You just wait for it and turn it around."

Brandon League has precisely this issue.  His fastball shows early, it comes in high, and he doesn't throw enough offspeed.  It's what keeps him from starring.

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The moral of the story:  a reliever who throws as hard as Cortes, and has a slider like his, will star.  Unless he has terrible deception and tees up a bunch of fastballs.  That's the asterisk.

Cortes, by contrast is actually "effectively wild" and not at all a comfortable at-bat in the way that Sanders and Ayala were, and in the way that League is.

So, we're optimistic on that count.  The Ayalas and Leagues are not the rule.  They're the exception.  Most pitchers don't have lousy deception by default.  They have to work for it.

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You also have the fact that Spoljaric threw 92, Sanders 94, Ayala 94, League 94-95.  Cortes throws like 96-100.  That's a nice error factor.

You can lose throwing 97. And you can win throwing 83, like Jamie Moyer.  The race isn't always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.  The exceptions underline the rule.  Bet against rookie pitchers throwing 84, and bet on rookie pitchers throwing 98.

The American League is betting against a crooked house, if it's betting against Daniel Cortes.

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Part 5

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