Charlie Furbush Scouting Report: The New Two-Pitch Arsenal

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The national saber sites use a type of "it's 20% harder to pitch in the rotation" paradigm that takes a relief ERA and multiplies it by, say, that 20% figure.  Or by component skills, hey, we've got a multiplier for that, too.  If a pitcher's K's are 7.0, well, subtract 17% and you've got the rotation K's.  That kind of thing.

It never hurts to know what an industry average is, but from where Dr. D sits, industry averages miss the point in cases like this.  Are you going to say that the industry average is for a new release movie to make $43.4 million, so Amazing Spider-Man is going to make 1.7 times that? ... bad example.  Okay, if the average high schooler gets 10% worse grades in college, was Albert Einstein going to have projectable grades?  He was a complete joke as a high school* student; in other contexts his skill set worked out differently.  ... another bad example, but you get the point.  Giving up on the analogies, Goose Gossage and J.J. Putz couldn't start at all; as relievers they were untouchable.

Charlie Furbush's mechanics are fatally flawed with respect to facing a batter more than one time.  He will never avoid centered pitches, never in his life.  He'll never get appreciably better at it, either.  Somebody blow my head off, it's amazing that he can throw strikes, never mind hit spots, with this motion.  It was amazing that the 1990 Randy Johnson threw strikes.  Hey, the power of repetition, I guess.

And when modern American League hitters know that they're going to get three or four centered fastballs over the course of the evening, obviously they can game-plan around it.

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=== Good News, Dept. ===

Furbush's bullpen 35:5 CTL ratio is stunning, as is his new 80 MPH power slider.  Your probably remember that on April 17th, he threw about two or three of those Frisbees when Dr. D whipped his glasses off, sat up in his seat, and asked what the deuce was going ON.

Furbush's first game was April 13, in which he got hit.  His second game was April 17, and following that we wrote this.

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Last year, in the rotation, Furbush mixed four pitches, and his slider was 76 MPH with good spin.  This year, in the rotation, he mixes two pitches, one of which is radioactive death.  Here, let's chart it:

  Fastball Cut Fastball Curve Slider Change
Furbush 2011, rotation 55% 15 20 0 10
Furbush 2012, relief ace 55% 0 10 35 0

You might ask, "why don't Furbush's centered fastballs hurt him as much in the bullpen?"  Three things:

(1) There isn't time to stalk the pitch.  The batter gets one mistake, maybe, and he probably fouls it back.

(2) Furbush doesn't suffer from overexposure now.  He appears at unpredictable times.  It's not like the batters are sitting down in the video room prepping for a Furbush start.  ... it's one thing to run a double-reverse football play when they're not expecting it, another thing to run it when they know it's coming.  Preparation matters in sports.

(3) The centered fastballs will hurt Furbush.  He's not going to run a 2.10 FIP for his career as a reliever.  You are witnessing him on a hot, and lucky, streak.

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That said:  Furbush, in the bullpen, has been able to de-clutter his roster.  He's now using two pitches, an "effectively wild" fastball and a slider that is -- by vision, not stats -- one of the best pitches in baseball, a true Bedard-class hook.

Randy Johnson lite:  a wacky, wunnerful athletic specimen with outlier strengths, outlier weaknesses, outlier bodies, and outlier motions.  Randy Johnson Lite coulda pitched the sevenths for me, babe.

It is surprising to Dr. D is able to throw a mediocre-average number of strikes with this delivery, but he can.  Furbush has always thrown strikes.  There have been great relievers, such as Goose Gossage, who were lousy starters.  They were literally bad as starters, while at the same time being Hall of Famers as relievers.  It's not a question of multiplying their ERA's by 1.20 to get their rotation ERA's.  They had skills that worked in the pen, and that didn't work in the rotation.  It is an I/O, binary, analysis for pitchers like that. 

Right now it looks to me like Charlie Furbush is a dominating left hand reliever in the major leagues, a man who could blow through the middle of the Dodgers' lineup for you in Game 7, Inning 7, year 2014.  He's not capable of more.  Better take what you can get.

My $0.02,

Jeff

Comments

1
Good-guy Andrew's picture

I really enjoyed this take on it. In the extra-inning game on Tuesday, he had better command than I'd ever seen him. 4 different pitches that he could throw wherever he wanted. That's better than 4/5's of the M's rotation and sometimes even better than the whole rotation. It's more than likely that this is a blip on the radar and he won't be able to follow up on this command, but his 'stuff' (slider especially) can make him a shutdown reliever for the next 10 years.
One more thought on this whole Furbush question... As I mentioned his command has gotten better, especially lately. As you said, his control and strike-throwing has never been a problem but his unleashing of meatballs has been. With better command out of the 'pen that has gone away. I think we have to think about a player's brain here. Sure, it's easier to have the same release and motion for 1 or 2 innings than it is 6 but it's also easier to focus on every batter for 1 or 2 innings than it is for 6. Is it a Hector Noesi situation, with another young pitcher. No doubt in my mind Noesi would be an excellent reliever with his stuff and not having to focus for 3 times as long.
Just a thought! Thanks again for the post.

2

What I wanted Furbush to be (#3-4 starter) is not what Furbush is (7th inning reliever). But right now Furbush is a KILLER 7th inning reliever, and more than that HE believes he is as well. He strolls out to the mound with all the confidence in the world and lays waste to the lineup with his pair of hard-to-detect-or-make-contact-with pitches.
He could be a really good asset for years going forward if he keeps this approach and pitch quality.
Not the pitcher I wanted, but not one I'd kick out of bed for eating crackers, either.
~G

3

I didn't see the game you mention Andrew, but am sure that you're right about his hitting spots well that game.
............
1.  If Furbush somehow became able to hit spots with his fastball, I guess he'd take a Cliff Lee-style leap into stardom.
2.  It's not logical to me that he'd have command, with those mechanics, but sports are full of illogical things.  It's not logical that Kevin Durant should move the way he does at 7' tall.
3.  Maybe Furbush can spot the ball for 15-20 pitches, the adrenaline sharpening his command.
An analogy ... I golf a few times a year, shoot maybe 100 ... I stand over my long irons going thru a mental checklist.  By concentrating fiercely, I can hit my first 10, 15 long shots straight, but any more than that and as the concentration loosens a bit, I can no longer overcome my lack of technique.
Maybe relievers are something like that?

5
ghost's picture

I think that Noesi will be a good releiver if he can't work out what's going on with his pitching with runners on base and with two strikes. His high mistake rate makes him a non-issue as a starter until he fixes it. I think he should be given every chance to be a starter, but if he fails a few times...then make him a set-up man...he'd be a good one.

6
ElJugo's picture

To you or me, it seems clear that the motions/mentalities/current successes of Furbush and Wilhelmsen or better suited to the closer/starter roles respectively.
However, if I consider what Wedge would be MORE likely to do, if he did make a move, he'd simply give Furbush a shot in the rotation instead of pulling the double switch. Why is that when it's pretty clear to us sitting on the rail that this would be the wrong move to make?
I think the main reason he wouldn't make the move is damage control. He's looking at a team that overall isn't performing that well. If he considered our preferred move, he'd think "well, if I move my closer, and I move my lock-down setup guy, one or both may fail. Where am I then? I'm much worse off than I started, and I've made publicly-obvious big-time blunder on a failing team. Is this the end of the line for me?"
Obvious move for us, since we don't have to deal with the consequences if it doesn't work out as we think it should...

7

GREAT put, Doc.
I would just add that given underlying mechanics that visually suggest control unlikely that minimizing maintanence issues should/would be helpful.
Conceptually, it is much easier to keep two pitches "sharp" than four. Someone with great mechanics, whose body flows naturally only has to change wrist motion or maybe not even that - maybe exact motion with different grip.
I hurt my left arm playing soccer a couple of weeks ago. I took a week off, then bowled on Wednesday night. I was worried about the arm, which felt fine except when I fully rotated either direction at the elbow, (though it was my wrist that would hurt when I did that). In any case, the injury concerns had me focus on keeping my forearm still above all else. I had a 594 series including a 225 game. Both are career highs left-handed.
Simplifying my mental approach and physical release paid huge dividends.
I would posit that reducing the number of pitches would typically improve the repeatability rate for any pitcher. For pitchers with flaky mechanics, I'd guess it's even more beneficial.

8

I used to bowl quite a bit, and it was night and day my first 5 frames to my last. Early would be all strikes and spares and make me feel like I was going to bowl 200, then late I wouldn't have quite the zip on the ball, maybe pick up 1 strike and lose the fine control necessary to pick up spares.
Furbush has a max effort delivery, it may be that it's extraordinarily difficult to maintain his mechanics through more than 40-45 pitches, and when he looses that, the centered meat balls come out....and looking at his splits page, over his short career, that's more or less true, after 75 pitches he's serving up an 1.102 OPS, though that is last year entirely.

9

Nobody ever got fired for leaving a successful closer where he is :- )
Funny thing.  No sooner do we bring up Furbush's mechanics than he comes out against San Diego and can't hit the broad side of a barn for several hitters... even the strikes were way off the target...
That last K he had, though .... three Randy Johnson-esque sssssssliders followed by a 92 fastball that looked 105, called strike three...  now that the slider is getting 35%, 40% of the action, the fastball just seems to play way up...
 
What say you Jugo...

10

And we haven't even addressed that high left elbow that Taro crusades on.
Evvvverrrrrrything aBOUT Furbush screams reliever, starting with the hand he throws with :- ) ... the good news seems to be, he could wind up a lot better at it than we ever 'xpected...

11
El Jugo's picture

Seems like it's going to be one of those things where one night he has the command, the next appearance he just doesn't have it. However, even the other night when he was off, it seems like he's still fooling batters. He's not going to give up many homers with the movement on that pitch, and his growing confidence to throw it in any count, the hitters look uncomfortable. So, even when he doesn't have the location, we're not seeing him get hit around the park. Compare that to Beavan. When he didn't have the pin-point control, he got lit up...

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