Paxton and Hultzen '12

 ............

The vampiric Wizard of Os entered the 2001 rotation on June 2, and sucked 4.4 WAR worth of blood in four months

............

SSI is eating this spring training noise alive.  From Carl Willis on the 16th:

"Last year at this time, Michael Pineda had never thrown a pitch in the Major Leagues," said pitching coach Carl Willis. "You can say the same for a Paxton or a Hultzen. Pineda did have 8-10 starts at Triple-A, so there was a little more there than these guys have done yet. But that's not to say that has to be a determining factor.

"If they come out here and show people the stuff we're hearing about, they're going to put a lot of pressure on you to make a decision."

Baseball people are careful about comparing 0-IP rookies to Michael Pineda, Warren Spahn or Gandhi.  Pitching coaches aren't bloggers, and when they're talking about very young players, they parcel out their expectations carefully.  It can come back to bite.  Two lousy games by the rook and everybody's laughing at you.

However, as you may have noticed, if you've got the OVER on a Michael Pineda or Kevin Durant or Tim Lincecum, and everybody else is foolishly taking the UNDER, then you're setting yourself up for an easy score.  That's the way with James Paxton and Danny Hultzen.  If that's all you need to become an Authority Blog, to back Pineda and Paxton and Hultzen, I'll take some, babe.

Willis' quotes suggest, strongly, that not only one of the M's LHP's could break in the rotation, but that both could.  If so, the rotation would be

  1. Felix
  2. Vargas
  3. Iwakuma (but should obviously start game 2)
  4. Paxton (as the 4, not the 5; he's the pro)
  5. Hultzen
  6. Hector Noesi (as swing man, with experience as such)

If the Mariners want to be a dark horse in 2012, and they do, they'll need both Paxton and Hultzen to pull off Michael Pineda splashes.  ... granted, one of them could begin on May 20 or whatever.

.

=== Precedents ===

Fangraphs has a nice new feature with which you can create leaderboards out of rookie seasons.  If you search the period 1992-2011, can you find a handful of seasons like Michael Pineda's?  Just how rare is a rookie splash like that?

We did the search and blinked.  The leaderboard is miles long.  Tons and tons and tons of rookie pitchers have logged 3.0, or 3.5, or 4.0 WAR for their teams lately.  Fully 16 different rookies have logged more than 4.0 WAR as pitchers over the period 1992-2011.

Fangraphs > Leaders > Pitching > Multiple Seasons > Rookies > sort by WAR.

.......

Tim Lincecum's rookie season was great, right?  But it was the #40 rookie season, during 1992-2011, as measured by WAR.

You liked Michael Pineda last year?  Logged 171 innings at over 9.0 strikeouts per ball game?  It was #32 by WAR .... a full 30 different rookies added more WAR to their teams' ledgers than Kong did.

And the awesome thing is, when you run this rookie pitching leaderboard, it returns name after name that went on to big accomplishments overall.  There are a few Dave Flemings on this board, but the first three names are Hideo Nomo, Brandon Webb, and Francisco Liriano.

There's Roy Oswalt.  There are Kerry Wood and Matt Cain and Tim Hudson and Hiroki Kuroda and El Duque and Pineda and Dontrell Willis and Justin Verlander and Andy Pettitte and Lincecum and Ricky Romero and CC Sabathia and ... 

Not only can you find rookie SP's who have big years, landing as aces in Year One, but those pitchers frequently are having big years because they are good, not lucky.

There's nothing weird about the idea of Paxton and Hultzen landing with a splash in 2012 and giving the Mariners a Hudson-Zito-Mulder combo right from Day One.  Pitchers have big rookie years all the time.

Comments

1

Is the knowledge that a) he's got legit talent and b) many other guys who do what he did have gone on to great careers.
So now we need to find another one.  Paxton might "only" be a LH Morrow, but I'd take that.  If he has the feel on his curve he's just devastating.  The Ms could always give the standard "his change-up needs more work" but with what Pineda did I think that's a hard justification to make if the other two pitches are mowing big-leaguers down like sheafs of wheat.
I have Paxton as the leader out of the gate, since he's had his minor league time to prove just how good he can be while Hultzen has none.  Can you name me some starting pitchers who skipped the minors in the last 30 years or so?
I'm not getting any good ones coming to mind.
So I would think that Paxton has pole position, with Hultzen trying to prove he deserves a late May / early June look.
If both of them prove they do...that would be outstanding.  We need our mega-talented kids to bring it out of the gate this year.  
Most of our hitters got the change to knock the kinks outta their games last year in the bigs (Montero excluded) but the arms that can make an immediate impact need to if we have an shot at an over .500 year.
It's all right if they're not ready.  But if we want to have a contending year instead of a rebuilding one, then our young pitchers will have to be awesome.
That Iwakuma wildcard fascinates me as well.  We could have such a fabulous staff this year, even without Pineda...
~G

2

Ha, me too. I've never paid hardly any attention to spring training, not really taking any interest until just before the season started. For one thing, normally every position was already filled before anyone even got to camp, which meant there wasn't any uncertainty about who would make the team let alone get a starting role. Second, most of the guys who were dissapointing the year before had little chance of improving. We could hope that Jose Lopez or Richie Sexson or Chone Figgins would do better, but that's all it was, hope. Now, I'm hanging on every word and have been since the first players showed up in Arizona.
This year there are tons of position battles. In the rotation, three spots are up for grabs with at least 8 people with a real chance of taking one. That alone makes things far more interesting than any other spring training. Add in third base, backup infielder, backup outfielder and the last couple spots of the bullpen, the result is that a third of the roster is undecided.
Then there are the guys who have a legitimate chance of improving on poor performances. Gutierrez for sure is going to be a lot better. If there's ever been anyone you should feel comfortable betting on based only on reports of him getting into better shape in the offseason, it's Guti. Robinson, Wells and Saunders also have reasons to be looking up. In addition there's Hong-Chih Kuo who is a total wild card and could be tremendous.
I don't have a clue how things will shake out, but I'm not really concerned about who exactly will make the opening day roster because I believe the org will go with the best players, and with all the quality options available that means the chosen guys should be awfully good. So while I'd prefer to see players like Paxton or Seager, if the coaches go with Millwood and Guillen it likely means those vets can still be productive. The only guy I really don't want to see is Shawn Camp, but since he'd just be the 5th or 6th reliever it's not a big deal.

3
Auto5guy's picture

Hey Doc
Did you catch this interview on KJR with Taijuan Walker?
 
http://www.sportsradiokjr.com/player/?station=KJR-AM&program_name=podcas...
 
He comes across very, very well in this interview.  In my mind he put to rest some of the lingering T.O. attitude questions. Most telling to me is that he referred to Paxton as being like a big brother to him. Actually this speaks well of both young men.  That Walker would look to some college aged white guy, as a mentor is a surprise.  And that Paxton would take Walker under his wing while he himself is still focused on getting to the show is also a nice surprise.  It takes a nice balance of humility and confidence to take on the dual roll of student/mentor.  My favorite type of person.
Also loved the competitive fire that was apparent in the interview.  He wants to make the club out of spring training.  He’s not just saying “What an honor to be invited” type stuff. Said during the season, he wanted to go out and get more strikeouts than Paxton had the night before.  Great stuff.
Matthew

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