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The team's game notes today --- > follow on SSI's (and James') idea that a huge pitching debut is strongly predictive of a good major league career.  James studied this and found that three (3) dominating starts, to begin a career, tended to lead into a very strong baseball card ...

This is mostly just common sense.  If a Stephen Strasburg or Jered Weaver or Tim Lincecum type has overwhelming "stuff," if he has it in him to overmatch batters, then he's a lot more likely to do both things.  Start with a bang, and follow up.

The rooster doesn't cause the sun and Mom to get up; the sun causes two things.  And Paxton-level stuff causes two things.

If 3 great starts predict a strong career, what about 11 great starts?!  The M's give Steve Rogers as the only pitcher, since the deadball era, to post a lower ERA than Paxton's.  That's out of some 2,000+ starting pitchers:

.

This isn't a "study," of course, but just flavor text.  The top 4 aren't the ones you look at to nail down the point, but they're fun to look at.

Steve Rogers debut'ed during the period of my childhood heroes, the Big Red Machine.  He was a 5-time All-Star, finished in the top five of the Cy Young vote three different times, ran a 116 ERA+ over the course of nearly 3,000 innings.  He tossed out 5-WAR seasons like IHOP cooks throwing flapjacks into the heat window, 7 of them in 10 years.

Jarred Cosart is contemporary with Paxton.  We'll see how his career goes; I wonder if this is an example of a decent pitcher who was real hot when he came up.

Zach Duke is an example of an extreme groundballer who got a "novelty" bonus before the league caught up to him.  This would be a picture-perfect exhibit A, if you wanted to argue that a huge debut is no guarantee of stardom.

Tiny Bonham came up during WWII, in a depleted league, but ... wow.  His ERA+ his first four years:

• 213
• 132
• 152
• 142

He was on the All-Star team and even MVP voting throughout this stretch, but his career dropped off as the war ended.

...

The above four pitchers aren't an overwhelming group example of the Huge Debut Theory, but they're nothing to sneeze at.  Draw 4 random names out of a baseball almanac and they won't be this good:

• A major star
• A guy who was an Opening Day starter for 4 years
• A "novelty" groundballer who turned out to be mediocre
• Jarred Cosart, who, we'll see

....

The M's info team also give the best ERA's through 12 starts, where Paxton will be if he has a Quality Start tonight:

• Steve Rogers, above
• Tiny Bonham, above
• Zach Duke, above
• Jered Weaver :- )
• Cal Eldred

That's a whale of an impressive list.  Eldred came up and got 4+ WAR per year, a couple years, until he blew his arm out.  Now we've got 80% stars.

Anyway, we've been sayin' since Lonnie got his videotape five years ago.  James Paxton is a lot more like Tim Lincecum than he is like Zach Duke...

Enjoy,

Jeff