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

Last season, we did a series on pitcher Batted Ball MPH.  We finished with a look at which M's pitchers gained, and which lost, in view of the new insights.  Some guys saw their stock go up.  Some not.

Extreme flamethrowing tends to limit MPH off the bat.  So does command, if it is extreeeeeeeme command; we're not talking simple Blake Beavan command here, but Doug Fister command.  Also extreeeeeme change-speed skill, like Vargas'.

M's winners were Paxton, Hultzen, and Taijuan, even more valuable after the MPH discoveries than they were before.  So were Felix and, siigggghhhh, Pineda.  Tom Wilhelmsen, definitely.  Charlie Furbush and Josh Lueke were listed as major losers.

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

Let's assume, for the moment, that James has a point, and that "pitch to contact" guys are groveling their way to a few mediocre MLB seasons.  By that paradigm, who wins and who loses for the M's?

Felix Hernandez is a loser.  There, the only place on the net you'll ever see that sentence.  ::bows deeply left and right, acknowledges applause::  

He loses only in the sense that he should be Pedro Martinez, but permits batters to knock his knee-high fastball into play on the ground.  SSI will protest to its dying breath that Felix is underachieving, because too focused on ground balls.

Yes, Felix is ours and you can't have him.  Well, not unless you give us Montero or Lawrie.  Wait...

Jason Vargas is a winner.  Vargas doesn't grovel for grounders.  He attacks, trying to dead-fish the change past the hitters.  Saberdweebs grumble about his fly ball rate, but Jason is out there trying to miss bats.  For having an 87 mph fastball, and being so short, Jason Vargas is putting together a whale of a career.

It's funny.  He was a winner on the MPH petri dish, too.  You look and you look and ... the more you look, the more you like Jason Vargas.  Maybe the resistance is just due to his physical appearance?

Paxton, Hultzen and Taijuan are huge winners.  They attack from the word Go.

Hector Noesi is a loser on the grandest scale:  his only reliable pitch is a located 93 fastball.  At the moment he is a pitch-to-contact guy ... as are Millwood and Jeff Suppan and Shawn Camp, by the way... of course things are relative.  If Noesi's 93-command game results in a 110 ERA+ for the league minimum, and an effective bridge to the M's young flamethrowers, that's hardly a tragedy.

Tom Wilhelmsen is a winner for obvious reasons.  You can guess why SSI would rather see Chance Ruffin and Steve Delabar than see Shawn Camp.  Especially in a rebuild year!  Why grovel when you've got real talent available and, supposedly, nothing at stake?

Hisashi Iwakuma is, in my opinion, a winner in this paradigm.  He doesn't fan a lot of hitters, but his approach is at bottom an attack of the pesky rodent hitter standing in the batter's box.  He's using 4-5 pitches to get ahead and miss bats, including a devastating forkball that he throws with bad intentions.  He's not trying to grovel a two-hop hot shot right at a slick defender.

...........

We don't say that groundball pitchers won't be around the game.  There are 6'2" players in the NBA.  But an awareness of the attack paradigm gives us another interesting way to look at the game.

Cheers,

Dr D