Orioles 2 ...
.
Q. Was "Safeco Joe" really that good? Complete-game four hitter. Wow. Felix hasn't thrown a CG.
A. He wasn't that good, no.
Not taking anything away from him. He threw an average-solid game -- he executed his own game about average, a shade to the better side of average. He's done it a hundred times before; he'll probably do it a hundred well, at least thirty or forty times again.
This game was just evening out the law of averages for him. Bad luck played into the 15 runs he coughed up his last two starts. Good luck played into this start.
You don't buy that, at first bang of the gavel? Check his K/BB (2:1) Monday, and his swings and misses (a piddling 4 of them in 105 pitches). Pathetic. And no, the 19 grounders weren't a skill -- except that he did have them swinging off the front foot, at pitcher's pitches. Which is Joe Saunders.
.
Q. Is the Mainframe worried about his 14 strikeouts against 13 walks? You can't stay in a rotation with a CTL like that.
A. It isn't worried, no.
Last year, he had 112 K's to 39 BB's, and then in the postseason he was 9:0. So far this year his CTL is awful.
But it all is just random fluctuation. Here are some of the saber outdomes that are the same in 2013 as previously:
- Velocity (88.9 last year; 88.6 this year, and tonight he was up)
- Pitch sequencing (his changeups are up a little bit; probably he's faced more RHB's than usual)
- His O-Swing% is about the same (it's a little weaker this year ... but also the Z-Swing% is stronger, by the same amount)
- O-Contact% exactly the same; when batters swing at sucker pitches they do exactly the same things with them
- Strike % is down a shade; First strike % is up a shade (those two things are, as a group, preferable)
- SwStr% is within historical norms (precisely the same as 2010)
True, he's at 4.00 strikeouts, but he's usually just at 5.00. So ... noise.
He's at 4.00 walks, but it won't stay there; it will drop under three real quick. Like next actually, this start.
Look, Joe Saunders is who he is.
.
Q. Who is that again?
A. He wants to get you out with the fastball. He moves a little 88-91 Jarrod Washburn fastball up-and-down in the zone. He had 19 grounders tonight, but that was just one of those things.
He changes the eye level extremely well, like Washburned used to. But that also makes him a flyball pitcher, so take the good with the bad.
...................
He throws the change to righties, just often enough to keep them from "cheating" on his fastball. But it's a lousy changeup, and it's often elevated. He wants to make you hit a well-located fastball for weak contact. He's "showing" the changeup (although it's in the strike zone) and he's wanting the results off of the fastballs that he moves all around the zone.
.................
He chews up lefties because his arm angle on the fastball, slider, and curve sort of slices the ball away from them.
.
Q. How does he make that slop work when others can't?
A. The perfect brushback pitch is exactly chin high and six inches away from, well, the chin. The ball winds up very, very close to the batter's FACE.
The first pitch tonight was a perfect brushback pitch. FIRST pitch.
Joe Saunders is a battler. He's got that little something, where he can figure out what to do, to survive an inning. Experience and savvy counts in the game of baseball. Why do you think young players have arcs that go up?
His "little something," and his guts, and his devastation of LHB's, that's what keeps his ERA+ around 100.
.........
Think lefty Blake Beavan. With the wisdom dialed up to 9, and a platoon split. Saunders is about the fastball, which is an average one. But maximized.
.
Q. Is he a Safeco pitcher?
A. He's said that he likes to pitch here.
He's an extreme platoon lefty, and Safeco UNTIL THIS YEAR was extremely hard on RHB's. No doubt, it saved him a handful of HR's early on, and he developed a fish-in-water feeling.
It says here that his "Safeco Joe" run ends, any moment now, never to return. But that's just me.
.
Q. What do you root for, if Joe Saunders is pitching for your team?
A. A long string of boring quality starts, fueled 50% by luck. That was the way in 2012, when he ripped off 5 QS to begin the year, threw 7 of 8 in midsummer, and all 6 of his September starts were quality ... in fact he had 21 quality starts last year, in 28 attempts.
He's got a history of 3 solid starts, like this one, for every 1 time he's completely blown to smithereens. The result is a 100 ERA+. That's fine from your #4 starter, and excellent from your #5.
It so happens that 2 or 3 of his first 6 starts were "DIS" (disaster) starts. Probably only 1 of the next 6 will be. ::shrug::
.
Q. Is he likely to have a good year?
A. Look past the roller-coaster ups and downs early; those are illusory. Time and chance happeneth to every man.
With one April's worth of returns, based on having watched him carefully with the human eye, Dr. D would say he's exactly the same pitcher he's always been.
Whether that's what you want or not? Well, that's what we've got a comments thread for :- )
.