Paxton and Hultzen '12
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The vampiric Wizard of Os entered the 2001 rotation on June 2, and sucked 4.4 WAR worth of blood in four months
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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
- Felix
- Vargas
- Iwakuma (but should obviously start game 2)
- Paxton (as the 4, not the 5; he's the pro)
- Hultzen
- 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.
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=== 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.
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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.