Before moving on to other subjects, however, I did want to take a moment to hone in on an interesting pecuilarity in Lee's statistical profile, and I'm hoping that even the most obstinate Lee skeptics will take a moment to listen. Most (all?) of the criticism targeted against Lee derives from his last five starts, comprising just 29.1 innings and a cumulative WPA (win probability added) of -1.78 wins that has to be the worst of any five-start span in his major league career. The walks have remained virtually non-existent, and the strikeouts have continued to pile up, but the hits have flowed freely and his command of late has been lacking, and I think those latter two characteristics are what have inspired such vitriol against Lee in some circles.
But what if he's permitting base hits at a far greater rate than we would expect, given his batted-ball rates and other peripheral indicators? Because that appears to be what is killing him of late, at least to some degree. It would be one thing if Lee was yielding a high batting average on balls in play and concurrently yielding a 25-plus percent line-drive rate, because then you can say, "Alright, opposing batters are racking up lots of hits, and it's because Lee is allowing lots of hard contact," and go from there. But he's not. I'm not going to sit here and tell you Lee is blameless in all of this, because there have been some (injury-induced?) problems, but this runs deeper than a terrible surface ERA.
Over his last five starts, Lee's BABIP (batting average on balls in play) has totaled a whopping .418; this, of course, is terrible. But it's not sustainable. Plugging Lee's peripherals into the xBABIP calculator -- which estimates what Lee's BABIP should have been over those five starts -- produces a mark of .311, a 107-point divergence that can primarily be ascribed to the random variation and luck that drives so much of what happens in baseball. I'm not saying the high rate of base hits didn't happen, but let's not pretend that it's predictive of what's going to happen in the future, or that the last five starts negate nearly three full seasons of Cy Young-caliber pitching. Because it doesn't.
]]>But since I can't bring myself to re-examine all of the minutia of that game (right now, at least), I'm going to divert the discussion towards the last remotely meaningful trade of the Rangers' 2010 season (and their last hope to make everyone forget about Ryan Garko and Jorge Cantu), a polarizing trade not so much because of the cost as because of the principal figures: persona non grata infielder Joaquin Arias to the Mets in exchange for outfielder Jeff Francoeur and a bundle of cash. (Brandon Boggs has been designated for assignment to facilitate Francoeur's addition, but will remain in the organization provided that no team plucks him from the outright waiver wire).
Up until a few weeks ago, Francoeur was mainly famous for three reasons: (a) seducing retired Braves general manager John Schuerholz and the rest of his baseball operations department with a five-tool package that evoked comparisons to Dale Murphy (and prompted Baseball America to rank him as baseball's 15th-best prospect before the 2005 season), (b) becoming the target of interminable ridicule and mockery when he failed to develop any semblance of plate discipline, and (c) being at the epicenter of a bizarre late-2008 trade rumor that had the Braves sending Francoeur to the Royals in exchange for soon-to-be Cy Young Award winner Zach Greinke. That, of course, did not pan out, and last July he was exiled to New York in the Francoeur-for-Ryan Church deal.
What is Francoeur today, besides a cost-neutral acquisition? A two-tool player, really; there's still some latent raw power there, I think and he might have the best throwing arm of any right fielder in baseball, but his defensive range is subpar -- a function of diminished speed, I'm guessing -- and he doesn't hit for average or contact or, for that matter, draw walks. As both myself and ESPN.com's Rob Neyer have written, though (here and here, respectively), there's at least a chance that Francoeur provides some limited amount of utility as a right-handed platoon partner for David Murphy, with one or the other holding down a corner outfield spot opposite Nelson Cruz and Josh Hamilton -- notwithstanding his balky knee -- patrolling center field.
The other argument for acquiring Francoeur seems to revolve around his clubhouse leadership and playoff experience and such, but since he has amassed exactly four career games of the latter -- in a four-game loss to the Astros in the 2005 NLDS -- I'm choosing to focus on the chemistry component of his purported intangible value. Josh Garoon already wrote one of the quintessential articles on this subject, but let's look at Francoeur in isolation. A five-second Google search will turn up a multitude of articles extolling him for being a great character guy and a let's-keep-things-loose prankster and, in broad terms, somebody who's just great for your clubhouse chemistry.
Here's the problem, though: arguably the fourth reason why Francoeur is famous is because his agent gave the Mets a public ultimatum about three weeks ago, essentially conveying the message that Francoeur either wanted everyday playing time or a trade. Seeing as how Francoeur's a terrible hitter versus right-handers and doesn't really need to ever face one again (along with the fact that he's having a terrible season), this was a downright delusional gambit, and for all the talk about Francoeur being so great in the intangible respect, I have to wonder how such a seemingly arrogant personality with such a poor grasp of his talent level can really be that beneficial to a Rangers clubhouse that, by most accounts, already has more team chemistry than it knows what to do with.
]]>● Josh Hamilton was swapped from center field to designated hitter before Monday evening's series opener in Kansas City due to "aches and pains" in his troublesome right knee; despite the one-night setback, manager Ron Washington believes he could return to the outfield on Tuesday (Richard Durrett, ESPNDallas.com)
[Here, we have a good example of how you can reconstruct timelines of all sorts if you pay close enough attention to the right sources. Hamilton was primed and ready to receive his second -- and final -- cortisone shot of the season back on August 1st, but team physicians wanted to refrain from administering that shot so early, as the inflammation-reducing effects of the medicine might wear off during the middle of a post-season run or (even worse) before the conclusion of the regular season. Despite that, however, he received the shot at some point during that same day and the Rangers effectively crossed the point of no return. Now, with more than a month left in the season, his knee tendinitis is yet again flaring up, and while one major newspaper is downplaying the situation and the other is evidently panicking, it seems apparent that the problem is chronic and not easily remediable.
One could easily question why the Rangers didn't plop Hamilton on the disabled list at that point and save the final cortisone bullet in the chamber for late August/early September, but the truth of the matter is that we're not in the room and aren't privy to the exact medicals; in any event, the disabled list can't be ruled out if the knee is yet again producing the sensation that it's going to "give out." Cortisone is not the panacea. It addresses the symptoms, not the root cause, and if it's already losing effectiveness with this much time left in the season, Hamilton's likely going to require ample final-month rest to fully guarantee his post-season availability.]
● Derek Holland has officially supplanted Rich Harden in the starting rotation, a move to which the latter consented; the entire starting rotation will receive an extra day of rest as a result of Thursday's off day (Jeff Wilson, Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
[This should quiet down some of the folks pleading for Cliff Lee to receive extra rest. The bigger story here, though, is the Harden-to-relief move, largely because of what I wrote on the idea a month and a half ago: "Four years ago, Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus [...] found that starting pitchers who (a) post high walk rates and (b) low isolated power rates have a tendency to enjoy better performance gains upon conversion into relievers than other starters-turned-relievers. Harden clearly fits part (a), but perhaps not so much with part (b). However, given that he's effectively a two-pitch guy at this point, perhaps there's some degree of sense to assigning him to the bullpen upon his healthy return [...] and seeing what he can do."
On the surface, this is still an interesting idea, but Silver's theory was premised on such bullpen prospects wielding strong strikeout rates in addition to the high walk rates and low isolated power totals. I don't know if anyone's noticed, but his strikeout rate -- one of the few good things he had going for him earlier this season -- has now also gone to hell as of late, so there's no longer much reason to believe he's going to see a sizable performance boost from this move. Of course, there wasn't much reason to believe he'd see anything resembling high-leverage work in September anyway, so this is the part where we stamp Harden as a lost cause, sadly shake our heads and wonder where things went so terribly wrong this year.]
]]>Right now, though, we're caught in the middle of a dead zone of sorts -- the Rangers are still multiple lengths ahead of the 7.5-game-back Athletics and heavy favorites to capture the division crown, but they're likely three weeks away from rendering that a fait accompli, and until then the bulk of the attention will be focused on preserving team health and other such things that assume extreme importance in October but just aren't very compelling topics right now. The farm system is no longer at the forefront of late-season Rangers discussion, and some of the attempts to discuss next year's team have been drowned out by pleas to "enjoy what we have right now." Okay. I am. Now what?
Rather than telling you about how Nelson Cruz and Ian Kinsler will make the Rangers a better team down the stretch or conveying some other glaringly obvious idea (or, even worse, recapping this weekend's brutal set of games), I wanted to take a moment to look at something written over this past weekend by Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram -- an article in which Michael Kirkman is not only described as likelier to nail down a post-season bullpen spot than Derek Holland (this I can agree with), but also as a potentially better prospect than Holland going forward.
I don't know that I can agree with that viewpoint, nor do I think that this sort of article would have been written if Kirkman had yielded 2-3 runs in his five major league innings of work to date rather than his present total of zero; however, the mere fact that this "Kirkman > Holland" idea is even being perpetuated resonates with me at some level, because it all ties back into the TINSTAAPP (There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect) theory and the oft-chaotic and random nature of pitching development. Put more bluntly, I don't think many people prepared themselves for the eventuality that Holland would still be trapped in developmental limbo nearly two full seasons later.
Around 18 months ago, industry publication Baseball America tabbed Holland as the fifth-best left-handed pitching prospect and 31st-best prospect in the game; the latter figure is a tad misleading, as once you dig beyond the truly elite prospects there isn't significant variation in talent, and ESPN.com's Keith Law illustrated this by going a step further and slotting Holland into the No. 21 spot while firing off this prospect synopsis: "[Holland] doesn't have the raw upside of [Neftali] Feliz, but he's not far behind him in potential and is ahead of him in command and feel for pitching, and is the most likely of Texas' horde (pun intended) of pitching prospects to contribute to the big club in 2009."
That was then. Today, we have media implications of Holland tumbling down the prospect ladder. And this is hardly a unique phenomenon in the context of the Rangers' farm system: former mid-to-upper-range prospects like Omar Poveda (traded) and Michael Main (traded) and Blake Beavan (traded) and Kasey Kiker (isn't good) disappointed and/or were pared from the organization's minor league rosters. More elite pitching talent in the vein of Martin Perez and Tanner Scheppers has performed relatively well, but hasn't busted out in the way we had grown accustomed to seeing. The only pitcher from the Rangers' latest wave of pitching talent who has meaningfully contributed to the major league rotation has been Tommy Hunter, and I can readily see the argument for him being a mediocre No. 4-caliber starter from this point forward.
The TINSTAAP theory holds that young, talented minor league pitchers are so unpredictable/unreliable -- and their attrition rate so high -- that they're really not "prospects" in the way that their positional counterparts are, and here again it's rearing its ugly head. Since Law lavished praise upon Holland in early 2009, his strike-zone command has seemingly stagnated -- or outright regressed -- and his velocity has dipped slightly while he's been nicked by injuries, and he'll now enter his age-24 season having not yet established himself as anything more than a long reliever/spot starter. I still like Holland, but this is all something to think about the next time the hype machine manufactures a new, exciting, can't-miss pitching prospect and we, despite knowing better, collectively buy in.
]]>2. What is your optimal post-season lineup, assuming that both Nelson Cruz and Ian Kinsler return healthy and perform reasonably well from here on out?
3. A random thought: What if the Rangers decided that re-signing Josh Hamilton was unrealistic/unwise and decided to maximize his value by giving him a much heavier share of the starts in center field in 2011-12 (which makes a bit more sense if you can acquire a left fielder whose value is significantly higher than that of Julio Borbon in center field)? Is the injury/durability risk attached to a move from left to center field actually less severe than we think it is?
4. Does the fact that Tommy Hunter's 2010 strikeouts-per-nine-innings ratio has fallen below the 4.5 mark -- the threshold below which Bill James believes it is very difficult for pitchers to have legitimate careers -- and his homer rate has climbed above 1.50 per nine innings hinder your confidence in how he might perform during the post-season?
[Yes, once again the question bank has virtually run dry. If you have an interesting idea or three for a question next week, don't be afraid to throw it out there.]
]]>Kirkman went into his senior prep season as a marginal prospect, but shot up the charts during that 2005 spring season to become what Baseball America considered a third-round talent as he grew bigger, added velocity and -- as it was reported back then -- gained control of his emotions. Though he was committed to Lake City (FL) Community College (where he might have been a teammate of outfielder Cameron Maybin, the No. 10 overall pick in that year's draft), Kirkman was recruited by a number of NCAA baseball powerhouses including Florida State, Mississippi State, Florida and Miami. The Rangers were therefore probably very fortunate to land him in the fifth round and get him under contract for $163,000.
Kirkman enjoyed a very strong debut season in the Arizona Rookie League, improving each month (4.21 ERA through his first seven appearances; 2.52 ERA through his final six) before going to fall instructionals where he created some buzz. During the spring of 2006, Kirkman was a buzz boy on the back fields, much like Ian Kinsler had been in 2004 and Edinson Volquez had been in 2005. I distinctly recall watching him commanding three pitches with uncanny precision and visiting with Rick Adair about what a huge talent the Rangers had stumbled onto. My notes from that time indicate that Kirkman had a heavy 90ish fastball, a plus 1-to-7 curveball and a slider that he threw for strikes.
During his rookie 2005 AZL season, hitters suffered equally against Kirkman no matter which side of the plate they stood on. Lefties hit .255 against him, while righties hit just .247. He didn't allow a homer all year and he posted a 1.29 ground-to-fly ball ratio while recording 58 strikeouts in 52.1 innings. He entered the 2006 season as a probable helium guy And then the wheels came off. And I do mean off.
At age 19, in his second pro season out of high school, the Rangers aggressively assigned him to Class-A Clinton, skipping the short-season Northwest League. But there was no reason to think that Kirkman wasn't up to the challenge.
He wasn't. Making six starts spanning just 19.1 innings, Kirkman posted a 6.98 ERA in the generally pitcher-friendly Midwest League, walking 24, plunking one and unleashing five wild pitches before being sent out to extended spring training. He re-emerged later in the summer with the rookie-league Arizona Rangers and the control issues that had plagued him in Clinton were even more pronounced. During his second tour of duty in the AZL, Kirkman posted a 13.20 ERA in 15 innings over the course of eight appearances during which he walked 27 and fired off nine wild pitches. He also suffered a hamstring injury that year, but that was a minor concern compared to the borderline Steve Blass disease.
When he reported to fall instructionals after the 2006 season, it was discovered that Kirkman had a minor tear in an elbow ligament, and he was sent home and told not to pick up a ball again until January.
The next spring, things were no better. Kirkman was such a train wreck during the spring of 2007 that his pitches were sometimes sailing 10-12 feet over the catcher's head. Just watching his body language around the back fields that spring was heartbreaking. The kid was utterly lost and appeared to have the confidence level of an abused puppy.
The Rangers eventually assigned Kirkman to Clinton again, only to see him fail once again. He was demoted to Spokane where he posted a 7.00 ERA in nine appearances, walking 25, hitting two and issuing seven wild pitches in just 27 innings of work.
In 18 months, Kirkman had gone from helium boy to total bust.
But he didn't give up.
In 2008, Kirkman made his third run at the Midwest League and, suddenly, he was once again throwing strikes. He was getting hit -- his stuff still wasn't back to where it had been as a rookie in 2005 -- but he was finding the plate again. Over the course of 15 appearances that year, Kirkman posted a 4.38 ERA and walked "just" 23 while fanning 58 in 74.1 innings.
There was hope. Not much. Kirkman's 2008 season wasn't enough to put him back on the prospect map, but he was lingering on the periphery of the radar.
And then 2009 happened. Served up to the pitching hell that is Bakersfield and the High-A California League, Kirkman put up unthinkable numbers.
In a stadium -- the euphemistic nomenclature of Bakersfield's "Historic Sam Lynn Ballpark" never fails to make me giggle just a bit -- and a league (the southern division of the Cal League is nothing but bandboxes) that crushes the confidence of dozens of pitching prospects every year, Kirkman blew the thing up. In eight appearances spanning 48 innings, Kirkman posted a 2.06 ERA, punching out 54 and walking 18 while allowing just one homer.
Nobody does that in Bakersfield. Nobody. And coming from a guy who only 18 months earlier had clearly lost all confidence in himself, it ranked among the most incredible things I've ever seen in my decade following Rangers prospects.
In an interview with LoneStarDugout.com's Jason Cole, Kirkman cited an interesting source for helping him get back on track:
"I started watching Cliff Lee pitch, and I started watching video of him and video of me. I was comparing myself to him. One thing he did is he shortened up his front arm and it let him get through the ball rather than having to go around himself to get to the plate. That really, I think, is what turned me on."
That spectacular Cal League performance earned Kirkman a promotion to Double-A Frisco in June of 2009. The morning he was set to make his debut in the Texas League, I sat down with Rangers minor league pitching coordinator Danny Clark to talk about the re-emergence of Kirkman as a major prospect. Clark beamed while talking about the quiet lefty:
"I’m more excited about Michael Kirkman than any pitcher we have right now from the standpoint of everything he’s gone through to get here. The command issues, injuries. He got sent back to extended a few times. Gotta give Keith Comstock a lot of credit for what’s happened with Mike for all the work they put in back in Surprise over the past couple of years.
"The big thing about Mike is that he doesn’t back down. He’s a quiet competitor. He’s a country boy and doesn’t say a lot. He’s not going to go out and draw attention to himself, but you lead the Cal League in ERA and strikeouts and that gets you plenty of attention.
"We’ve always seen the fastball velocity which is plus for a lefty starter — 92 to 94 — but he’s got total command of it right now with the plus breaking ball that he’s throwing for strikes. I’m a big Kirkman fan. Couldn’t be happier for him."
Kirkman's tenure in the Texas League was solid, but not quite as spectacular as his blitzkreig through the Cal League. He battled and fought more than he dominated, but he finished up with a respectable 4.19 ERA in 18 appearances spanning 96 innings, striking out 64 while walking a slightly disturbing 43, raising at least some suspicion that his control issues might not be entirely behind him.
Nonetheless, Kirkman's 2009 season was good enough to earn him a spot on the Rangers 40-man roster over the winter, and he rolled into the 2010 season with a somewhat surprising assignment to Triple-A Oklahoma City, where he stamped himself as an elite prospect at age 23. In 131 Pacific Coast League innings, Kirkman struck out a league-leading 130 hitters and posted a 3.09 ERA, which stands as the third-best mark in the league.
Kirkman has a classic starter's assortment -- four-seamer, two-seamer, curveball, slider, cutter, change-up -- and has above-average velocity for a southpaw. While his control is no longer an issue, his command remains a minor one and he must continue to hone it in order to achieve his upside as a solid number three starter in a good rotation.
Kirkman will be in the mix for a rotation spot next year, but for now, he's taking the ball and running with it towards a spot on the Rangers post-season roster. For those of us who have followed Kirkman's story over the past five years, it damn 9near brings you to tears to see him killing it out of the Texas bullpen right now. His is probably the most improbable ascent through the system that you'll ever see and a glowing testament not only to Kirkman himself, but to the Rangers' player development system.
]]>Most of Lee's recent problems appear to stem from flagging command, a symptom often ascribable to pitcher fatigue; however, Lee insists he is neither fatigued nor in need of an additional day of rest, so that should be the end of the story, right? Not necessarily. I'm absolutely not going to accuse Lee of outright prevarication, but there's a key distinction to be made between Lee refuting talk of him being a lock to sign with the Yankees -- talk which doesn't even matter, because he's almost certainly going to the highest bidder no matter what -- and Lee attempting to preserve the image of being an ultra-durable ace who can shoulder any innings-based workload so long as he receives his standard four days of rest between starts. He has a deeply vested interest in maintaining such an image.
What none of this answers is the question of whether working in a few extra days of rest for Lee now will pay dividends later. Intuitively, you would assume the answer to be 'yes,' and anecdotally, this proved the case last year when the Phillies granted him one extra day of rest after a bad three-start run near the beginning of September, but a couple of problems surface here: (a) Lee actually received five days of rest before the second of those three consecutive poor starts, a game in which he allowed six earned runs in just three innings, and (b) if the extra day of rest truly did produce some performance-boosting effects, they were short-lived, because he got hammered in his final two regular-season starts of 2009. Not an especially strong anecdotal example.
What about on a more holistic level? For his career, Lee is materially better when pitching on five days' rest (1,822 PA, 3.64 FIP, 3.55 K/BB) than on four days' rest (3,197 PA, 3.80 FIP, 2.88 K/BB), a deviation large enough that I'm a bit inclined to believe it's not just a fluke ... but at the recent SABR 40 convention, Baseball Reference founder Sean Forman and baseball economist J.C. Bradbury found that the impact of days of rest on a starting pitcher's performance is negligible to the point of not being statistically significant. In other words, the population as a whole performed essentially the same regardless of the number of days of rest. I'm still more inclined to believe that Lee's a little better on extra rest than the study's findings might have you believe, but I don't think it's definitive either way.
With the Rangers still miles ahead of the second-best team in the division and home-field advantage not being an utterly dire need, I guess there's no real harm to be inflicted by throwing a few extra days of rest here and there at Lee. If he's not fatigued, you lose only a start or two at most in the process (and probably don't lose any real ground in the division race), and if he's more fatigued than he's letting on, well, then maybe it pays off later ... but that's a very strong "maybe." It will make for a very neat and tidy narrative if Lee receives extra rest and pitches well immediately thereafter, but if that happens, the rest likely won't have been as instrumental as you'll have been led to believe.
]]>● From the "stuff that looks superficially correct but probably isn't" pile emanates this post by Richie Whitt of the Dallas Observer, in which he uses win-loss records to compare this year's Rangers squad to last year's through 125 games and concludes that Texas is basically "the same team in a crappier division." Fortunately, we have better ways of gauging a team's talent level than simply eyeballing win-loss records, such as wins above replacement (which strips contextual performance from the equation).
And this is where Whitt's assertion breaks down, or at least it does if you consider a projected four- to five-win difference significant enough to refute the "Texas is the same team" notion: the Rangers amassed 21.8 wins above replacement between their offense (wOBA) and defense (UZR) last year, working out to around 16.8 wins if prorated through 125 games. This season, they're already sitting pretty at 20.5 wins above replacement (again, through just 125 games), and are on pace to finish somewhere between 26-27 wins. The improvement is far less exaggerated on the pitching side (FIP), such that the difference is likely no more than one win either way, but there's some evidence here to suggest that the identical win-loss records are not indicative of being the "same team" talent-wise, as it were.
● If there was already growing opposition towards the construction of publicly financed stadiums, the recent leak of numerous team financial documents probably only further entrenched the opposition and its cause, because today there's a huge kerfuffle over the revelation that the Marlins actually turned huge profits during the time that they contended they were only breaking even financially -- the "centerpiece fiscal argument" that helped secure the new stadium that will cost Miami-Dade County taxpayers billions of dollars before everything is said and done. In essence, Marlins team executives lied about the team's profitability in order to help secure a new stadium.
Now, tie all of this into the recent line of discussion about whether the Rangers should erect a new stadium in the next 5-10 years (which is highly unlikely, but then that never stopped anyone from talking about it before). I will acknowledge that neither the location nor the design of the Ballpark are conducive to fully maximizing team revenues, but this is common knowledge and not the real issue -- the real issue is whether erecting a new retractable-roof facility is cost-effective, and whether Rangers ownership should pour significant funds into its construction that might be better allocated elsewhere. I suspect the answer to this question is 'no,' but even if you feel differently, I think it's reasonable to suggest that this Marlins stadium fiasco will make it at least a little more difficult to secure public funding for such projects going forward, and likelier that the Rangers stay put through at least 2020 than before.
]]>For starters, Harden -- who strung together 6.2 no-hit frames while striking out six but, in his typically walk-inclined fashion, also handing out five free passes -- is categorically not the worst pitcher to ever mount a legitimate no-hit effort, but I'm going to wager that the list of pitchers who were in the midst of a replacement-level campaign at the time of their accomplishment (like Harden) is very, very small; about the only example I could dig up was former Cardinals right-hander Jose Jimenez, who recorded a no-hitter at Arizona on June 25th, 1999 after entering that evening's start with a 6.69 ERA, but his fielding-independent ERA at the time (4.40 FIP) was better than the league average and not remotely similar to to that of Harden's (6.47 FIP) going into last night.
[Before taking this any further, allow me to fly off on a quick tangent: How on earth was the Pitch f/x pitch-tracking system not working at the Ballpark last night? I've always wondered about the perfect storm of technical difficulties that knocks it out of commission, but it's doubly frustrating now; even if Harden and Co. had managed to nail down the complete no-hitter, there would be no way to statistically dissect their efforts on a micro pitch-by-pitch level, because the system was, for whatever reason, non-functional last night. Hell, there could have been a perfect game and we would have no such record of it. Very frustrating.]
Even more bizarre, however, were several other aspects of Harden's wild night; at 4.83 pitches per batter faced (111 pitches to 23 batters), Harden was several degrees more inefficient than any other pitcher to log at least 6.2 no-hit innings in a single start during the pitch count era (1988-present); the next closest are Jon Lester (05/19/2008) and Nolan Ryan (06/11/1990), both of whom used 4.48 pitches per batter faced in their respective no-hitters. And it turns out that sub-nine-inning no-hit starts are even more rare than conventional no-hitters themselves; only 16 other pitchers in major league history have logged at least 6.2 no-hit innings in a single start while failing to reach nine full innings.
David Cone posted one such start in September 1996, shortly before gifting the Rangers their first and only post-season victory to date: a seven-inning no-hit effort against the Athletics in which he threw just 85 pitches. It turns out that the reason for his seemingly premature departure was, as I suspected, health-related -- Cone had undergone shoulder surgery less than four months earlier to remove an aneurysm from beneath his right armpit, and then-Yankees manager Joe Torre adhered to his pre-game pledge to limit Cone to 100 pitches at most. Oddly, closer Mariano Rivera fell two outs short of completing what would have been a combined no-hitter when he yielded a one-out single in the ninth inning. Feeling an odd sense of deja vu, yet?
If not, here's the point of similarity: Neftali Feliz also blew his shot at completing a combined no-hitter with just two outs left, and also on a single, albeit one of the rocket line drive variety. No regrets; Joe Mauer's an incredible hitter, and it didn't remotely resemble a cheap hit. And no regrets about Harden's early exit, either. Sure, he might have pulled it off if he had been allotted 140-145 pitches, but that's just crossing into the realm of the irresponsible, and he was "effectively wild" -- the Twins were getting runners on base, and the score was close enough that it just didn't make sense to push Harden to the limit (and conceivably risk the lead) with a rested bullpen standing by.
I'm not going to call this a spectacular start from Harden, because the simple fact of the matter is that it wasn't; he did a good job of inducing weak contact on the whole, but five walks per seven innings will kill him sooner rather than later. It was, however, clearly enough to buy him at least 1-2 more starts, and speaking as someone who already had Harden's bags packed and halfway out the door about 12 hours ago, it's apparent now more than ever that nothing is ever a certainty in baseball. And that's just one of the many wonderful things about baseball that keeps bringing us back.
]]>About three months ago, Julio Borbon found himself mired in funk of all funks. There were few line drives to be had and even fewer walks, with the end result being an historically terrible offensive pace from a major league center fielder. That, fortunately, is no longer the case, but with him today sitting at .266/.305/.345 (.285 wOBA), we can't exactly pretend that his age-24 season has been one earmarked by great progress; things became so bad that he was basically relegated to fourth-outfielder duties during the first few weeks of August, an arrangement which would have likely remained in place if not for Nelson Cruz's ill-timed hamstring flare-up and the lack of any better active-roster outfield options.
Borbon, to his credit, did secure a 2-for-3, one-walk performance in yesterday's series finale against the Orioles, but let's face facts -- if/when Cruz returns, Borbon will again be superseded in playing time by every other active-roster outfielder, and probably isn't going to be relied upon very heavily in a post-season series beyond the duties of a pinch-runner/late-inning defensive replacement. And the problem is that it's difficult to see how a player whose stock has eroded so severely in the span of 4-5 months is going to go into next season as the overwhelming favorite to nail down the vast majority of the playing time in center field.
At this point, I would guess that next year's median projections for Borbon will probably going to look something like .280/.320/.380; extrapolated over 600 plate appearances with the built-in assumption that he saves you in the vicinity of 5-10 runs defensively per season, you're looking at somebody who's worth around 2.0-2.2 wins above replacement on a full-time basis. That's league-average production at a league-minimum price, something you look to exploit as long as you possibly can, but there are a few issues here: (a) as a guy who's battled some huge plate-discipline demons this year and has limited upside to begin with, I'm concerned about the chances for recurrence of an awful season like this, and (b) the Rangers are now clearly in a position where they're going to have to pony up some cash/assets for a solid 2011 backup plan.
Josh Hamilton qualifies to play that part again (in theory, at least), but he's not somebody you should reasonably expect to log more than 15-20 games in center field per season going forward; he's about to enter his age-3X years, will be handsomely compensated by some means after this year's MVP-caliber campaign, and had already been administered two cortisone shots for his aching knees before the regular season's two-thirds mark. More than anything else, that's the kind of player you strive to protect physically. And neither Nelson Cruz nor David Murphy are options there, so there's little in the way of an internal hedge against Borbon falling off a cliff again.
I don't want to proclaim that I'm a total non-believer in Borbon, because that's not the case at all. A good-fielding, cost-controlled center fielder with a decidedly mediocre bat does give you something, but it's definitely not a "franchise center fielder"-type solution so much as it is something that you look to improve upon if the right opportunity presents itself ... and maybe that's a kink in my own team-evaluating abilities. Maybe I need to learn how to be satisfied with every position not being solidified multiple years into the future and scale back my obsession with long-term solutions. After a season like this one from Borbon, however, you can hardly begrudge anyone for wondering how this drama's going to end up playing out.
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