a look at atarting pitching so far

D

depley

Awaiting a Promotion
It is interesting to look at the splits so far this season.

Colon, has been bad at home, even worse on the road. No one figured on him having an ERA 3 1.2 runs higher than he did in 2016. He is toast.
Dickey, he has pretty even road/home spits and basically has pitched to about what we should have expected at a +4 ERA
Garcia, strangely he has pitched BETTER at Sun Trust Park by almost 2 1/2 runs per game. He has actually been the bright spot in the rotation
Fulty, still learning, but has not been that bad, still his home ERA is 1 1/2 runs per game higher than road.

Julio, this is where is it shocking, Sun Trust Park is in Julio's head. Julio's home ERA is a whopping 8.40 vs his 0.71 ERA on the road. We see the problem now how do we fix it?

I am all with Colon being either dropped or reverting to mop up guy at this point and giving Wisler, Blair, Sims or Newcomb those starts. time to move on.

there has to be a silver lining somewhere does't there?
 
I think ground ball percentage takes on increased importance given the way Suntrust plays.

Julion is at a 34.5% rate. The prior two years he's been at 39.1% and 39.5%. He is not a ground ball pitcher, but it would be helpful to push the percentage to where it has been the past two years.

Colon is at 42.9%, right where he has been in the prior two years. He's suffered from some deterioration in strikeout and walk rates. But he's also been unlucky (or unclutch if you believe in such a thing). BABIP (.341) is significantly above what is normal for him and strand rate (58.0%) is way down.

Jaime Garcia has a ground ball rate of 54.2%, down from 56.7% and 61.2% in the prior two years. His pitching tendencies are well suited for the new park. His walk and strikeout rates have deteriorated significantly from prior years, but he seems to have gotten back on track in his last two starts.

Folty's ground ball rate is 41.9%, up slightly from last year. His main issue this year has been an elevated home run/fly ball rate (17.0%).

Dickey's ground ball rate is 51.0% this year, up significantly from about 42% each of the prior two years. Home runs/fly ball (18.3%) has also been an issue for him.

Given the ballpark, we need to look closely at ground ball rates in constructing future pitching staffs. We have three in the rotation this year (and would have been four if Dickey somehow had not pushed up his ground ball rate) who are not really well suited for the ballpark. I also think it would be helpful to have a pitching coach with a track record of teaching pitchers how to pitch lower in the strike zone.
 
He's not a starter, but I find this encouraging for wisler. Here's his game log:

Vs mets... 2.0 ip 1 h 0 er 0 bb 0 k

Vs brewers... 1.0 ip 0 h 0 er 1 bb 0 k

Vs mets... 0.2 ip 4 h 4 er 0 bb 0 k

Vs mets.. 1.1 ip 4 h 3 er 2 bb 1 k

Vs pirates... 2.0 ip 0 h 0 er 0 bb 1 k

Vs giants... 2.0 ip 0 h 0 er 0 bb 1 k

So only 2 bad outings and both were vs the same team.
 
msstate7 said:
He's not a starter, but I find this encouraging for wisler. Here's his game log:
Vs mets... 2.0 ip 1 h 0 er 0 bb 0 k
Vs brewers... 1.0 ip 0 h 0 er 1 bb 0 k
Vs mets... 0.2 ip 4 h 4 er 0 bb 0 k
Vs mets.. 1.1 ip 4 h 3 er 2 bb 1 k
Vs pirates... 2.0 ip 0 h 0 er 0 bb 1 k
Vs giants... 2.0 ip 0 h 0 er 0 bb 1 k

So only 2 bad outings and both were vs the same team.
Click to expand...

small sample...the most relevant thing for me is 3 walks versus 3 strikeouts. That won't cut it.

The thing that makes me still have some hope for Wisler is he had a decent first half in 2016 and had some good results in AAA at an early age. But something happened in the second half of last year and he has not gotten back on track. I have a theory about what happened. He gave up some home runs and it was decided that he needed to pitch differently (his ground ball percentage went up in the second half, but he also became less effective). I think sometimes when you change a pitcher (or hitter for that matter) too much, you end up going backward. The Wisler from the first half of 2016 is a pitcher I would take, though the new ballpark would work against him.
 
nsacpi said:
small sample...the most relevant thing for me is 3 walks versus 3 strikeouts. That won't cut it.
Click to expand...

Yeah it's a small sample. I'm encouraged though that outside of those 2 disastrous appearances (back-to-back days) vs mets, it's...

(5 appearances) 7.0 ip 1 h 0 er 1 bb 2 k
 
Sample size may be a bit small, but it would be interesting to see how the WBC effects pitchers.
 
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