D-Train D-Railed
Dontrelle Willis is broken. At 26 years old, for whatever reason, he has lost the ability to throw the ball over the plate. Here are his performances so far in 2008:
April 5th, vs White Sox: 5 IP, 1 H, 7 BB, 0 K, 99 pitches, 46 strikes
April 11th, vs White Sox: 0 IP, 0 H, 2 BB, 0 K, 14 pitches, 4 strikes
May 23rd, vs Twins: 1 IP, 1 H, 2 BB, 0 K, 28 pitches, 13 strikes
June 3rd, vs Athletics: 4 IP, 2 H, 5 BB, 3 K, 70 pitches, 37 strikes
June 9th, vs Indians: 1 1/3 IP, 3 H, 5 BB, 2 K, 64 pitches, 27 strikes
After his April 11th appearance, the Tigers put him on the DL to try to give him a chance to figure out his mechanics and get himself ready to pitch. It didn’t work, and after three more disastrous appearances since returning, he’s now been optioned to Single-A Lakeland of the Florida State League, as the Tigers are going to put him on the Roy Halladay plan to try to repair their busted starting pitcher. Toronto sent Halladay back to the minors in 2000 after he posted a 10.64 ERA in 67 innings of work, and with some changes in his approach and his delivery, he returned in 2001 and restarted a dominating, Cy Young career.
That’s obviously the best case scenario for Willis, but it appears an unlikely one. While Halladay was bad in 2000, he wasn’t anywhere near this horrible.
Halladay, 2000: 5.59 BB/9, 5.85 K/9, 1.86 HR/9, 6.49 FIP
Willis, 2008: 16.68 BB/9, 3.97 K/9, 1.59 HR/9, 10.11 FIP
Halladay was bad, but Willis is struggling on a Rick Ankiel level. Only 48% of his pitches on the season have been strikes, and he’s posting a dreadful 6% swinging strike rate. Even when he manages to get the ball over the plate, which is a rarity unto itself, hitters are making contact. He’s simply not able to locate any of his pitches, and the results lead to either a called ball or a crushed line drive.
Generally, when a pitcher struggles this badly, the initial assumption is that he’s hurt, but Willis’ stuff hasn’t taken much of a dive. His fastball velocity still sits at 88.5 MPH, down less than 1 MPH from last year’s mark, and he’s actually throwing his change-up harder this year than at any point in the last four years. If he’s’ hurt, it isn’t affecting his velocity.
Really, the best guess here is that it’s a mental problem. By sending him to Lakeland, the Tigers can get him some work away from the obsessive eyes of fans and let him tinker with his mechanics in a safe environment where the results don’t matter. But, for 2008, Tigers fans should assume they’re not going to see Willis again – he could use the next three months in the minors to fix what’s broken and try to return as a successful pitcher in 2009.
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These short FanGraphs pieces don’t lend themselves to much detailed analysis, but this is a great piece. Willis is an established major-league pitcher sent down the single-A to see if he can learn how to pitch again, because he’s clearly forgotten.
If only we had Pitch F/X data for 2000 we could see whether there was a significant change in the re-engineered Halladay, and we could perhaps apply that to Willis. As it is, if the Tigers get half the return on this that Toronto did with Halladay, they’ll be ecstatic.
Willis is also quite a good hitter, as pithers go. Maybe he could go the Ankiel route.
This is where motion capture technology (never mind pitch/FX) would be fantastic. Imagine if a team had a pitcher don the suit and get in front of an array of cameras and pitch a simulated game once in a while. This information could be used to point out very small differences in a pitchers delivery between any two points and then the pitcher could actually go about correcting their delivery.
Steve: I remember seeing on maybe ESPN, or somewhere that the A’s pitching staff used to do just that.
It is impressive that Dontrelle Willis still isn’t the best pitcher on his team after two league demotion.
Steve – that would be a great idea. Last night, Baseball Tonight showed video comparing Willis’ 2005 delivery to some of his pitches from the Cleveland game the other day. Speaking as someone who often thinks too much when he throws (but not as a mechanics expert or psychologist by any means), it does look like a mental thing. But if teams did begin to use motion capture, they’d be able to quantify exactly how different his movements are. That may seem like overkill, but you know what they say about millions of dollars riding on the smallest of details….
Dave – interesting you should mention Ankiel. Willis is considered a good hitting pitcher (batting as high as 7th in the Marlins lineup). I wonder if an Ankiel-like switch has crossed anyone’s mind yet.
I was just over at BornByBits messing around with Josh Kalk’s Pitch/FX data and it is quite interesting when you look at Willis’s fastball (shows up as an 89.9mph change up) has not missed a single bat yet this season.That is out of 69 “hittable” pitches. Amazingly only 4 of those 69 went for hits, while 28 were called strikes and another 25 were foul tipped. This probably means that the fastball is still moving like it is supposed to just he cannot put the ball where he wants to, the evidence being the 74 balls.
My first guess with out looking at any film would be an inconsistent release point.