Staring Down the Sinkerballers, Part One
We’re really excited to introduce you to the newest writer to join the FanGraphs team – Bryan Smith. He’s covered minor league and college baseball for nearly every site on the planet, and we’re thrilled that this will be his new home. Please welcome him to the site.
Brad Bergesen was not the most exciting player that had his Major League debut with the Baltimore Orioles last season. Not even close. When Bergesen was called up in late April, the fan base was too busy anticipating Matt Wieters arrival to notice. His season-ending injury was suffered in late July, one day after Chris Tillman made his debut, and six days before Brian Matusz would follow suit. The minor league strikeout numbers of David Hernandez and Jason Berken surely held more promise for Orioles fans.
A lot of blue-chip players debuted for the Orioles last season, ushering in a new era of trust in the farm system. Of all those players, Brad Bergesen was the most valuable. The 2.3 WAR he accumulated in 19 starts was more than those other pitchers combined, and still managed to top Wieters and Nolan Reimold. Bergesen, amazingly, was the Orioles’ Rookie of the Year.
Now, I don’t believe that when it’s all said and done, Bergesen will end up as the career WAR leader of this esteemed group. But even within his small sample size of success, I think there is a lesson to be learned for those of us that follow (and report on) Minor League Baseball. I use Bergesen as a very particular example as I begin my first project here at FanGraphs. I posit that no type of minor leaguer is typically as undervalued as the right-handed sinker-slider brigade, for a couple reasons: 1) the sheer number of them gives the notion they are fungible, 2) they don’t light up radar guns or strikeout columns and, most importantly, 3) their success depends upon the inexperienced eight players in the field.
More than three years ago, I wrote an article for The Hardball Times predicting eight breakout prospects for the 2007 season. (I ask you to ignore the article so as not to become blinded by my Eric Campbell infatuation). One of the diamonds in the rough in the piece was Vince Mazzaro, coming off his debut season in the minor leagues: 5.05 ERA, 11.0 H/9, 6.1 K/9. But armed with the knowledge that he had a solid sinker, and quoting his .320 BABIP and 62.4 LOB%, I saw someone that would improve as his defenses did.
After his first 17 Major League starts yielded replacement level results, Mazzaro probably shouldn’t serve as my credibility-defining example. But his progression up the minor league ladder, from “bust” to 2008 Texas League Pitcher of the Year, serves as an interesting narrative to begin this series. I plan to isolate a sample of Major League sinkerballers, define their minor league commonalities, and use this information to help us recognize a different breed of prospects. The criteria I used to isolate the sinker guys was as follows:
– At least 40 IP in 2009.
– At least a 50% groundball percentage in 2009.
– Neither left-handed, nor right-handed with an average fastball above 93.0.
– And then I used my eyes to do things like eliminate the side-armed Cla Meredith’s of the world.
I want to clarify my third criteria. When a scout sees a player, there’s no question a few traits will inspire a little bias off the bat. You’ll find that all scouts love lefties that can touch even 90 mph, especially lefties with the kind of control that sinker/slider guys possess. Paul Maholm and Marc Rzepczynski don’t have better stuff than the guys in my sample, but because they were left-handed, they were a lot more noticed at the college level. The velocity requirement is similar: Fausto Carmona could get by in the minor leagues at times solely based on his velocity — and scouts held him up as a prospect as a result of velocity + movement.
So, with all that out of the way, I whittled down a nice sample of sinkerballers. We have 24 in all, complete with guys you would expect, like Derek Lowe, or Aaron Cook, or Chien-Ming Wang. And also a whole lot of guys who are, yes, fungible (I’ll leave the whole list in the comments). Still, the job of a prospect reporter is to identify as many up-and-coming Major Leaguers as possible — even the guys capable of just 40 decent innings. Prospect coverage can get better, and I see sinkerballers as a fine place to start.
Final Note: I’m thrilled to say that I’m joining David Appelman’s fantastic outfit here at FanGraphs for the indefinite future. I’m very pleased to be joining friends of mine, like, Dave Cameron and Erik Manning, and just as pleased to be joining the company of guys I admire, like, well the rest of this staff. If you’d like to get a hold of me, please try bsmithwtny AT gmail, or I’m going to try this Twitter thing again with the @bsmithwtny handle. Thanks!
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OK, let’s try this alphabetically: Burke Badenhop, Brian Bass, Jeff Bennett, Brad Bergesen, Mitch Boggs, Shawn Camp, Clay Condrey, Aaron Cook, Sean Green, Derek Lowe, Jason Marquis, Justin Masterson, Doug Mathis, Sergio Mitre Matt Palmer, Mike Pelfrey, Joel Pineiro, Rick Porcello, Chad Qualls, Chris Sampson, Ramon Troncoso, Chien Ming Wang, Jamey Wright. More on that group to come.
I’m not sure Pineiro is a good fit. He had a completely different skill set in the minors and in his first few seasons in the majors.
Yeah, I double-checked with Dave on this one, and you’re certainly correct. I had forgotten this. I’m going to take Pineiro out of the study, as I still think anything more than 20 is going to yield some interesting results.
But as of 2009, he was the most groundballingest of groundballers in the majors. Unless that was a one-year, Dave Duncan-pixie-dust fluke, he fits now.
Joser: Yes, but the point of the series is to track how these guys did in the minor leagues, and what tools they may have left for us to identify them. If Pineiro wasn’t yet a sinkerballer, anything he did in the minor leagues would only cloud the data that we’re looking to compile. Arbeck was right on with this one.
Ah, sorry. Missed that (memo to self: skim less, shut up more).
Still, I think precisely because of that Pineiro is one of the most interesting pitchers to look at right now. You don’t often see somebody change their entire profile in the middle of their career unless they go down to the minors (like Halladay) or they turn into a submariner or knuckleball pitcher in a last ditch attempt to salvage their careers (which often involves being a reliever, too). I’d love to better understand what he did, and I’m really interested to see if he can keep doing it.
What criteria did Ronald Belasario not meet?
Belasario was one of the guys that threw too hard for the study, with his 94.8 mph fastball well above the 93 cut-off. In trying to find guys that are ignored by the typical ways of judging minor leaguers, I couldn’t include guys that radar guns are attracted to.
Welcome to FanGraphs!!
Welcome, and congratulations to Fangraphs on another excellent addition.
This is a fine topic to begin with.
Welcome to FanGraphs Bryan.
This sounds like it should be an interesting series. I find that my team (the Phillies) consistently performs weakly against these types of pitchers. Bergesen was one who swiftly worked through the Phillies lineup last year, until Ryan Howard took him yard with a pinch hit homerun. Perhaps a good follow up would be to figure out which teams and batters thrive against these types of pitchers and which do not.
Hey Bryan! Great to “see” you on FanGraphs. They’re lucky to have you.
Great idea for an article series–looking forward to the future posts! I was surprised to see Qualls made the list–I always thought of sinkerballers as innings-eating starters, rather than high-leverage relievers (though a high likelihood of a groundball can, in many cases (even high leverage ones), be as or more effective than the possibility of a strikeout).
We tend to ignore these guys because most of us play roto where the lack of strikeouts hurts. However, I also play Scoresheet and in that format these are the guys you can target and win big with.
Welcome to FanGraphs!!
Welcome to Fangraphs!
I was just wondering what (if any) are the common characteristics of the sinker/slider sub-93 mph right-handed pitcher group. I would guess that they all keep their walk and home run rates relatively low, but that’s just a guess…
For this group to succeed, there’s some necessities: they absolutely need to keep the peripherals you mention low, and they need to be death on right-handed hitters. A slider is a weird pitch for a RHP to throw to a LHB, so these guys are always working on developing that third pitch (usually, a change-up) in the minors.
But I think a lot of times, you see guys come to the Majors, and they start to throw too hard and elevate that sinker, and all of a sudden, their BB and HR rates have relegated them to below replacement-level. It’s the guys like Bergesen, who seems to understand what he does well and not try to change, that can have success with this formula.
Nice article and welcome to FanGraphs.
As I try and gauge success of a group like this, I look for one more criteria to add to your three, which is the ability to throw strikes, at least 62-63% of the time.
Some of these guys will never experience success until their S:B ratio improves.
If the walk too many, they will never succeed. It creates a fine line as to which ones will eventually pan out.
Look at Pelfrey the last two years. he lives on the edge with a 60-61% ratio and it caught up to him. This type of pitcher has very little margin. That is why they are fungible in my opinion.
A guy like Qualls will do very well.
Kevin
Pelfrey is the weirdest guy on my list, without question. At Wichita State, he threw both a two-seam and four-seam fastball. He probably doesn’t get mentioned so highly in the draft if not for his fastball velocity. Similar to Porcello, in this regard. But when they hit the minors, they started to go with the two-seamer more and more, and they were no longer quite what their teams drafted. The transition seems to have been kinder on Porcello than Pelfrey, certainly.
What about Zach Duke and Charlie Morton? I’m guessing they didn’t have the ground ball percentage? I’m not sure if Morton is a sinkerballer exactly, but when I’ve seen him pitch and heard the announcers talk about him, they rave about the movement he generates on his fastball, and it’s almost too much to control.
You’re correct about missing on the groundball percentage. And Duke is a lefty, too. I don’t think Morton throws a two-seamer generally, but I could be wrong. I thought it was just a lively four-seamer.
It’s great to see my favorite baseball website add one of my favorite (tough to keep track of over the years) baseball writers. And a series on groundball pitching prospects? Fantastic.
Thanks, Sean. And to everybody for the kind words here.
I’ve been difficult to track, I think, because I spent my teenage and college years writing on the Internet, with every semester bringing changes that effected the amount of content I could produce, and every summer being reserved for different internships. I believe I have now reached a level of stability and consistency that should sustain a nice run here at FG. That’s all we can really hope for, right?
The sinkerball …great pitch, the Honda Accord of pitching…might not get you laid but gets the job done.
If it gets you a major league contract, it’ll get you laid.
Unless you look like Aaron Harang
What about Marc Rzepczynski? 51/28 gb/fb ratio is pretty solid.
Re: Rzep… he’s a lefty, as mentioned in the article (his name isn’t highlighted for some reason).
As for Porcello, he’s going to be interesting. From what I understand, Porcello was asked to alter his repetoire at the major league level in order to pitch more innings under a fairly strict pitch count. As he’s still only 21, this might still be asked of him for a while. He’s definitely capable of throwing consistently above 93 (the cutoff mentioned), but is instead pitching to contact and racking up those GDPs.
Honestly, I’m not sure if I believe the above story entirely, but if it’s true, that’s an amazing achievement for a guy that young — making the adjustment necessary to survive in bigs BEFORE it was necessary may end up making him a starter with an amazingly versatile set of pitches once the shackles are taken off.
I can certainly attest that Porcello is capable of pitching above 93, he was routinely 93-97 with his four-seam fastball as a senior in high school. But even then, he showed an affinity for the two-seamer. Now, I’m not sure I believe the story that Porcello has another breaking ball we haven’t seen yet — sometimes the urban legends surrounding these guys are ridiculous — but I am sure he has another gear to get to.
What about Trevor Cahill?
Hooray, Bergeson is finally getting the attention he deserves! Great article!
great article. how about brandon webb?
Oh Chien-Ming Wang . . . I was quite sad when the Yankees didn’t non-tendered him. Personally, I’m still scratching my head over what happened. Regardless, Wang will make whoever signs him quite happy. I highly doubt that the two consecutive 19 win seasons are a fluke.
Sergio Mitre is absurdly underrated by statistically ignorant Yankee fans and media.
Brandon Webb fits the model, prior to his missed year.
Cahill came in just under 50% GB in ‘09, so misses the study.
Brett Anderson, while left handed and so missing out here, is my new boyfriend: Left handed, avg fastball in ‘09 = 92.6, a 2 seamer a few miles slower, at 89.5, a slider, cut fastball and change all right around 84 (although the cutter is probably a mistake of some sort, thrown 0.1% of the time according to his page), and a K rate that was over 1/IP in the minors, only 7.70 last year, and a groundball rate over 50%.
Can’t wait to draft him in the 10th or 11th round of my fantasy league this year.
Would it be rude of me to point out Bergeson’s #s add up to 108.6 percent?