Premium Pitching: R.A. Dickey, Hector Noesi, Gabriel Arias and Friends

The pitching week of August 9th-15th was marked by the brilliance of R.A. Dickey.  As you will see in the following edition of Premium Pitching something about Dickey’s performance got me thinking about his 2010 season, his career and his future.

I went a little longer than intended on Dickey, but that didn’t stop be from providing a little something for all 5 minor league pitchers featured this week.  I hope you enjoy!

Minor Leagues: 7 starts qualified (data unavailable for 8/10 and 8/14)

[81]  8/11, RHP Jessie Nava (Pulaski Mariners – Rk):  7.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 9 SO

He’s 22 and getting his first shot at the Appalachian League after spending 2006-2008 pitching in the Venezuelan Summer League. The 2010 numbers as a whole don’t impress, but his August 11th start certainly did.

[82]  8/13, RHP Jared Rogers (GCL Marlins – Rk):  7.0 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 8 SO

Rogers was the Florida Marlins 36th round pick in June’s MLB Draft.  Incidentally he was also drafted in the 36th round back in 2006 by the Yankees but didn’t sign.  You’d expect a 4-year starter from a major college program like Rice University to dominate the Gulf Coast League and he’s doing just that.  He’s thrown 33.2 professional innings thus far and has a 0.53 ERA and 0.59 WHIP as a result. He’s walked just a single batter while striking out 31 which is just crazy at any level.  At 22-years old and with college polish the Marlins probably need to be a bit more aggressive with his assignments including an immediate promotion.

[82]  8/15, RHP Hector Noesi (Trenton Thunder – Yankees AA):  7.0 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 9 SO

Prior to the start of the season Noesi was ranked as the Yankees 24th best prospect by Baseball America.  Were it not for time lost during 2007 and 2008 thanks to Tommy John surgery, Hector may have already found himself in the major leagues.  As it is, there is a lot to like here.  His H/9, BB/9 and SO/9 are all excellent to good.  Aside from a 5 start stretch in A ball back in 2007 (prior to surgery) his ERA has always been below 4.00 and his WHIP has always been below 1.12.

In 328.1 career innings he has a 3.12 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, 1.6 BB/9, 9.0 SO/9 and 5.66 SO/BB.  This season the Yankees promoted him from Tampa (A+) to Trenton to give him his first taste of Double-A and he’s handled himself very well thus far with a 3.30 ERA, 1.12 WHIP and 4.44 SO/BB.  At 23-years old, he’s basically right on track despite losing parts of two seasons due to injury.

If he doesn’t make it in New York, I have a suspicion he will make it somewhere and have some major league success along the way.

[82]  8/8, LHP Greg Wilborn (Great Lakes Loons – Dodgers A):  7.o IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 12 SO

The Dodgers selected Wilborn in the 18th round of the 2009 draft and started him off in the bullpen of the Ogden Raptors (Pioneer League) last season.  He struggled in his 1st taste of professional baseball including a 7.45 ERA and 2.12 WHIP in 19.1 innings.  He started 2010 back in Ogden but this time he was cast as a starter.  Based on the returns so far, the rotation appears to agree with him. After 8 starts in Ogden, he was 4-0 with a 2.06 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 1.6 BB/9 and 12.0 SO/9. Those impressive numbers earned him a promotion to Great Lakes where he has made 3 starts.  The first one on August 3rd was decent, the second one (featured here) was brilliant, and his 3rd start on the 13th was a train wreck as his control abandoned him.

[87]  8/13, RHP Gabriel Arias (DSL Phillies – Rk):  9.0 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 10 SO

Might be about time to get the 20-year old hurler stateside and give him a tougher challenge.  He’s thrown 186.1 innings between 2007-2010 for the Phillies DSL team with a 1.79 ERA, 0.998 WHIP and 10.67 SO/BB.

Major Leagues: 8 starts qualified

[82]  8/15, RHP Bryan Bullington (Kansas City Royals):  8.0 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 5 SO

[83]  8/14, LHP Brian Duensing (Minnesota Twins):  9.0 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 4 SO

[84]  8/10, RHP Felix Hernandez (Seattle Mariners):  8.0 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 13 SO

[87]  8/12, LHP Johan Santana (New York Mets):  9.0 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 10 SO

[91]  8/13, RHP R.A. Dickey (New York Mets):  9.0 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 7 SO

If you picked Dickey to have the best start of the week, congratulations.  Now you can go on with your life and be sure you never play the lottery again. You just cashed in your luck for all of eternity.  Seriously talk about coming out of nowhere.  Dickey threw down this week to have the best outing in the majors and minors.  He combined with Johan Santana to pitch back-to-back shutouts and somehow* the Mets are still a wreck.

*It’s not too hard to figure out why.  Statement was made tongue-in-cheek.

Last year Dickey finished the season with a 4.62 ERA in 64.1 IP with all but 5 of those innings coming out of the pen as a member of the Minnesota Twins.  It was the lowest ERA he’s finished a season with by about a half run.  Heck, even a handful of his 14 minor league seasons ended with a higher ERA.  The Twins paid him just about the league minimum ($525,000) and got essentially replacement level return (-0.1 WAR) on their investment before designating him for assignment at the end of August.

After the 2009 season he was once again a Free Agent, and the Mets took a small gamble on Dickey by signing him to a minor league contract on December 23rd.  Safe to say the gamble has paid off this year as the 35-year old knuckleball specialist has turned in a 2.43 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, and 166 ERA+ in 17 starts and 111.0 innings pitched.  That’s good for a 2.2 WAR which accounts for half of his career WAR of 4.4.

He has cut his BB/9 rate down to 2.4, compared to the previous two seasons (4.1 and 4.2 respectively), which has certainly helped his performance, but he had similar BB/9 rates in 2003 (2.9) and 2004 (2.8) and failed to generate this level of success.  The key for Dickey this season is that he has combined his 2.4 BB/9 with a career low 7.9 H/9.  His previous low in hits allowed per 9 innings came back in 2005 when it was 8.8.  2005 was a year that also featured one of his worst BB/9 (5.2).  When you put his 2010 H/9 and BB/9 together, have a pitcher who has posted a WHIP that is easily beats his previous season-best 1.48 WHIP set back in 2003.

Dickey’s not just limiting base-runners through luck and a routinely massive strike zone granted him by unusally generous umpires either.  There is some statistical data behind his improvement. According to pitch type linear weights (PTLW), his knuckleball has been 0.79 runs above average for every 100 thrown.  Since he throws his knuckleball 83.7% of the time, this doesn’t seem that surprising.  After all it should be his best pitch.  It gets a little moreso however when you factor in that his knuckler has never, in his career, rated as an above average pitch.  For an even bigger surprise we just need to look at the only other pitch he has been throwing this year.  His fastball, which “blazes” toward the plate at an average speed of 84.3 MPH, has been 2.19 runs above average for every 100 thrown.  As is the case with his knuckleball’s PTLW, his WHIP, H/9, and most of his other peripheral stats, he has never wielded his fastball with this level of success.

Speaking of that success, can we expect it to continue?  The skeptical answer is of course no, but there is something to be said for his performance this season.  This is more than a hot stretch or late season surge so commonly turned in during the month of September (I’m thinking about you Kyle Davies).  In addition to being another single-season high in his 8 major league seasons, 17 starts is a fairly significant stretch as is the 111.0 innings that have been the result of those starts.

I think he can carry this level of performance through the rest of the season and it’s not like we have to worry about how he will pitch under pressure since the Mets are 59-59 and 10.0 games back this season.  From the looks of things he should be able to keep on keeping on through September.  Of course the knuckleball is an especially tricky mistress so I wouldn’t put any money on any continued success.

Speaking of money, the Mets have a conundrum on their hands.  Actually they have dozens of things to figure out this offseason and dozens of other problems to fix on top of that, but what do they do with Dickey?  Do they bring him back?  Do they let him walk?

He is arbitration eligible so the team could go that route and with little success previous to 2010 he doesn’t have a lot of historical leverage to take into the arbitration hearing.  He should be affordable, but would it be wiser to give him a multi-year deal?  Logically most people would say no, but what if he does this again in 2011 and Mets choose not to lock him up beyond 2011?  Knuckleball pitchers tend to figure things out later than pretty much every other pitcher who takes the mound so it isn’t completely unreasonable to think that Dickey has finally fully matured into a full-fledged knuckleball artist.  If that is the case, at 35-years old, he has many potentially productive seasons ahead of him.

The kicker for Mets fans is that whatever Omar Minaya does, assuming he’s still making the decisions this winter, it will probably backfire.  That just seems to be the way the ball is rolling for the organization these days.

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Tags: Brian Duensing, Bryan Bullington, Felix Hernandez, Florida Marlins, Gabriel Arias, Greg Wilborn, Hector Noesi, Jared Rogers, Jessie Nava, Johan Santana, Kansas City Royals, LA Dodgers, Minnesota Twins, New York Mets, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies, R.A. Dickey, Seattle Mariners