A broken hand will keep Ryan Vogelsong on the DL for at least four to six weeks. (Image Credit: Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports)

Ryan Vogelsong fractured two bones in his right hand and dislocated his pinkie finger on Monday, landing the right-hander on the disabled list. The injury took place in the 5th inning of Monday’s game against the Washington Nationals. Vogelsong was at the plate in the bottom half of the inning before taking a pitch directly off his hand, prompting San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy and team trainers out to the plate. Vogelsong would end up being pulled from the game.

An MRI exam on Tuesday revealed the extent of the damage and Vogelsong underwent surgery. He’s expected to miss the next four to six weeks.

Vogelsong hasn’t gotten off to an impressive start to the 2013 season, posting a 2-4 record and 7.19 ERA through his first nine starts (46.1 IP). He’s struggled to keep runners off base, unlike the past two seasons with the Giants. Vogelsong’s story is well known – career minor leaguer, heads to Japan, reinvents his mechanics, and is an All Star upon his return stateside – and the freak injury just adds to the story that has been his career.

It remains to be seen who will replace Vogelsong in the Giants’ rotation. Minor leaguers Chris Heston and Mike Kickham could be options, as are relievers Chad Gaudin and Shane Loux. With a scheduled off day built into their schedule on May 28, the team could delay a decision through at least one turn in the rotation.

Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

One area that is notably weak for many teams entering this year’s World Baseball Classic is the starting rotation. In general, pitchers get injured more often than position players and, as a result, are usually treated more cautiously. Therefore, it is no surprise that many organizations are hesitant to allow their pitchers to throw in games that don’t affect the win-loss record of their particular clubs. However, despite the general trepidation, Team USA has managed to assemble quite an impressive WBC starting rotation.

R.A. Dickey

R.A. Dickey, Sensei of the staff. Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

At the top of the rotation is newly acquired Blue Jay’s knuckleballer R.A. Dickey. Dickey is coming off a career year, winning the NL Cy Young award, but was also very good even before last season. Over the past three years, Dickey has posted 2.73, 3.24, and 2.84 ERAs while throwing an average of 205 innings per season over that span. In fact, R.A. Dickey’s 2.95 ERA over that span is good for 11th best of all major league starters. While his fielding independent number’s aren’t quite as good (generally an indicator of luck one way or another), it should be noted that fielding independent statistics don’t generally work as well with knuckleballers as they do when evaluating traditional starters. R.A. Dickey is neither a product of luck nor is he a one-hit wonder, he is a fantastic ace for the USA pitching staff. R.A. Dickey should be feared by opposing countries, as his Karate Kid headband in the picture at right clearly indicates.

Gio Gonzalez

Gio Gonzalez, all natural National. Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

What shouldn’t be lost among all the PED allegations around Gio Gonzalez this offseason is that he had a very good 2012, and is more of a 1-a than a number 2 pitcher on this staff. Last season, Gonzalez struck out over a batter an inning and posted a 2.89 ERA for the Nats. The real area of improvement for Gonzalez last year was his walk rate. He went from walking 4.05 batters per 9 to 3.43, and the results followed. Also, Gio’s homerun rate was nearly half of what it was the previous season. Though drastic changes in homerun rates aren’t generally sustainable, improvements in walk rates do generally come with age, so that aspect could certainly be repeated or even improved. If Gio Gonzalez is anywhere close to the pitcher he was last year for the Washington Nationals, he should be a great compliment for R.A. Dickey at the top of this staff.

Ryan Vogelsong

Ryan Vogelsong, started from the bottom. Credit: H. Darr Beiser-USA TODAY Sports

Ryan Vogelsong, a one-time journeyman pitcher, has turned into a very good major league starter. Before the 2011 season, Vogelsong hadn’t pitched in a major league game since 2006. Since then, he’s had two very good major league seasons for the Giants, with ERAs of 3.37 and 2.71, respectively. He is a guy who fielding independent statistics haven’t necessarily been crazy about, indicating that he may have been on the receiving end of some good luck. However, it’s been two full seasons in a row in which he’s outpitched those numbers, so he should be given some benefit of the doubt. Considering the lack of starting pitching talent among many of the teams in the WBC this year, Vogelsong is likely the best #3 starter in the bunch.

Derek Holland

Derek Holland, presumably “preheating the oven.” Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

This is where the rotation for Team USA starts to get a little thin. The good news, though, is that even the better pitching staffs among the other countries start thinning out far sooner than #4. Despite a lackluster 2012, Holland was actually better than league average in 2010 and 2011. The raw talent is there. His fastball averaged 93 mph in 2012 and 94.2 mph in 2011, as opposed to a league average of about 91.6 mph. However, fastball velocity doesn’t tell the whole story about the effectiveness of a pitcher’s repertoire. Last season Holland got batters to chase at pitches outside the zone and also induced swinging strikes at rates below league average, indicating that his stuff might not be as nasty as a quick glance at velocity may have indicated. Still, Holland has been about a league average major league pitcher over the past three years, which equates to a very good #4 starter in WBC terms. It should also be noted that Holland goes by the nickname “Dutch Oven,” giving him a significant advantage over competitors in terms of hilariousness.

Ross Detwiler

Detwiler, most likely after not inducing one of his trademark groundballs. Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

The 6’5 lefthander was the 6th overall pick in the 2007 draft, and made his major league debut later that same season. Still, despite being a highly-touted, tall lefthander with above average velocity (92.7 mph average fastball last season), Detwiler doesn’t strike many batters out. Rather than racking up Ks, what Detwiler excels at is inducing groundballs, inducing them last year at a rate of 50.8%. Though not a great starting pitcher relative to some other candidates for the roster, the high groundball rate should play extremely well with the excellent USA infield defense. Like Holland, Detwiler has an awesome nickname, National Det (clever, right?). But also like Holland, Detwiler can’t necessarily measure up to the first three pitchers in this rotation. Still, with the dearth of starting pitching in the tournament overall, Detwiler could very well be the better pitcher in most matchups he finds himself in.

Team USA’s rotation is very noticeably without the likes of Justin Verlander, Zack Greinke, Stephen Strasburg, and Clayton Kershaw. Still, the top two pitchers in the rotation represent the first and third place finishers in NL Cy Young voting last season, and pitchers 3-5 are quality major league starters. In a tournament that includes many staffs made up of lower-echelon major leaguers and developing minor league prospects, this group of USA pitchers is more than adequate. The starting rotation should be a strong point for the USA squad come tournament time.

Here are a few guys you may have heard were having great seasons, but really aren’t. A caveat: just because someone who pitches for your favorite team is on this list does not mean I’m insulting the pitcher. He may in fact be a quality starting pitcher; I’m merely suggesting that his 2012 numbers may be a little misleading to this point.

Ryan Dempster, Chicago Cubs

Dempster has had a good run in the Cubs starting rotation these past several years. And don’t get me wrong: there’s no doubt he’s done a lot of things well this season. Many fans may be inclined to put Dempster in the least lucky pitchers category due to the fact that he has a 1.86 ERA and only five wins on the year. Yeah, that sucks, admittedly. After all, one largely useless pitching stat might as well go ahead and help out the other largely useless pitching stat. In a normal year, Dempster would probably have more than five wins for his efforts, but he would also have a higher ERA as well. The 35-year-old has done a great job of improving his control later in his career, and he remains capable of picking up a fair amount of strikeouts, so it isn’t all bad. His xFIP of 3.13 still points to him having a very nice season, too, so when I say he’s been one of the luckiest pitchers in baseball, I don’t mean to say it’s all been luck. I just think there’s enough of a discrepancy in his peripherals to indicate this year could be much, much different for him. You know, if he wasn’t stranding a league leading 85.5% of his runners or sporting a .242 BABIP. He’s also seen an unwarranted drop in home runs allowed despite getting fewer outs on the ground than he has since 2002. Like I said, Dempster’s had a great year, but it wouldn’t be shocking if that ERA took a big hit before the season’s end. Ironically, he’ll probably end up winning a higher percentage of his remaining starts in the process of regressing. That’s another reason why wins mean nothing, or at least mostly nothing.

Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-US PRESSWIRE

Ryan Vogelsong, San Francisco Giants

Vogelsong is a great story. After being drafted in the fifth round by the Giants in 1998, he was soon shipped off to Pittsburgh as part of the deal that brought Jason Schmidt to the Bay Area. Despite absurd K/9 rates that indicated he was capable of utter dominance in the minors, especially before he reached Double-A, Vogelsong had a very unseemly start to his major league career when he finally got a chance to pitch regularly at the game’s highest level. After the 2006 season he had logged 315 innings in his career, and the accompanying stats were not pleasant: a 5.86 ERA, a 1.59 WHIP, a somewhat pedestrian 6.2 K/9 rate, and a 4.4 BB/9 rate. After several years away from the game that included a stint in Japan, Vogelsong returned to the majors last season and was a completely different pitcher — a good one. He’s already thrown nearly as many innings since his return as he had in his career before that point, and the numbers are much better. It’s easy to be happy for Vogelsong considering his newfound success, but part of it appears to be luck this season. Take, for instance, his .249 BABIP. It was .280 a season ago, and it’s .288 for his career; that number is bound to rise. He’s also stranding 85.1% of his runners, an astronomical rate that is absolutely not sustainable, even more than the BABIP. His control is solid, but he still doesn’t miss as many bats as a premium starter should (6.5 K/9). Oh yes, and his ERA (2.31) is well off the mark of his FIP (3.73) and xFIP (4.40), and there’s really no better indicator of luck than an ERA that’s two runs below a more advanced pitching metric. Vogelsong is a capable starting pitcher to be sure, and he deserves credit for rebuilding his career, but you might be tempted to overvalue him based on a solid 7-4 record with that 2.31 ERA. Don’t be deceived.

Jered Weaver, Los Angeles Angels

Uh oh, now I’m really picking on a big name. Weaver has been an All-Star three seasons in a row, a top finalist for the Cy Young Award the past two seasons, and is still just 29. Let me also state for the record that I always liked the guy and considered his reputation to be rightly earned. That’s all changed this season. First of all, what’s going on with Weaver’s K/9 rate? It peaked at 9.3 in 2010, dropped to 7.6 a year ago, and now stands at 6.7 this season, the second lowest total of his career. It appears at this point that the 2010 results were a complete anomaly, but if I were an Angel fan I would have hoped it was a sign of things to come for a still improving top flight starter. Apparently that wasn’t the case, and now it continues to get worse. PITCH/fx does indicate a slight drop in velocity (88.3 MPH) on his fastball this season, although he was throwing almost this slowly back in 2009 and got it back up the next few years. It’s back down in 2012, and so are his K/9 rates. I can’t profess to know why these things are fluctuating so much with Weaver, but the fact remains his results this year are not coming the same way. He has the lowest BABIP of any qualifying starter in baseball (.233), and he’s continuing his usual trend of escaping jams at a high rate (79.7% of runners stranded this year, an even 77.0% for his career; both are very high). On the plus side, his control is as good as ever, so maybe he’s making an effort to pitch more to contact and forget about missing bats, but the fact remains that his 11-1 record and 2.26 ERA are going to put in consideration for a Cy Young award if he keeps it up, and there are other pitchers far more deserving, pitchers that have a lower xFIP than 3.95 for instance. Weaver’s a good pitcher, even a great one, but he’s not having the best season of his career at all; in fact, he’s taken quite a step down from his last two campaigns.

Can’t get enough of Spencer? Check out his work at StanGraphs and follow him on Twitter at @shendricks221.

Angel Pagan, with to runners on, stepped to the plate.  With two strikes, Pagan smashed a pitch into the left field seats and slingshotted the Giants into the lead.  They were able to hold it in the ninth and picked up the win 6-5.

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It’s not too bad but we want to make sure we’re cautious.  I’d say probably, cautious side, 10 days [before returning] maybe just to make sure I’m feeling good and don’t go out there and try to throw and tweak it again and come back in here. We’re just going to go really conservative right now.

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