Tools of Ignorance, a Giants Baseball Blog

On Friday night, I was sitting in traffic on the 280 when Pirates rookie Juan Perez was thrown out there to start the ninth inning in a game the Pirates were losing to our heroes, 8-2, and proceeded to walk four of the first five batters he faced.

Fortunately for him, the middle batter in that sequence was a leading contender for the highly-coveted title, “Slowest Man in the Major Leagues.” (Also known as “Slowest Member of the Molina Family.”) Bengie hit into a double play; Russ Ortiz would thus come to the plate with the bases loaded and two out, and when he flied out Perez had escaped the inning without allowing a run to score.

How often does this happen — a pitcher walks four batters in an inning without allowing a run? It’s pretty rare. With help once again from retrosheet.org, I found that Perez was just the 7th pitcher to accomplish the feat in the last 10 seasons (notice the current and former Giants on the list):

Date        Pitcher          Inning 

04/13/07    Juan Perez       9th

08/05/04    Vinnie Chulk     8th

05/14/04   Kazuhisa Ishii    1st

05/04/04   Eric Dubose       2nd

04/09/04   Jon Garland       4th

08/12/00   Shawn Estes       5th

04/24/00   Chuck Finley      1st

I’m just leeching off other people’s work here, but Gary Huckabay recently wrote something at baseballprospectus.com (subscription required) that I believe applies to the 2007 Giants:

“When I first wrote that “There’s No Such Thing as a Pitching Prospect,” it meant two things, one of which has kind of become lost over time. Yes, it means that pitchers get hurt at approximately the same rate as that methheads swipe identities and lose teeth. That’s what pitchers do, not just prospects. But it also had another meaning — that guys who are totally blowing people away in the minors . . . are absolutely not pitching prospects — they’re already pitchers, and more time in the minors only means time off the living, pulsating clocks that are their labrums, rotator cuffs, and elbows.”

[emphasis added]

One thing that distinguishes young hitters from young pitchers is that young major-league hitters can pretty much count on making steady improvements from the time they start playing professional ball until the time they’re 26 or 27.   You might have a guy like Cameron Maybin who would be pretty overwhelmed if he tried to play in the major leagues today, but we can be fairly certain that he’ll be able to handle the big leagues in two years or so.  Cameron Maybin is a prospect.

The same is not the case with pitching prospects.  Although there are exceptions, in general there is no systematic pattern of improvement after the age of 21 or so.  Sometimes guys get better, of course, and sometimes they do so in a hurry — but you can’t take a young pitcher in a vacuum and expect him to improve the same way that you can for a hitting prospect.  Mark Rogers will probably never get his command sorted out, Yusemiro Petit will never add enough ticks to his fastball to become a useful major-league starter, Gavin Floyd will never learn how to keep the ball down, and so forth.  All of these things are possible — but they’re not very likely.

The flip side, as Huckabay also alludes to, is that young pitchers often take less time to become dominant big league performers.  Pitching, somewhat contrary to the mad-genius reputation of pitchers like Greg Maddux, is more of a purely physical skill and less of a learned behavior than hitting is.  Pitchers like Francisco Liriano and Jered Weaver and Cole Hamels weren’t just holding their own last year, they were among the very best pitchers in baseball.  Someone like Tim Lincecum might very well be as effective today as he’s ever going to be, before he’s had a chance for injuries and mileage to accumulate.

I understand why the Giants are preparing to send Lincecum down to Fresno.  They want him to start every fifth day, since starting is where his highest value ultimately is.  But Earl Weaver, who was a successful manager and wrote one of the best books on strategy and tactics, believed that the best place for a talented rookie was with the big club, pitching in long relief, making adjustments at the major-league level.  Given the apparent mediocrity of the Giants’ bullpen, and the probable struggles of Russ Ortiz (no, I’m not yet a believer, although I wish him well), doesn’t it make sense to get Lincecum back up soon?  Keeping Tim Lincecum down on the farm is not conservative — it’s a downright irresponsible way to run a ballclub.