Last week, I took a look at what we really knew for sure about the Reds young hitters. Today, I’m going to turn the lens of sample size to pitchers and see what we see.
Pitchers, as you probably know, are much harder to predict. If you want to know why, I know of no better way to explain than to tell that it takes 2,000 batters faced before a pitcher’s batting average on balls in play (BABIP) stabilizes. That’s about 2 1/2 years of injury-free pitching if your looking at a starter. So, on one level, we must acknowledge that we don’t know everything about any of the young guys yet. Even DeSclafani only has 1104 batters faced in his career so far.
Anyway, onward.
Let’s start with Disco since he has a fair bit of experience. You can feel good about both his K-rate and BB-rate as he’s faced enough batters this year for those to both be stabilized. His HR rate is probably around his career-rate as well. If you really want to be encouraged, realize that his BABIP is a bit high and, since he hasn’t faced enough batters for it to stabilize, we should expect it to come down some over the next year or so. Disco, that is, seems to be for real.
Dan Straily has been ERA lucky this year and the samples on his peripherals (except for BABIP) are all big enough to tell you that he shouldn’t be counted on as an ongoing part of the rotation.
Brandon Finnegan is next up and we should maybe be a little discouraged. His K and BB-rates are both heading int he wrong direction this year. He is, however, only 23 and we should expect further adjustments to be made.
And that’s it.
It feels silly to write such a short article, but among pitchers who have a shot at being part of the future these are the only ones who have enough innings for us to say anything at all useful. Pitchers are weird and you almost never know what you’re going to get.