Looking at PITCH/fx, Bailey's stuff does indeed appear to be good. 43% of his strikes were either called or swinging. That is virtually the identical percentage accomplished by Phil Hughes and Yovanni Gallardo. But Homer's control wasn't NEARLY as good as either of the other two.

And Tim Lincecum had a more impressive 46% of his strikes as either called or swinging. Plus, Tim's control was clearly better than Homer's.

Bailey and Hughes are the youngest of that quartet, with Lincecum being the oldest. Lincecum has been the healthiest of the group, with Bailey and Hughes seeming to be the laggards in that regard.

As I have said, I wouldn't give up on Homer Bailey as a very good candidate. But while one could have made an argument a year ago for Bailey as being no worse than the second-best prospect (behind only Hughes) among that group, it appears to me that he has fallen to the bottom of an extremely talented group.

Bailey would benefit from missing even more bats than he presently does. But most of all he needs to improve his control and remain healthy. He didn't accomplish either of the last two this past season, causing his star not to shine as brightly IMO.

Incidentally, PITCH/fx does indicate that Homer would quite possibly benefit from using his curve ball more often. Not only did he achieve a higher percentage of untouched strikes with the pitch (46% of all strikes) than with his fastball (41%), Homer also had far better control of the pitch (66% strikes) than his heater (62% strikes).

It appeared that Homer had trouble throwing strikes when he was behind in the count. He walked 10 of the 12 hitters he went to 3-0 on (with one of the other two hitting a double). He walked 14 of the 26 he got behind 3-1. He walked only 10 of the 29 hitters who went to a full count on him, which isn't too bad. But he walked 20 of the 88 batters to whom he threw a ball with his first pitch. That would be a walk rate of somewhere around eight or so per nine innings, which isn't very good.

My suggestion to Homer would be to throw the curve more often when he gets behind. It would make it harder for the hitter to look for the fastball in fastball counts, and it doesn't appear it would cost Homer much if anything with regard to control.

As I was performing this analysis, it dawned on me that one way to see how pitchers' control and dominance compared would be to see how they fared on the 3-2 pitch, when one ball would mean a walk and one strike would mean a strikeout. What percentage of batters did the pitcher walk, strike out, allow to put in play, allow to put in play for a hit and allow to put in play for an out? Here is a comparison of Bailey and Lincecum last season:

Bailey Lincecum
% of walks 34% 33%
% of strikeouts 17% 28%
% BIP (outs) 31% 28%
%BIP (hits) 17% 10%

What we see is that when throwing strikes meant a hit or an out while throwing a ball meant a walk, both Bailey and Lincecum walked about a third of the batters. Lincecum got the large advantage by allowing only one of ten batters to get a hit, while Homer allowed one of every six to get a knock. As a result, Lincecum limited batters to only a .148 BA on the 3-2 count, while Homer let them hit .263. Lincecum's primarly advantage was that he struck out over 60% more batters than Bailey in that situation, allowing only about 60% as many balls to be put into play.

On the 3-2 pitch Lincecum didn't show much better control than Bailey. But by showing far more dominance, he was able to allow far fewer hits. The poster to whom I was replying said that Bailey had shown plenty of stuff but needed to work on his control. When a strike was needed in order to avoid putting a runner on base, Lincecum showed far better stuff than Bailey.

By the way, here is the same comparison between Gallardo and Hughes:

Gallardo Hughes
% of walks 31% 45%
% of strikeouts 29% 13%
% BIP (outs) 25% 24%
%BIP (hits) 14% 18%

Hughes is known for his control, but his walk percentage on 3-2 was the highest of all four young pitchers. Gallardo's numbers were similar to Lincecum's.

On 3-2, all but Hughes had decent -- but not great -- control. Lincecum and Gallardo got a lot of strikeouts; Bailey and Hughes didn't. Lincecum held batters to the lowest batting average, followed by Gallardo, Bailey and Hughes.

I'm rather shocked by how poorly Hughes pitched on 3-2, and Bailey wasn't too good either. Perhaps that is an indication of their being the two youngest pitchers in the group. Perhaps neither Hughes nor Bailey benefits from as much domination as the older Lincecum and Gallardo.

I would take any of these guys in a flash -- but I would rank Lincecum at the top and Bailey at the bottom of the group. And to me, Bailey falls clearly below the other three, who appear to be fairly close.