5 plus pitches? This kid at 19 has an amazing sinker that he throws in the mid-90s and can get MLB hitters out with now. That alone can make a guy a big league innings eater. Add in a plus changeup and 2 above average breaking pitches, and he has ace potential.

You would have written off Halladay, Wang, Joe Saunders, Webb, Buehrle, Shields, Derek Lowe, and a lot more successful major league pitchers using this logic of you need to have good K rates in the minors to be successful in the majors.

I am not going to claim K rates are unimportant using a list of outliers, but there is a difference between not being able to strike people out and not striking people out because of how you pitch, and those guys are good examples of very successful pitchers who didn’t strike a ton out in the minors but were successful because of how they pitched.

As a Tigers fan, I can tell you for a fact he doesn’t have an upper 90s fastball. He’s said that himself. I can tell you for a fact he wasn’t throwing one of his pitches because the Tigers wanted him to work mainly on fastball-changeup.

The rest is my opinion….I don’t think he was concerned at all with striking out batters, and with the success he was having there was little reason to (unless he wanted to be declared the #1 overall pitching prospect by all the gurus). What that means as far as his MLB potential…..impossible to say. I don’t think he should be penalized for not striking out people, as his approach was different than most minor league pitchers, but I don’t think you can treat him as a Verlander or Linecum surefire type prospect, because they had the K numbers to go with everything else.

At least he as already learned what it takes most pitcher five or six years to learn. First pitch strikes can lead to first pitch outs. Its kind of a cliche, but there is a lot of truth to it.

This probably deserves its own diary, but here you go anyway:

I know some of you do not totally buy into strikeout rate predicting future performance. If you do not, I STRONGLY suggest you read this article:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2617

Specifically, the article states:

Where the value of “just putting the ball in play” has often been overstated for hitters, the opposite has long been the case for pitchers. In their case, a strikeout is most definitely not “just another out.” In fact, the ability to create outs for one’s self is among the most important skills a pitcher can possess.

Why? There are a number of reasons, but mainly it’s because more strikeouts mean fewer balls in play. Fewer balls in play mean (on average) fewer hits surrendered. And with fewer hits surrendered come fewer runs allowed. The steps aren’t perfect, mind you, but on a macro level they hold up.
 
Or, to perhaps give this conclusion some real-world resonance, look at the disparity in ERA between those pitchers with the highest strikeout rates in the league in 2003 and those at the bottom of the barrel:

Pitcher SO/9 ERA
——————————————————
Kerry Wood 11.35 3.20
Mark Prior 10.43 2.43
Curt Schilling 10.39 2.95
Pedro Martinez 9.93 2.22
Javier Vazquez 9.40 3.24


Pitcher SO/9 ERA
——————————————————
Joe Mays 3.46 6.30
Danny Graves 3.20 5.33
Aaron Cook 3.12 6.02
Kirk Rueter 2.51 4.53
Nate Cornejo 2.13 4.67

The difference isn’t accidental. In a nine-inning complete game, Kerry Wood is roughly 30% less reliant upon his defense to convert batted balls into outs than someone like Kirk Rueter or Nate Cornejo would be. That’s not just a huge difference, that’s a Marlon-Brando-pulling-up-a-chair-to-the-buffet difference.

Strikeout rate also has predictive value. According to a study conducted by Keith Woolner, pitchers with high strikeout rates age better than comparable pitchers (i.e., pitchers who posted similar park-adjusted ERAs at the same age) with low strikeout rates. Bill James also gave this subject some treatment in his most recent edition of the Historical Baseball Abstract when discussing Mark Fidrych, and came to a similar—if slightly hyperbolic, as Tommy John can attest—conclusion: “There is simply no such thing as a starting pitcher who has a long career with a low strikeout rate.”

The prominence of the strikeout in Major League Baseball has been increasing steadily over the past 130 years, and it may continue to grow as teams begin to let go of their macho attachment to “just putting the ball in play” on offense, while further valuing pitchers who are self-sufficient on the mound. Like many other developments in baseball, this will be a sign of evolution, and a better game overall will be the result.

Don’t fear the strikeout. In many ways it is a harbinger of better things to come.

Keep in mind the article was written in 2004, which is why you see some older references to the Kirk Rueters of the world.

So, now that we have shown that K rate is an indicator of success at the major league level, let’s dive a little into minor league K rates. Unfortunately, I was unable to find some research on current "ace" starters and their minor league K rates. If you want a detailed quantitative view of pitchers in the minors in 2007, here is a great article for you:

http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2007/01/categorizing_mi.php

Some interesting names for sure in this article, and I feel safe in saying that there are likely to be very few success stories in that "Northwest Quadrant" (high GB rate, low K rate). Chris Volstad is really the only one mentioned with a shot at being an above-average regular. I say that not being much of a fan of Aaron Laffey. In fact, in the article the more impressive listing is the "Southeast Quadrant" (high FB rate, high K rate), with names such as Rich Hill (his problems seem more mental than anything else to me), Jake McGee (injury issues now), Brandon Erbe, Clay Bucholz, Scott Elbert (more injury issues), Homer Bailey (seems like coach-ability issues), Kevin Slowey and Johnny Cueto. On this fact alone, I would suggest that K rate is a more predictive factor of future success than GB rate. But, let us do a little more digging.

In my opinion, the 10 best pitchers in baseball as we sit here in January 2009 are (in no specific order) Johan Santana, Jake Peavy, Tim Lincecum, Roy Halladay, Brandon Webb, CC Sabathia, Carlos Zambrano, John Lackey, Cole Hamels and Josh Beckett. We can argue semantics of "you should have included Player X instead of Player Y", but at the very least we can agree that these guys are true #1 starters (i.e. not Chien-Ming Wang, who just happened to be the #1 starter on his staff in 2008). I took the list of 10 starters and compiled their minor league career innings and K rates. Here is what I came up with:

Pitcher K’s IP
Santana 349 343
Peavy 548 437
Lincecum 104 63
Halladay 417 639
Webb 323 357
Sabathia 284 247
Zambrano 389 470
Lackey 444 565
Hamels 276 201
Beckett 295 216

So really, we have 3 stud starters out of 10 that did not post a ratio of 1:1 – Halladay, Zambrano and Lackey. So is a 1:1 K:IP ratio required to become an ace pitcher in the bigs? Not necessarily, but it sure does help. As for the 3 guys mentioned, Halladay was really knocked around in his first tour of the bigs. He went back to the minors, learned a new pitch, and only then started to succeed. I honestly do not know the whole story on Zambrano. As for Lackey, he is one that definitely has surprised me.

So what does all this mean for Porcello? I truly believe that if he wants to be “the next Josh Beckett” (i.e. a #1 starter in the bigs), something needs to change. He will not, IMO, be able to continue to succeed posting the K rate that he did in 2008. Again, there are rumors that he was not allowed to throw his best pitch. If that is in fact the case, then that just might be the change he needs.

I ranked Porcello #20 overall on the list I sent to Sidd. His K rate will need to improve dramatically for me to personally rank him above such guys as Price, Feliz, Cahill, Hanson, Bumgarner, Holland and Brett Anderson (all of whom I ranked higher than Porcello). Again though, even if Porcello only turns out to be the next Jon Garland, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A solid #4/borderline #3 starter who eats a lot of innings has a lot of value in the bigs. It is just not worthy of ranking as the #1 pitching prospect in baseball.

At how emotional everyone is getting over talking about Porcello. As far as I know, he is not related to any of us, nor did he run over any of our dogs or teepee any of our houses.

I have heard some very interesting claims in this thread so far:

1. Porcello has a mystery pitch – supposedly his best strikeout pitch – that Detroit did not allow him to use in 2008. This issue has been talked about in many many other threads, but I look back to the King Felix days – the same claim was being made. The difference though is that Felix was still striking people out in the minors without his slider. Maybe this mystery pitch will help him, maybe it will not.

2. Porcello’s approach was to pitch to contact. This is a bit of a new one for me. Do we actually know that for a fact? Is there a link or some other sort of evidence supporting this argument? How do we really know he was intentionally trying to induce contact early in the count? Or is this just a convenient excuse as to why he is not getting more outs on his own?

3. Porcello is extremely smart. This one is laughable. There have been plenty of pitchers from the Ivy League that never went anywhere. Lots of smart guys have failed in baseball. Being book smart and being savvy on the mound are two very different things. You can point to an ACT score, but it means nothing. Greg Maddux was probably the smartest pitcher I have ever seen on the mound. It does not mean he would make a good nuclear physicist, aeronautical engineer or brain surgeon. Does Porcello, at 19, really have a good understanding of what each hitter’s strengths and weaknesses are, and what pitch he is expecting with any given count? Maddux seemed to know that information better than anyone else I have ever seen, and these are not things that are learned at 19. Could Porcello get a very good understanding over time? Sure, but I guarantee he has practically no clue right now. No 19 year old has a clue.

4. Roy Halladay’s stat line in high-A was eerily similar. Yeah? Well so was Rowdy Hardy’s. Finding the one needle in the haystack does not mean that Porcello is the next needle. Is it a possibility? Sure. Likely? No. Someone could put a % likelihood to it, but it would take one heckuva lot of time and research.

So let me explain one more time. Porcello is a very good pitching prospect, who I feel gets overrated because of the high GB rate. I love his control rate. I like the GB rate. But I feel that GB rate gets overrated with pitchers. Some of the best pitchers in the majors right now (taking my top 10 – Santana, Peavy, Lincecum, Hamels, Lackey, Zambrano, and Beckett) are considered fly ball pitchers.