Porcello's Struggles

Coming up, Rick Porcello was obviously one of the most anticipated and praised pitching prospects in recent memory.  Drafted out of high school in 2007 by the Tigers, he figured to be the best prep arm out of that class (despite falling down to 24th overall because of bonus demands).  Baseball America ranked him 4th in that 2007 draft...  Here's the draft scouting report they had on him back then (this is paid content, but it's also three years old and a single scouting report... as an aside, you should subscribe to BA for their draft stuff alone, they do two hundred of these every year):

The top pitcher in the long awaited, much anticipated high school Class of 2007, Porcello was tabbed as a can't-miss prospect by the time he was a 15-year-old on the showcase circuit. His maternal grandfather, Sam Dente, played shortstop in the majors, appearing in the 1954 World Series with the Indians. Porcello has shown steady improvement during his prep career, and was pitching at his best heading down the stretch, tossing a seven-inning perfect game for the nation's No. 1 high school team in May. He's long, lean, athletic and projectable with a clean delivery. His fastball sits at 93-95, touching 98. He holds his velocity deep into outings. He throws a tight curveball at 74-76 and a harder, sharp-breaking slider at 80-82. He shows feel for his changeup. He can spot his fastball to both sides of the plate, and mixes his pitches effectively. He tends to finish his delivery across his body, and if he improved his extension, his stuff could have better life, which would make him profile as a true top-of-the-rotation pitcher. He still is likely to be the first high school pitcher selected.

As an pro in 2008, his fastball and changeup were hyped, and the Tigers were rumored to be restricting Porcello's slider use so that he could focus on his FB/CH/CB.  With the restrictions, his peripherals were only okay as a 19-year old in the high-A Florida State League.  While he had a 2.66 ERA in 24 starts, he also only had a 72/33 K/BB over 125 innings.  This is where I want to branch off my post for a moment, because things got interesting in the following offseason.

A lot of people started putting Porcello into their top 20s, top 15s, and even top 10s that winter.  I'm included in that bunch, as I placed him at #14, and was actually ridiculed for it being too conservative.  I became somewhat vocal in my criticisms about Porcello around that point, and my criticisms were amplified when the Tigers announced that he would join their MLB starting rotation in April 2009. 

Porcello's supporters claimed that his lack of strikeouts were due to his inability to use his slider, and that the pitch (which was now becoming a sort of unseen legend) would lead to dominant strikeout numbers.  His detractors cited Madison Bumgarner (this was before he started throwing 75 MPH heaters, obviously ;-)) as evidence that, even if Porcello only had his plus fastball, he should have been racking up strikeouts in A-ball.  In a FanPost about Brett Anderson and Trevor Cahill, I brought Porcello into the discussion:

The guy that I’m really concerned with is Porcello. Yeah, we’ve heard all the complaints about him before, and I’ve said and repeated most of them myself. But now, if he starts in the majors, all of those concerns and complaints are amplified tenfold. I used Jeremy Sowers as a worst-case stat comp for him earlier this offseason, and I think the likelihood of that comp becoming a reality (at least for this season) now increases significantly. His 6+ K/9 at high-A is NOT going to translate well to the majors. Hopefully that secret slider can get him some strikeouts, or this could get ugly.

What followed was me eating my words, as Porcello admittedly looked very good in 2009, and drew praise from a lot of different people.  His strikeouts weren't there, but he was a 20 year old rookie, so that's sort of nitpicking.  He did what he does pretty well, in getting groundballs and displaying plus control.  The slider sort of receded to the background, as did all the arguments about his plus "stuff".

This year, things have taken a step backwards, obviously, and Porcello has looked about as bad as possible.  The curious thing here is that his FIP has actually improved slightly over last year (it wasn't stellar to begin with).  I think what we could be seeing is that low K/BB + low K/9 combo start to kill him a bit.  He's still getting groundballs, and he's still controlling the ball really well, but he's gotten hit hard.

Now, let's take a look at that slider.  After shelving it to focus on his curve, Porcello threw that curve about 8% of the time according to FanGraphs.  This year, he seems to have scrapped it completely, going to it only 0.1% of the time, and instead siding with his slider on 14.4% of his pitches, up from just 5% in 2009.  His changeup has been used without any drastic changes, at about 8-9%.  The interesting thing here is that Porcello's fastball, which was 14 runs in 2009, is now worth -3.  And, of course, that slider has become less valuable, too, and it's now his worst pitch according to FanGraphs.

It seems improbable that a pitcher's stuff could just disappear, but almost immediately after becoming a pro, that's what seemed to happen to Porcello.  My question, and I've admittedly taken a long time to get here, is this: How concerned should we be with Porcello, and how can we apply that to prospecting?  Obviously, Porcello is still only 21 years old, and while his stats scream Sowers v2.0, he has (or had?) oodles and oodles more stuff than Sowers could ever dream of.  There's still plenty of time for Porcello to turn it around, but can we reasonably expect him to suddenly become a dominant strikeout pitcher?  Did Detroit ruin his front-of-the-rotation ceiling by rushing him to the majors?

Now, just lastly, I realize that this is all about a major leaguer and not a prospect, but it's still very much relevant, I think.  People here (and in the MLB) are so quick to make excuses for prospects, or brush over flaws.  While Porcello was obviously an elite prospect in 2008-09, we overlooked some troubling numbers, and the Tigers didn't do him any favors by allowing him to skip three levels.  We have far too much faith in prospects sometimes, and clearly, especially in this case, a little more seasoning could have really helped.  I don't think the lack of Detroit's logic here can be overstated; when you have an elite, big-name prospect, especially one coming off a developmental year, there's absolutely no reason to expect this much out of him.  Going forward, I think it provides a cautionary tale to both teams and fans (maybe one that the Marlins should read before entrusting Mike Stanton a big league job).  Hopefully, Porcello's story can recover before he regresses even further.