Blangraphs

Since returning from the DL with elbow crankiness Blanton made 5 appearances in relief. His numbers played out like this: 8IP, 2ER, 11K's, 0BB's, .875WHIP. Ka-Joe!

September 12, 2011. It's a calm night at Minute Maid park, in the bottom of the 8th inning, and number 56 is kicking the dirt on the mound. For the first time in months, Kentucky Joe Blanton is going to pitch in the majors. He looks in at Humberto Quintero, a right-handed catcher. Blanton chooses his pitch and uncorks a slider in the dirt. This deceptive dart of a pitch was just a bit overdone, and Quintero smiles, thinking about how close he was to being fooled by Blanton. Ball one.

Getting set again, Blanton calmy maneuvers his body behind the baseball, subtly and harmoniously working all of his muscles to power the ball with a wave of Newtonian fury. Quintero can't catch up to the missile, finding that his bat has only gone a quarter of the way around before the ball is past him. Strike one.

On the next pitch, Blanton makes his only mistake of the night. Blanton unleashes his deceptive change-up, but Quintero is ready and thumps it into left field for a single. Jason Michaels stands ready, slowly walking into the batters box. He won't be there for long.

O, how many batters have stood where Michaels now stands, and O how many have felt a surge of confidence, ready to prove that the unassuming man on the mound, whose movements are slight, and who appears average in so many ways, is their lesser? How many such men have imagined that Joe Blanton will be a footnote in the tale of their glory? To Michaels, the ball seems to take an eternity as it leaves Blanton's hand and approaches him, and he is brimming with anticipation.

But as so many learn, and try to forget, there is layer upon layer of maddening mystery in the strategy of the man on the mound. The pitch, seemingly slow and pedestrian, is not quite where it should be, and Michaels finds his bat awkwardly, embarrassingly, underneath the ball, chopping it into the sky. It floats harmlessly in the air and nestles itself in the glove of Michael Martinez.

The next batter is Jordan Schafer. he mangles the first pitch into a bouncing foul ball, as if he is crumpling a beautiful picture into a ball. He knows that his approach was wrong, but he feels close, since he put the bat on the ball. He steps outside the box and tries to get a bearing on his situation. When he is ready, he steps back into the box and glimpses Blanton staring in. The visor of Joe's blood-red cap casts a shadow over his face, and Schafer cannot see if Blanton's eyes hold any sympathy for the hopeless hitters he is facing. As Schafer tries to grasp this fleeting thought, Blanton hurls the ball past him for strike two.

The next pitch is high, and the fourth pitch flirts with the outside corner, and Schafer kicks the dirt nervously. What will happen next? Perhaps Blanton will get a grip of his location and finally throw a strike. The last two have been close ones, and he'll probably stop fooling around and challenge Schafer. That sounds perfect, because Schafer feels that on this pitch, he is truly ready. Blanton exhales, touches his cap, and deals the pitch. It takes a split second to arrive. Schafer sees a somewhat lazy fastball leaving Blanton's hand, but his heart sinks almost as quickly as the ball. It's the slider again! Schafer finds himself flailing by the time the ball arrives, and he returns to the dugout.

Angel Sanchez is the Astros' last chance against Blanton. He drops into a coiled stance that suggests he has lashed many a difficult pitch into unexpected singles and doubles. He takes the first pitch outside. On the next pitch, he gets one in the strike zone, and he strikes. With a quick stinging motion, he attacks the ball, only to realize that it will not leave the infield. The ball bounces harmlessly to Jimmy Rollins, and Blanton's dominance is complete.

Joe Blanton pitched a perfect game* today in the minors.




















































(if a game is defined as one inning)

Vance Worley has pitched well. After another great performance against the Giants he has lowered his ERA down to 2.35 for the season and picked up his 8th win.

Worley's ascent to the majors seems to have a bit of a surprise to most of us though. He as never regarded as a top prospect and not even included in the Halladay, Lee, or Oswalt talks. So why is he now so good?

The answer that seemed most obvious to me was he was probably getting somewhat lucky. I headed to Fangraphs and looked it up and indeed the two factors I always look at first to see if a pitcher has been getting some good luck indicated that Worley's awesome 2011 has been a bit lucky. His BABIP is .247, which for almost every pitcher averages out to .290 for the year, and his HR/FB ratio is 5.6%, which usually averages out to 9.5% for every pitcher. Ok so he has been lucky, but is that the only thing to say about his fantastic year? He has shown a pretty good strike out rate and a league average BB%. Fangraphs also has a great pitching tool called FIP which basically measures a pitcher on only things he can control, strike outs, walks, hit batters, and homeruns. Keeping in mind Worley's HR/FB%, his FIP is a quite good 3.28, sandwhiched between Michael Pineda and Tommy Hanson. An FIP this good assumes that he has some control over his HR/FB%, and maybe he does, but normalized his xFIP is 3.76 which is right between Alexi Ogando and Chris Volstad(!). Hopefully he has some control over his HR/FB%, it wouldn't be unprecedented. Matt Cain has a career HR/FB% of 6.7% over 1200 innings. If Worley can keep his rate somewhere around there then we can expect his FIP to stay closer to 3.3-3.4 rather than 3.8. His BB/9 and K/9 seem to be improving as the season goes on which is very encouraging, over the past 2 months his BB/9 and K/9 have both been above league average (along with his K%).

So from what he know so far, Worley is probably not as good as his ERA and win/loss totals indicate, but he has demonstrated that he can be an above average starting pitcher. For a team with the payroll restraints the Phillies now have from signing big free agents like Halladay and Lee; having an above average starting pitcher making minimum salary is quite valuable. Worley has been a real pleasure to watch so far this season and it appears he will be a quality asset to the Phils for quite some time.

Thnx ZWR