Bergmann Wants To Stay This Time
On May 15th, I wrote this:
They (Washington) won’t win a championship with Perez-Hill-Lannan-Redding, but they’re the epitome of what you can do with freely available talent when you’re willing to take some flyers on guys with question marks. Along with that comes the downside of what they’ve gotten from their #5 starters, however. Washington has done well filling the front four spots in their rotation, but they’re going to have to do some more work to get a fifth starter who won’t cancel out all the work already done.
At that point in time, Jason Bergmann had given up 16 runs in 12 1/3 innings for a sparkly 11.68 ERA and had spent the previous month in Columbus while the Nationals tried other options. However, the night I posted the article above, Bergmann got the call back to the majors and returned in style, with seven shutout innings against the Mets. He followed that up with another seven shutout inning performance against the Phillies, and then tossed 5 2/3 scoreless innings against the Brewers on Memorial Day. In all, since getting the call back from Triple-A, Bergmann has given Washington 19 2/3 scoreless innings, a stretch that includes a nifty 6/22 BB/K rate.
However, Bergmann was sporting a 2/12 BB/K rate during his disastrous first three starts of the year, so we can’t really chalk up the difference in results to an improvement in his ability to work around the zone. The change can really be tied to one simple fact; Bergmann is an extreme flyball pitcher (his 58.4% FB% is second highest in baseball), and his performance hinges on how often those fly balls go over the wall. During his first three starts, five of his 23 flyballs left the yard, but he hasn’t given up a single home run despite allowing 29 flyballs in his most recent three starts.
Obviously, neither his early home run rate nor his late home run suppression are sustainable, and the truth of his abilities lies between the two extreme performances. However, due to Bergmann’s proclivity for letting opponents put the ball in the air, Nationals’ fans should continue to expect inconsistency, as his ability to keep runs off the board is almost entirely tied to his home run rate.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
You’re finding more interesting things to write about the Nats than I ever did!
Bergmann’s had a really interesting career. He’s bounced from reliever to starter back to reliever back to starter while in the minors. All the while never really having much control.
Last season, Bowden read him the riot act after his initial start or two where he walked everyone in sight. Randy St. Claire and he worked on a new grip for his breaking pitches, and he was a completely new pitcher. Those secondary pitches accented his fastball, and he’s been better than before.
What got him into trouble early in the year was a few things, I think. One, I don’t think he quite trusted his breaking pitches. With the arm injuries he had last year, he seemed tentative on them. And as he showed early in his career, without those secondary pitches, he’s not much of a pitcher. Second, he’s refined his changeup. That’s been one of the more interesting developments… I’d say something like a third of his strikeouts have come on changeups — a pitch he’s really only been comfortable with this season. He’s not afraid to throw it. A third thing has been his development of a two-seamer. Looks to my eye that he’s mixed that in about half the time he throws a FB. But that’s something he just started throwing this season, and I think it took some getting used to.
As you said, the underlying numbers for him early weren’t bad. He was just hitting a wall when fatigue sort of set in, and (I’ll speculate here), he didn’t quite trust those secondary pitches enough. He went down, got his head on straight, realized those were effective and has done better.
He’s not going to be an ace, but he’s a surprisingly effective pitcher when his arm is feeling good.