Eddie Butler’s Concerning Strikeout Numbers

Eddie Butler of the Colorado Rockies is one of baseball’s most highly-regarded pitching prospects. In addition to wielding lights-out stuff, the 24-year-old righty has pitched admirably in the upper levels of the minor leagues. Butler put up a respectable 3.58 ERA in Double-A Tulsa last year, which earned him a three start cameo with the big club.  If he’s not big league ready right now, he’s very close. Given this combination of stuff and performance, it’s no surprise that Kiley McDaniel is a big fan of Butler’s. He ranked him 42nd overall in his top 200 list and gives him a FV of 55 — equivalent to a #3 or #4 starter or a closer.

Despite his redeeming qualities, KATOH hates Butler. It hates him lot. It pegs him for a putrid 0.7 WAR through age-28, which puts him very, very far outside of KATOH’s top 200 list. His KATOH projection was far worse than most similarly-ranked prospects on Kiley’s list.

KATOH’s down on Butler for a couple of reasons. For one, he was a little old for his level last year. If you’re a 23-year-old in Double-A, KATOH’s not going to like you unless you’re dominant, and Butler was much closer to mediocre than dominant.

Still, even for a mediocre performance in Double-A, 0.7 WAR feels awfully low. However, the way Butler was mediocre also turns KATOH off. For minor league pitchers, strikeouts are very predictive of future big league success, and Butler mostly pitched to contact in 2014.

He struck out just 14% of opposing batters in 18 Double-A starts last year– far lower than the Texas League average of 20%. Butler’s non-strikeout ways also showed up in his cup of coffee in Colorado, where he struck out just 3 batters in 16 big league innings. All that opponent contact earned him an atrocious 6.75 ERA and 5.69 FIP as a big leaguer.

Butler’s declining strikeout rate wasn’t entirely a 2014 phenomenon, either. His strikeout numbers began falling off the table around the time he was promoted to Double-A Tulsa back in August of 2013.

In fairness to Butler, injury may have played a role in his inability to miss bats last year. He missed six weeks with inflammation in his rotator cuff, and reported some additional shoulder pain following his final start of the season. For all we know, these ailments could have hindered his performance all season long. Still, it’s pretty alarming that his strikeout numbers started to atrophy as far back as August of 2013 — 11 months before his trip to the DL.

Now that Butler’s had five months to rest his shoulder, maybe he’ll add a tick or two to his fastball velocity. Maybe he’ll go back to striking hitters out like he did in the low minors. You can certainly envision a scenario where Butler returns to form; but the bottom line is that he has 28 Double-A starts under his belt, and almost nothing in those 28 starts suggests he’s capable of striking out hitters with any regularity.

Butler’s low strikeout rate isn’t simply an instance of him being unable to get strike three, either. Whiff rate correlates pretty well with strikeout rate for pitchers in Double-A, and Butler has fared very poorly in both metrics. Quite frankly, he’s just not missing many bats.

Obviously, those who ranked Butler among the best pitching prospects in the game don’t expect this trend to continue. If they did, they wouldn’t have ranked him so highly. Butler will need to figure out how to miss more bats in order to succeed at the highest level. His stuff suggests such a transition is possible, but last season’s uninspiring strikeout numbers tell another story. But just how likely is it that his knock-out stuff will eventually translate into swing-and-miss? Let’s turn to the data.

Given his poor KATOH projection, its obvious that any group of comps based purely on stats wouldn’t reflect too kindly on Butler. So lets try something a little different: Focusing only on pitchers who throw roughly as hard as Butler does.

Butler can bring the heat. He’s reportedly hit 99 MPH in the past, but in his big league cup of coffee last year, he mostly sat in the low-to-mid 90’s. According to PITCHf/x, Butler averaged 93 MPH with his fastball (FA). To get a sample of pitchers, I grouped together all big league pitchers whose fastballs averaged over 92 MPH as rookies in the PITCHF/X era (since 2007). Then, I pulled out the ones who faced at least 4oo batters in a season in Double-A between the ages of 22 and 24.

Unsurprisingly, Butler’s 14% K% is one of the lowest in the group. Of the 97 pitchers in my sample, Butler ranks 90th. If we zero in on the 20 seasons by guys who struck out less than 16% of batters faced, the results don’t look very promising. Here’s a look how those pitchers have fared so far in the major leagues.

Granted, most of these pitchers didn’t have the prospect pedigree that Butler does. But even so, this analysis doesn’t bode well for Butler and his low-strikeout ways. Beyond Sonny Gray and Tyler Matzek, its basically Ryan Webb and a bunch of scrubs. Simply put, it’s rare that a pitcher who doesn’t strike batters out in the minors to goes on to be a successful big leaguer — even if he throws gas. It happens, sure; but those cases are few and far between. Perhaps Butler will turn out to be one of those exceptions, but the odds seem to be stacked against him.