How Good Is Gio Gonzalez?

Yesterday, the Nationals gave up four prospects, including three of their top 10 guys, for the right to acquire Gio Gonzalez from the Oakland A’s. This follows on the heels of the Mat Latos trade, essentially establishing current market value for a young starting pitcher with four year of team control. However, with Latos, the only nitpicking you can do about his performance to date is that he’s pitched in Petco, because other than that, he’s been pretty fantastic. Gonzalez’s track record is a little more spotty, starting out poorly before turning in two good seasons the last couple of years, but maintaining a walk rate that’s among the very worst in baseball.

Even while succeeding, Gonzalez simply hasn’t shown much of an ability to throw strikes on a regular basis, and those command problems have drawn unfavorable comparisons to the likes of Oliver Perez and even my own analogy to Edinson Volquez. However, rather than just continuing to point out the flaw in Gonzalez’s skillset, I thought it’d be useful to look at this pitcher type in general.

So, using the sweet, sweet custom leaderboards here on FanGraphs, I compiled a list of all starting pitcher seasons over the last 10 years with a minimum of 100 innings pitched and then filtered by walk rate (>=10%), strikeout rate (>=20%), and ground ball rate (>=40%). The resulting list gave me 38 pitcher seasons from 25 different pitchers. We can safely say that these guys have produced results at one time or another in a pretty similar fashion to how Gonzalez has pitched over the last couple of years. Here’s the list of those pitcher seasons, sorted in alphabetic order.

Season	Name	Age	IP	BB%	K%	GB%	BABIP	ERA-	FIP-	xFIP-
2002	A.J. Burnett	25	204.1	10.7%	24.1%	42.8%	0.266	84	79	90
2009	A.J. Burnett	32	207	10.8%	21.8%	42.8%	0.295	88	95	96
2010	Brandon Morrow	25	146.1	10.5%	28.3%	40.4%	0.342	108	75	83
2010	Bud Norris	25	153.2	11.3%	23.1%	43.0%	0.314	124	106	99
2010	C.J. Wilson	29	204	10.9%	20.0%	49.2%	0.266	77	81	97
2006	Carlos Zambrano	25	214	12.5%	22.9%	46.9%	0.252	73	88	94
2009	Carlos Zambrano	28	169.1	10.6%	20.7%	44.7%	0.300	86	82	99
2010	Carlos Zambrano	29	129.2	12.1%	20.5%	43.6%	0.301	80	89	107
2007	Chad Billingsley	22	147	10.3%	22.6%	41.0%	0.290	76	91	89
2009	Chad Billingsley	24	196.1	10.5%	21.8%	45.3%	0.292	99	93	94
2009	Chad Gaudin	26	147.1	11.5%	20.9%	43.9%	0.309	117	102	100
2008	Clayton Kershaw	20	107.2	11.1%	21.3%	48.0%	0.320	102	96	91
2005	Daniel Cabrera	24	161.1	12.2%	21.9%	52.7%	0.291	104	94	94
2006	Daniel Cabrera	25	148	15.7%	23.7%	40.7%	0.309	103	92	102
2008	Edinson Volquez	24	196	11.1%	24.6%	46.3%	0.299	73	81	89
2011	Edinson Volquez	27	108.2	13.3%	21.3%	52.4%	0.293	145	135	106
2009	Francisco Liriano	25	136.2	10.7%	20.0%	40.2%	0.319	132	112	101
2010	Gio Gonzalez	24	200.2	10.8%	20.1%	49.3%	0.274	81	93	97
2011	Gio Gonzalez	25	202	10.5%	22.8%	47.5%	0.287	79	93	92
2010	Jhoulys Chacin	22	137.1	10.5%	23.7%	46.6%	0.285	74	81	91
2008	John Maine	27	140	11.0%	20.1%	40.6%	0.266	100	104	102
2008	Jonathan Sanchez	25	158	10.8%	22.6%	41.1%	0.317	116	89	95
2009	Jonathan Sanchez	26	163.1	12.4%	24.9%	40.7%	0.276	103	100	98
2010	Jonathan Sanchez	27	193.1	11.8%	25.3%	41.5%	0.252	78	102	99
2011	Jonathan Sanchez	28	101.1	14.9%	23.0%	42.4%	0.272	114	114	113
2008	Jorge de la Rosa	27	130	10.9%	22.4%	45.7%	0.319	105	86	93
2009	Jorge de la Rosa	28	185	10.4%	24.2%	44.7%	0.308	95	84	87
2010	Jorge de la Rosa	29	121.2	10.7%	22.1%	52.3%	0.278	95	98	91
2006	Josh Johnson	22	157	10.3%	20.2%	45.8%	0.277	71	90	93
2009	Justin Masterson	24	129.1	10.6%	21.0%	53.6%	0.314	99	90	91
2003	Kerry Wood	26	211	11.3%	30.0%	41.5%	0.269	75	85	80
2010	Manny Parra	27	122	11.3%	23.0%	47.2%	0.337	126	114	95
2004	Rich Harden	22	189.2	10.1%	20.8%	44.9%	0.289	86	83	92
2005	Scott Kazmir	21	186	12.2%	21.3%	42.3%	0.307	88	88	102
2007	Scott Kazmir	23	206.2	10.0%	26.9%	43.1%	0.333	78	79	83
2007	Tim Lincecum	23	146.1	10.5%	24.3%	47.0%	0.283	90	80	85
2010	Ubaldo Jimenez	26	221.2	10.3%	23.9%	48.8%	0.271	65	71	90
2009	Yovani Gallardo	23	185.2	11.9%	25.7%	45.0%	0.275	90	95	87

(By the way, that table is sortable, so you can click on any of the headers and see where Gonzalez’s seasons rank in the various categories.)

The first thing you may notice about these guys is their age – this is a very young skillset, with the average age of a pitcher posting this kind of season being 25.3 years old. In fact, A.J. Burnett’s 2009 season is the only example of a pitcher older than 30 meeting this criteria. The type of result is often the product of an inexperienced pitcher still trying to find command of his stuff, and as he gets older, that command generally improves.

In fact, if you’re a Nationals fan, you have to be excited about some of the names that show up here – Kershaw, Lincecum, Johnson, Jimenez, and Gallardo all posted similar seasons at one point in their career before turning one some of the best starting pitchers around. This is clearly the upside that the Nationals believe they’re getting – if Gonzalez does improve his command slightly while retaining his ability to miss bats and get ground balls, he has the chance of becoming one of the best pitchers in the league.

However, with the exception of Jimenez, none of those guys had the same long track record of walking guys as Gonzalez does. He’s consistently run walk rates north of 10%, even dating back to the minor leagues. This isn’t a new problem for him, and one that he hasn’t shown any real signs of improving on, even as the rest of his game has gotten better.

So, while one could focus on the “what if” upside, it’s more practical to look at Gonzalez’s command problems as something that are going to stick with him, and ask how good Washington can expect him to be if what they’ve seen is what they’re going to get. That brings up a very different set of comparables – Burnett, Billingsley, Zambrano, Cabrera, Volquez, Sanchez, and de la Rosa. These are all good stuff guys who never really conquered their command problems, and had to rely on strikeouts and ground balls to overcome all the walks.

If we just look at the career numbers for those guys (minus Volquez and Cabrera, who haven’t thrown enough innings to really be all that helpful as comparisons yet), we see a group that is a bit above average overall, mixing some really good seasons with some less great seasons into an overall package that is good but not great. Overall, these guys have posted +97.5 WAR in just under 6,000 career innings, or a total of about +2.9 WAR per 180 innings pitched.

Interestingly, all of these guys are also generally perceived as “headcases” or “bad makeup guys”. Gonzalez has also been described that way, and his attitude is often cited as one of the reasons he’s now been traded four times in his career. I don’t know which way causation flows here – whether guys with command problems are judged to have mental issues because of their command problems, or whether guys with makeup issues are more prone to missing the strike zone regularly – but it is worth noting that this pitcher type is often seen as one of the more frustrating in the sport.

Still, having the expectation of being a +3 win pitcher even without improvement, and the chance to be something more if the command comes along, makes for a pretty nice piece overall. While I’d prefer Latos’ overall skillset thanks to his ability to get swings and misses while pounding the strike zone, it’s clear that Gonzalez can succeed even while missing the strike zone with regularity. He might not be as good as the Nationals are hoping for, especially if they are buying into his ERAs from the past two seasons, but the ground balls and strikeouts do generally make up for the command issues. That flaw holds him back from being a great pitcher, but it shouldn’t stop him from being a pretty good one.

Did the Nationals get an ace? Probably not. Did they pay too much for Gonzalez? It depends on what you think of the kids they gave up. Overall, though, they did acquire a good starting pitcher, although they might want to realize that he’s going to provide some frustration over the next few years as well.