Ken Giles: Because the Phillies Deserve a Bright Spot

When we talk about the Philadelphia Phillies around here these days, it’s rarely in a positive light. It’s usually about wondering what they’re doing with Cole Hamels, or how Ryan Howard is completely unmovable, or just generally wondering how many years it might take to return the team to relevance. They’ve brought this on themselves with their direction — or lack of it — over the past few years. When you look at the fact that they have six different positions ranking in the bottom three in our 2015 projections, you really start to understand just how bad this team is going to be.

But it’s not all bad. It can’t be. Even the Phillies are going to have a bright spot. Since I’m in a charitable mood, and since there’s very little happening in baseball right now, and since we haven’t really talked about him yet, let’s focus today on Ken Giles, who very well might be the team’s closer this year should Jonathan Papelbon get moved.

Let’s start with some small sample sizes to output a ranking that is technically accurate, yet obviously flawed:

Top FIP Seasons, 1915-2014, Min. 40 Innings Pitched

1. 0.78 Craig Kimbrel, 2012
2. 0.86 Eric Gagne, 2003
3. 0.89 Aroldis Chapman, 2014
4. 0.96 Sergio Romo, 2011
5. 1.19 Wade Davis, 2014
6. tie — 1.34 Ken Giles, 2014
7. tie — 1.34 Dennis Eckersley, 1990
8. 1.36 Greg Holland, 2013
9. 1.39 Pedro Martinez, 1999
10. tie — 1.50 Ken Howell, 1984
11. tie — 1.50 Rob Dibble, 1990

A few things should be immediately obvious there. First and most obviously, the minimal requirement for innings pitched, set entirely so that Giles would appear, tilts this heavily towards more recent one-inning closers. (And for the 10 billionth time, good lord, 1999 Pedro.) Two, it’s true Giles was really, really good last year, but despite being tied for sixth all-time here, he’s only third in 2014 alone. It’s just absurd how effective relief pitchers are right now.

But there’s also this: It’s pretty hard to be on this list and not have a pretty successful career. Howell is probably the least valuable member of this group, and even he had his moments — including a 3.5 WAR 1989 in Philadelphia. As I indicated above, we’re not going off the deep end to declare that Giles is some historically great player based on 45 good innings, it’s just fun to look at that and realize just how effective he was, relatively quietly, pitching down the stretch for a bad team in a lost season.

Giles was a 2011 draft pick out of an Arizona junior college, and… wait. Hang on. How many big leaguers have a quote like this attached to them?

“He pitched for me for one year and he was awful,” New Mexico Junior College head coach Josh Simpson said. “I had to get rid of him. He just couldn’t throw strikes.”

New Mexico Junior College’s 2015 schedule includes games against Clarendon, Lamar Community College and the New Mexico Military Institute. Four years ago, Giles was trying to find junior colleges that would keep him on the roster. Now, he’s coming off a debut where he was among the top rookies in the National League.

Still, Giles wasn’t on any top Phillies prospects lists prior to the season, and it’s easy to see why. Though he’d gotten a shot in the pros because of his huge fastball, he’d walked 5.5 per 9 in Single-A in 2012, then pitched only 25 innings (with an even worse 6.7 BB/9) in 2013 as he battled multiple oblique injuries that were reportedly connected to his delivery. Pretty much every scouting report there is out there about Giles talks about the fastball, lack of control and inability to throw other pitches.

Here’s Marc Hulet looking prescient here back in February of 2013:

He entered pro ball with just one usable pitch but has made significant strides with his slider that now has the potential to develop into an above-average offering.

Giles, 22, has effort to his delivery, and struggles with both his command and control. He walked 50 batters in 82.0 innings but also struck out 111 between two A-ball levels. Giles will probably return to high-A ball to open 2013 but could see double-A by the end of the season. He has the makeup and intensity to develop into a high-leverage reliever.

So about that “one usable pitch”: It’s a fastball. It’s thrown harder than anyone in baseball, other than Aroldis Chapman. It looks like this:

That’s 100 mph up top to Jayson Werth, and that fits the theme for Giles. While he was racking up strikeouts in the minors, this BA report from when he was called up indicated that “he got a lot of his strikeouts on fastballs up in the zone or out of it altogether.” You can see that was still his plan in the big leagues, with Giles doing his best to come up in the zone in putaway situations:

We always knew, from the day he was drafted, that Giles had velocity. What he didn’t have, at least until he reached the bigs, was control. Even in Triple-A this year, he was walking 14% — we’re only talking 13.2 innings, of course — and that dropped to 6.6% in the majors. I’m trying to be nice to the Phillies here, but I still have to share this quote about where Giles thinks he made improvements that doesn’t necessarily reflect well on Philadelphia coaching.

Getting the invite [to the AFL] was a shot of confidence in that lively right arm, particularly coming off a lot of missed time due to the oblique strains.

“I think that helped a lot with my control,” Giles said. “I got a lot of different feedback from other coaches from other organizations and maybe got a few new ideas.”

What he also didn’t have was a complement to the heater. As Hulet noted two years ago, the slider had improved, but it was still more potential than performance. Now, it’s ranked among the most valuable sliders in the game, and yes, I feel silly actually calling up a leaderboard based on his 40-inning stint, but, well, we’ve been over that. It actually became Giles’ go-to out pitch. Though he threw the two pitches an essentially identical number of times with two strikes, the heater got only 15.3% whiffs, while the slider picked up 33.9%.

Apparently passed from Brad Lidge to Justin De Fratus to Giles, it looks like this, specifically when it’s making Mike Trout miss badly:

If you play around with Baseball Prospectus’ PitchF/X leaderboards you can find some interesting things. Since 2007, 628 pitchers have thrown a slider at least 200 times. Twenty-two of them have had a whiff rate of at least 50%. Nine of them get grounders at a rate of at least four times the rate they get flyballs. Only one pitcher has done both, and you already know that’s Giles — in addition to a 27% foul ball rate, because those count too.

I’m sure you’ll understand when I say I will take the “over” on Giles repeating his 1.18 ERA, 1.34 FIP over a full season in 2015. Steamer sees a 2.80/2.97. apparently not completely buying into his newfound control. Perhaps that’s fair to worry about. But for the Phillies, Giles represents something unique. He’s not a reminder of past glories, like Howard or Hamels. He’s not a placeholder who had his best years somewhere else, like Aaron Harang or Grady Sizemore. He’s not a busted prospect, like Domonic Brown. He’s someone who could potentially be a part of the next good Phillies team, and he’s someone who could at least help keep this team merely at “bad” rather than “atrocious” in 2015. It’s not much. But then, the Phillies don’t have much. Giles is something. And something, at this point, matters.