One Night Only: A Mountain Out of a Cahill

Cinco de Mayo is Spanish for “the Fifth of Mayo.”

Feel free to use that tidbit of information early and often.

Texas at Oakland | Wednesday, May 05 | 3:35 pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Rangers: Colby Lewis (R)
32.2 IP, 10.47 K/9, 3.58 BB/9, .280 BABIP, 38.8% GB, 5.7% HR/FB, 3.61 xFIP
Projected FIP: N/A (FAN) 3.99 (CHONE) 4.39 (ZiPS)

A’s: Trevor Cahill (R)
178.2 IP, 4.53 K/9, 3.63 BB/9, .276 BABIP, 47.8% GB, 13.2% HR/FB, 4.92 xFIP (2009)
Projected FIP: 4.56 (FAN) 5.08 (CHONE) 5.05 (ZiPS)

This Is Not About Colby Lewis
Even though it’ll probably seem like it most of the time, Colby Lewis will not, in fact, be the only guy on the field this afternoon in Oakland. In fact, there are a couple-few players who — despite lacking Lewis’s direct connection to the godhead — have actually managed to distinguish themselves as worthy of the baseballing enthusiast’s attention.

Not the least of these players is Oakland starter Trevor Cahill. Cahill — along with other young Oaklanders Brett Anderson and Andrew Bailey — made his debut last year, and was actually rated as the organization’s number-two prospect (behind Anderson) in Baseball America’s 2009 Prospect Handbook. Despite having thrown only 37 innings of ball above Double-A before 2009, Cahill’s excellent K rate (9.96 K/9) over that time — combined with Oakland’s youth movement — created a space for him in Oakland’s rotation. Back in December, our man Dave Goleblahblah justified the confidence the A’s would’ve had in his success:

Sure, Cahill’s command sometimes abandoned him. But he drew as much praise as any pitching prospect in the game. And why not? In addition to all of those Ks, Cahill was a groundball machine. He burned worms at a 56.4% clip in 2007 and kept the ball on the ground 61.5% of the time in 2008. Generally, strikeouts and groundballs have an inverse relationship: one comes at the expense of the other. It’s rare to find a young pitcher so adept at making batters whiff or chop the ball into the dirt when they do manage to make contact.

In light of those expectations, it’s fair to qualify last year as a bit of a disappointment. After having missed a lot of bats at lower levels, Cahill posted a mark of only 4.53 K/9 in 2009. Nor was his walk rate of 3.63 BB/9 anywhere near low enough to let him be effective in the mold of Carlos Silva circa 2004-2008, or even Rick Porcello of last year.

The question for this start — for Cahill, in general — is whether he’s able to get some breathing room between his strikeout and walk numbers. Perhaps the answer is in altering his repertoire. As resident cyborg Dave Allen wrote last year:

Like many ground ball pitchers Cahill throws a lot of fastballs (almost 70% of the time), and the problem is he has not been very good at getting them in the zone. His fastballs are in the permissive pfx zone 50% of the time, compared to the 55% for the average fastball. This is one of those things that seems like a small difference but is not. The variation is fastball zone percentage is narrow, so 50% is quite low, and over the course of the whole year those extra balls really pile up.

A little snooping over at Texas Leaguers reveals that, last year, Cahill got swing-and-misses on 5.5% of his two-seam and only 3.3% of his four-seam fastballs. Though his changepiece generated whiffs 13.5% of the time, he threw it too rarely to bring his overall whiff rate to league average.

What’s peculiar is the almost complete absence of Cahill’s knuckle-curve, a pitch Baseball America described in 2009 as “nasty… a swing-and-miss pitch with hard downward movement.” Texas Leaguers shows a curve, but the whiff rates are modest, and the drop, though fine, isn’t otherworldly.

Okay, It’s a Little Bit About Colby lewis
The reader might not have access to ESPN Insider, which means the reader might not know that ESPN’s Jason Grey — while less immodest in his prose stylings on the matter — is also smitten with Mr. Colby Lewis. Gray has been riding the CPL train since at least March 9th, when, after attending an Angels/Rangers spring training game, he wrote of Lewis:

He worked two innings Monday. He did allow a solo homer to Mike Napoli (a big bomb to center field on a hanging curve), but was otherwise impressive, throwing 20 of his 26 pitches for strikes, working very quickly and efficiently, and being aggressive. He reached 92 mph a few times and had very good cutting action, and also showed he could throw his fastball to both sides of the plate. He mixed in a curveball that ranged from 74-79 mph that was sharp at times, but a bit inconsistent. He also mixed in some good 82-83 mph sliders, and even ran it in the back door against a few lefty hitters. There was a lot to like, and it was hard to believe I was looking at the same pitcher I saw a few years ago. I snagged him for $4 in the AL LABR (League of Alternative Baseball Reality) auction Saturday, and was happy then to do so. I’m even happier after seeing him Monday.

One of us! One of us!

All-Joy Alert
Three All-Joyers are likely to appear in this evening’s game: Mr. Lewis, Adam Rosales, Ryan Sweeney. Other All-Joyer Kurt Suzuki, unfortunately, is injuricated.

If I Had My Druthers
• Rosales, Suzuki, and Sweeney would all somehow turn a triple play together.
• Colby Lewis would somehow turn a triple play all by himself.
• He’d also turn the beat around.