Phil Hughes as Shutdown Reliever
Since June Phil Hughes has been recast from disappointing former top starting pitching prospect to shut down reliever. He started off as a sixth/seventh inning guy, but by mid-July had established himself as the 8th inning setup man to Mariano Rivera. His numbers are great 11.36 K/9, 2.52 BB/9, and a sparkling 1.26 ERA (1.77 FIP), but built, partially, on a lucky 0.274 BABIP and under 3% HR/FB.
This year Hughes added a cutter and got rid of his slider (this was also true of his early stint as a starter), and as a reliever has stopped using his change. So he is a three pitch guy: a four-seam fastball, a cutter and his big 12-6 breaking curve. As a reliever he throws about 65% fastballs, with the rest an equal split of curves and cutters to RHBs and almost all curves to LHBs.
In the pen everything has gotten much better, as expected. His fastball and cutter have gained speed (fastball from 91.8 to 94.5 mph and the cutter from 87 to 89 mph). Both the pitches are in the zone more often and gotten more whiffs. His fastball, as a reliever, has more rise and is higher up in the zone, making it more of an extreme whiff/flyball pitch. As a result it does not get as many ground balls, but induces more pop-ups.
It is important to remember these numbers are from just 70 innings (35 as a starter and 35 as a reliever). So there are serious small sample size issues. He is most likely performing above his true talent level as a reliever, even in indicators that are not luck based (K and BB rate, whiff rate, in zone rate). In addition as a reliever all his ‘luck’ indicators changed from unlucky to lucky. His BABIP went from .317 as a starter to .274 as a reliever, and his HR/FB from 12% to 2.9%. Pitchers have some control over these, and maybe as a reliever he can keep them lower, but some of his improvement from a starter to reliever has been luck and some, probably, over-performance of true talent.
Phil Hughes will be the Yankee’s 8th inning man for his year and the playoffs, but next year it will be interesting to see what they do. Using the FanGraphs WAR valuation an elite reliever is worth about the same as a just slightly above average starter (this year Joe Nathan is worth about as much as Tim Wakefield and Mariano Rivera is worth the same as Gil Meche). So the Yankees would have to think the difference in his performance as a starter and reliever is much larger than that of the average starter to justify keeping him in the pen next year.
Dave Allen's other baseball work can be found at Baseball Analysts.
This is only marginally related, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while and this seems like a reasonable place to raise it.
Replacement level FIP is lower for relievers than for starters. Is it possible to leverage this by lowering the number of innings pitched by starters, or even doing away with the traditional 5-man, 6 IP per start rotation?
It seems like someone could gain an advantage by turning disappointing “starters” (long-innings guys) into good “relievers” (short-innings guys), and then doling out more of the traditional starter innings to a large pool of those relievers.
Might not be fun to watch, though.
I like the idea. The only problem I see is that it would tire out arms and require one to carry extra pitchers. Instead of a 5th starter, you could use a 4 inning guy followed by a 2 inning guy, which might be more effective. Would it be worth carrying the extra pitcher?
I’m thinking more along the lines of guys going 2-3 innings every 2-3 days. Say your higher usage guys end up averaging 1 IP per game. With about 1450-1475 innings to fill in a season, you could do this handily with about 10 of these guys.
You should check out this article.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9228
“To enable starters to continue to have large workloads while minimizing innings pitched per game would require a complete re-working of usage patterns. One method would be to follow a tandem starter routine that, for brevity’s sake, I’m going to call SOMA: Shorter Outings, More Appearances. Under SOMA, starters would be paired up to pitch every third day, tossing 3-4 innings each per game. After accounting for off days, SOMA would allow a team’s best starters to appear in around 60 games and rack up 200-240 innings per season—similar to their current workloads—with minimal impact on bullpen usage.”