Share the Wealth: Boston’s Pitching Depth
With a pitching staff overflowing with the likes of Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Justin Masterson, Brad Penny, John Smoltz and Tim Wakefield (as well as the injured Daisuke Matsuzaka), the Boston Red Sox club has a plethora of options for the starting rotation. And there is more on the way. Let’s update the “disgusting” (ie. enviable) starting pitcher depth in the minor league system:
Clay Buchholz: Doomed by a poor 2008 season, this 24-year-old hurler has turned things around in 2009 but the organization lacks a spot for him at the Major League level. Buchholz has a 2.11 ERA (3.26 FIP) in 93.2 innings. The right-hander has allowed just 59 hits, while posting a walk rate of 2.79 BB/9 and a strikeout rate of 8.26 K/9. Right-handed hitters are managing a batting average of just .130 against Buchholz.
Michael Bowden: Like Buchholz, this 22-year-old right-hander would probably be pitching in the Majors for just about any other big league organization. In 16 triple-A starts, Bowden has an ERA of 3.32 (4.49 FIP) and he’s allowed 70 hits in 81.1 innings, while posting rates of 3.43 BB/9 and 5.98 K/9. He’s not flashy, but he has the potential to be a solid No. 3 starter.
Felix Doubront: This 21-year-old southpaw from Venezuela is not talked about as much as some of the other pitchers in the system, but you cannot ignore his potential. Doubront has a 3.71 ERA (3.93 FIP) in 15 double-A starts. He’s been a little too hittable with 64 hits allowed in 63 innings and he has a walk rate of 4.14 BB/9, but his strikeout rates have increased as he’s climbed the organizational ladder. With a little more command and control, Doubront could vault into the upper echelon of Boston pitching prospects.
Junichi Tazawa: Tazawa received a fair bit of press this past off-season as a highly-regarded Japanese amateur free agent. Boston payed a pretty penny for the right-hander, but he’s more than justified the contract with an excellent season in double-A. Tazawa has allowed 72 hits in 87 innings of work while posting a walk rate of 2.59 BB/9. He also has a strikeout rate of 8.17 K/9, while adjusting to life in North America. Tazawa has been particularly tough with runners in scoring position (.163 average, compared to .246 with the bases empty).
Casey Kelly: Things were not supposed to go quite this easily for Kelly. The 19-year-old doesn’t even want to be a pitcher; the former two-way prep prospect would much rather play everyday at shortstop. The organization agreed to let Kelly play shortstop in 2009 if he first pitched about 100 innings on the season. With 95 innings pitched, he’s about to leave the mound behind for 2009, but Kelly has excited just about everyone with his potential as a pitcher. He blew threw low-A with a 1.12 ERA (2.14 FIP) in nine starts. In eight high-A starts, Kelly has allowed 33 hits in 46.2 innings of work. He’s also posted a walk rate of 1.35 BB/9 and a strikeout rate of 6.75 K/9. Kelly has a healthy groundball rate at 53%. If you’re the Boston management, you have to cross your fingers and pray that Kelly sucks big time with the stick so he’ll turn his attention back to pitching.
And Don’t forget about: Kyle Weiland, Nick Hagadone, Stolmy Pimentel, Brock Huntzinger, and Stephen Fife.
Marc Hulet has been writing at FanGraphs since 2008. His work focuses on prospects and fantasy. Follow him on Twitter @marchulet.
With all the depth, you have to wonder why they haven’t made more of an effort to deal some of it for fixing immediate MLB problems, i.e. SS and C.
They have tried (Texas) but are not getting the deal they want. Theo Epstein really, REALLY loves his pitching prospects and is valueing them higher then other GMs.
He offered Bowden for Salty and Miguel Montero (ARI) according to reports out of Boston. Texas demanded Buchholz+ and Arizona turned him down.
Obviously we may not know the whole story, but Id say Theo Epstein is valuing his guys properly.
“He’s also posted a walk rate of 1.35 BB/9 and a strikeout rate of 6.75 K/9. Kelly has a healthy groundball rate at 53%. If you’re the Boston management, you have to cross your fingers and pray that Kelly sucks big time with the stick so he’ll turn his attention back to pitching.”
The ground ball and walk rates are good but he K/9 is nothing to write home about. I don’t think it’s a done deal that he’s the next big thing as a pitcher. If he’s killing the ball and playing a good SS isn’t that better for an organization with no real long term SS, not to mention less risky?
Sure, a 6.75 K/9 is nothing to write home about. Unless you couple it with a minuscule walk rate (1.35 BB/9, which is a 5.00 K/BB). And on top of that, remember that Kelly is 19 years old and absolutely dominating high-A ball. Clayton Kershaw didn’t have a K/BB rate that good in regular old A ball at age 19 (he had a very high 12.39 K/9, but his BB/9 at the time was 4.68).
It’s absolutely true that one would like to see more Ks from Kelly. But his combination of control, dominance and age all suggest that he’s got a chance to be something special.
You forgot about Brian Price….3.45 FIP and a 9.66 K rate. It’s good to be a Red Sox fan.
I don’t understand the Bowden hype. A flyball pitcher who doesn’t miss bats. Can’t imagine that’s a recipe for success, especially at Fenway.
Not saying it’s a great recipe for success, but if he does have some, it’ll probably be because his delivery appears to make it really tough to pick up the ball, in a Keith Foulke sort of way.
Most likely the Sox still deal Brad Penny and eventually call up Buchholtz for at least a few starts in the bigs. Smoltz will have a few more starts to turn things around before they either shop him or move him to the pen.
The biggest trade deadline issue might be Jonathan Papelbon. Pap is throwing almost nothing but fastballs and raising the ire of Boston management at the moment. He isn’t being used in particularly high leverage situations lately outside of saves, as Okajima, Delcarmen and Ramirez are shouldering those weights. With Daniel Bard getting such a thorough workout in the show, it might be that the Sox are looking to move Papelbon in deal for a SS or C along with a SP. It should be interesting how this glut of pitching shakes out, but I don’t see Buchholtz or Bowden being moved as the Sox hate free angent pitcher signings and would prefer to keep the young arms in house. Should be an exciting deadline.
“[Papelbon] is throwing almost nothing but fastballs and raising the ire of Boston management at the moment”
I don’t know where you heard that, or the ‘trading Paps’ thing either. I follow the Red Sox like a religion and I haven’t heard either of those before.
As for pitch selection, last year Papelbon threw almost all fastballs. You’d know that if you looked it up. (http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=5975&position=P#pitchtype) As a matter of fact, Paps is throwing fewer fastballs this year than last. His problem is walks. He’s already walked 18 guys this year and he’d never walked more than 17 in any full season before.
“He isn’t being used in particularly high leverage situations lately outside of saves, as Okajima, Delcarmen and Ramirez are shouldering those weights.”
Paps Leverage Index (look it up) is 2.39. Okajima’s is 1.39, Ramirez’s 1.41, and Delcarmen’s 1.19. Paps is pitching in the highest leverage situations for the Red Sox. He’s their go-to reliever. Whether he should be is another matter (though I think he should), but whether he is or not isn’t in dispute.
I assume you’re looking at BB-ref? Isn’t aLI the average LI of all the PA’s in a game? (As opposed to the LI at the time Paps entered the game.) I have to imagine this year he’s creating a lot of his own leverage.
E.g, the 4/27 game against Cleveland. He entered the bottom of the 9th with a 3 run lead, for which tango’s chart gives a LI of 1.0.
bb-ref lists his aLI for the appearance to be 2.99, which is easy to see considering the inning went 1b-1b-K-1b/RBI-K-popout.
Another good one was the 6/2 game at Detroit. He entered the 9th with a 4 run lead, good for a LI of 0.5. He gave up 3 straight singles to bring the LI to 3.7 before striking out the side and ending up with an avg LI of 2.02.
papelbon is the only “core” red sox player without a long term contract in place.
lester/youk/pedroia/soon bay
considering boston has 1.) a ton of good pitching prospects and relievers, 2.) is run by statistically inclined people who likely realize that you shouldn’t hand out long term deals to relievers 3.) the slow but steady decline of papelbon
the writing is on the wall for ol’ paps.
In reply to Puck:
I got the stats from this site, which defines pLI as, “A player’s average LI for all game events.” I assume that means an average of the LI for each plate appearance. At least that’s how I used it.
I’m interested to see what Tazawa can do. Coming from an Industrial League in Japan, he’s coming over having not been really established. He’s put up good numbers in the minors so far, and if he succeeds I wonder if there will be a good contingent of players who will consider making the move out of the industrial leagues. HS will be a bit tougher because you’ll really be rubbing up against NPB if you do that. Nonetheless, several teams are scouting Hanamaki Higashi’s Yuusei Kikuchi.
Nah… Tazawa was a rare talent for that league. It was a unique situation. Simple version – He basically dropped out of high school and so was eligible for that league. NPB (Japanese baseball) claims the rights to draft all Japanese high school players and MLB respects those rights. They didnt have a deal in place regarding the industrial league. The vast majority of the talent in Japan comes from the high school leagues. Tazawa was an exception… he was a rare talent for that league.
Yeah, don’t see Bowden in the majors right now for very many teams. A K/BB ratio of 1.74 in AAA won’t play in the majors. BP translates his stats this year to an ERA north of 6.00.
Pimentel could be the best of the bunch with a 2.70 FIP and a 3.88 K/BB rate. Oh yeah, and he’s just 19 years old
The Red Sox are over hyping their own talent to bait other teams into trading for it. They are over-rated, but the sell job by Theo and the boys in beantown will be enough to rope in a team like Florida to trade a guy like Hanley… If they trade all 5 of the prospects listed above for Hanley Boston still wins that trade!
I think if you could ask Marlins management if they’d re-make the Beckett & Lowell for Ramirez, etc. trade they’d happily say, ‘Yes.’ The Marlins got maybe the best young player in baseball for two players they coudn’t afford anymore. I don’t think that’s roping anyone into anything.
And, newsflash, every team tries to hype their prospects. The Yankees are no different.
So they’re faking statistics and lying about these players’ ages? Oh, then I guess it’s just BA and BP and Fangraphs being in the pocket of the Red Sox front office? No? So you’re just a trolling Yankees fan? Okay then.
A MLB team is hyping up their prospects in order to increase value in a trade.
News at 11:00
Except, when is the last trade the Red Sox made involving highly touted prospects? There’s a million trades they could havve made by now given the plethora and caliber of prospects they have. Why are they pumping but not dumping? Or you could look at the fact that Boston isn’t using their farm system as a bucket of chips to trade but rather is building their major league team around it’s products.
Does anyone really imagine that they’re still not going to need Buchholz and Bowden, and probably more, just to get through the rest of this season? I sure don’t.
I used to think the Sox system was overrated but look at the talent it has produced since 2005…. even just looking aty those currently in the major leagues. Hanley, Papelbon, Lester, Youk, Pedoria, Delcarmen, Masterson, Bard ect…
Perhaps it’s luck but the Sox have been second to none at developing talent over the past 5 years I feel there is a good chance this is not a fluke. Developing talent is different than having talent. The Yanks have ahd lots of talent also since 05 but much less of it has developed into reliable MLB championship caliber players.
Also Bowdens velo is down this year from avg of 91-92 last year to avg of 89 or so this year. Personally I would consider trading any of there prospects except for Reddick or Kelly.
Nice post, Marc. You had me right up until:
“If you’re the Boston management, you have to cross your fingers and pray that Kelly sucks big time with the stick so he’ll turn his attention back to pitching.”
I know you’re being facetious, but I think the Red Sox would be much happier if Kelly excelled at the plate as a middle-infielder and became the SS of the future for an organization that hasn’t had one since 2004.
That Historic Depth has withered away.
Seriously, I would think they would have dealt some pitching prospects already. I understand Theo’s restraint on waiting for something worthwhile, but the starters you have in the big leagues (Beckett, Lester, Dice-K, Buchholz) are all under 30. They will be there a while. Especially after less-than-promising numbers from Green/Lowrie at SS, everyone knows that’s their weakness, time to step up and pull the trigger. Not sure if I buy the rumors about moving Pedroia to SS. Yeah there’s more decent 2B free agents this year (Polanco, Phillips) but don’t settle for moving guys around when you can/should deal. Everyone wants good, young pitching, and you’ve got plenty to go around.
(Coming from a Yankee fan btw)