Volquez Keeps Rolling

The Reds might not be thrilled that they traded away Josh Hamilton, but they have to be thrilled that they acquired Edinson Volquez. After another terrific outing last night, shutting out the Phillies for seven innings, Volquez has now given up 11 earned runs in his 12 starts this season. That covers 75 innings and works out to a stellar 1.32 ERA, and he’s done the heavy lifting himself, racking up a league leading 91 strikeouts.

This is the most impressive start to a season since Pedro Martinez’s performance in 2000 that might have been the best year any pitcher has ever had. In Pedro’s first 12 starts that year, he threw 91 innings, walked 18, struck out 121, and posted a 0.99 ERA. Opponents hit .160/.223/.214 against him during that stretch. He proved somewhat human the rest of the year, posting a mortal 2.29 ERA in his final 17 starts of the season thanks to allowing 14 home runs, but his 14/163 BB/K ratio during that period of struggle is still hilariously awesome.

Before Pedro, you have to go back to 1988 and John Tudor to find a pitcher who started a season this well. Tudor’s first twelve starts covered 83 1/3 innings and a 1.08 ERA, but they come with a pretty big asterisk. Tudor allowed seven unearned runs during that span, and his walk to strikeout rate was 20/30. Seriously, he posted a 1.08 ERA while striking out 3.24 batters per nine innings. His success was completely based on getting hitters out on balls in play, and if Fangraphs had existed in 1988, we’d have been predicting a pretty severe regression to the mean. It came swiftly, as his next five starts resulted in him giving up 22 runs in 29 innings for a nifty 6.67 ERA.

Volquez isn’t Tudor, however. Volquez has some of the best stuff of any starting pitcher in baseball, and when he’s throwing it for strikes, he’s nearly untouchable. Pedro’s dominance came from his pinpoint command of his nasty fastball and change-up, which Volquez will likely never be able to match. But there’s nothing wrong with being worse than the 2000 version of Pedro Martinez – that just gives him something in common with every other pitcher in history.

Edinson Volquez is having a remarkable start to the ’08 campaign. He’s not this good – no one is – but he’s a terrific talent, and Reds fans should be ecstatic that they’re going to have this guy in their rotation for years to come.