Boston » Doug Fister

Drew Pomeranz Gives Cause For Concern

Brett Cowett — Thu, 24 May 2018 13:00:31 +0000

We’re in the midst of another streaky run by the Red Sox. They’ve won six of their last seven, thanks in part of excellent starting pitching. Boston was coming into this season with an obvious strength in their rotation, and lately, they’ve been flexing those muscles. However, while four of the five starters have been good, at the very least, one has lagged behind the rest: Drew Pomeranz.

Pomeranz started the season on the disabled list, as he suffered a forearm flexor strain in mid-March. He returned on April 20th, after a couple sub-par rehab outings in Triple-A, to pitch against the Oakland Athletics. It wasn’t a glorious return — Pomeranz lasted 3.2 innings, allowed three runs, and didn’t look like he had much of his command or his normal velocity. Since then, he’s been… well, the best description of his 2018 season is a dejected shrug. He’s been fairly unremarkable ever since, and at times his starts have been the visual equivalent of someone dragging their nails across a chalkboard. It should come as no surprise that his next start, which would’ve been today, was pushed back to Saturday against the Atlanta Braves.

Last year, I wrote about how Drew Pomeranz is an underrated pitcher, and how he was much better than people perceived him to be. He turned in a solid 2.6 WARP in 2017, and was more or less a constant in a rotation that had Chris Sale, the bad version of Rick Porcello, and the occasional good start from Doug Fister. In 2018, he’s been anything but, the far-and-away worst starter currently in the rotation, and looking solely at results thus far, the worst starter the Red Sox have, period.

You’d expect some rust coming back from a forearm injury, sure, but he’s had six starts in the majors so far, and he’s looked like a mess. The velocity loss is the most notable sign, as it’s nowhere close to where it was last year.

Apart from the changeup, which isn’t one of his main pitches, everything’s a good two to three mph slower than his norms. It’s more than a bit concerning, especially for a guy with Pomeranz’s injury record.

But he keeps on pitching, sharply diminished velocity and all, and both he and the Red Sox insist he’s health. If you’re a devout pessimist like me, this looks like a perfect, eminently frustrating storm combining a potentially scary injury and deep-seated distrust of the Red Sox medical staff, who have had a near-annual debacle concerning an injured player and their ability to play. While a forearm issue isn’t as scary as something like a shoulder, it could be a prelude to something like a UCL injury in his elbow. Thankfully, it wasn’t, but that doesn’t solve the mystery of the missing velocity or his mediocre production.

Again, both parties say he’s fit as a fiddle. But it does put the Red Sox in a little bit of a bind. As he is now, Pomeranz is a serviceable number four in any rotation, but that’s not how Pomeranz had been pitching the last two seasons, and it’s not like he’s at the far right side of the aging curve — he’s just 29 years old. They can’t conceivably take him out of the rotation either, since that means giving either Hector Velazquez or Brian Johnson starts, and even with the success they’ve had coming out of the bullpen (and starting this year), having them start for an extended amount of time is asking for trouble. I’m not talking 2011 bad, where the Red Sox ran out guys like Kyle Weiland and an awful, definitely-injured John Lackey down the stretch, but bad enough where you’d actually want this version of Drew Pomeranz to stay. A Pomeranz that resembles anything like last season’s iteration makes this rotation fearsome. The current version downgrades the rotation to simply spooky. Still really good, but not great.

Fortunately, there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Pomeranz told Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald that he might’ve found and potentially fixed what had been the cause of his awfulness. This isn’t the first time he’s had a dramatic uptick in production after a mechanical change — in mid-May of last year, he mentioned everything finally starting to click after a start that month, and went on to be the second-best starter in that rotation. It’s not totally out of the realm of possibility that everything changes on Saturday, but, against my better judgement, it does get my hopes up.

There’s nothing that can be done until we see how he does on Saturday. If he’s good, all of this is just water under the bridge. If not, and he’s seemingly corrected that mechanical problem, the concern will start to grow. Pomeranz says he’s healthy, and the Red Sox have given him the green light to pitch. So until anything changes — for better or worse — we’ve just got to wait and see, and hope Pomeranz is better than this.

Header photo by Bob DeChiara — USA TODAY Sports

The 2017 Roster Recap Compendium

Brett Cowett — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 13:00:33 +0000

During the offseason, we here at BP Boston run a series called Roster Recaps, in which we detail the year that was for every player that graced the major league roster in 2017. Some you might vividly remember (Chris Sale!), while others you’ll struggle to recall what they did (Ben Taylor… ?). For the players in the latter category, we’ve got you covered. If you feel like looking back on some good times, we’ll accommodate you too.

Presenting the full list 2017 Roster Recaps, listed with the authors that wrote them. An asterisk denotes a player who has, as of March 13th, dearly departed the Red Sox. We’ll miss them all terribly.

Catchers

Sandy Leon (Cam Ellis)
Blake Swihart (Jake Devereaux)
Christian Vazquez (Brett Cowett)

Header photo by Winslow Townson — USA TODAY Sports

Roster Recap: Doug Fister is Unremarkably Usable

Matthew Kory — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 14:00:33 +0000

You may recall Doug Fister from his time on such shows as “Tall Pitcher Dude Is Good”, and “Tall Pitcher Dude Is Not So Good”, and “Where in Triple-A is Tall Pitcher Dude?”. Fister’s career went from Cy Young vote receiver to dude without a job in a manner of a few seasons. That brought him to the Rich Hill portion of his career, where he signed with Boston mid-season, was better than expected, and then left for a larger contract with a different team featuring blue uniforms.

What Went Right

For the Red Sox, what went right was Doug Fister being bad for the Astros in 2016 then awful for the Angels Triple-A team to start 2017. The Angels started 13 different pitchers in 2017 (only three of which had FIPs under 4.00) and still somehow none of them were Doug Fister. It was with that background that Fister was cut loose and signed with Boston. There he proceeded to be…okay. There were some disaster starts, especially at the beginning of his time with the Red Sox, but mostly Fister was exactly what the team had (probably) hoped he’d be: a perfectly acceptable back-of-the-rotation guy.

In the end Fister gave the team 90 innings that were worth, depending on which WAR measure you use, somewhere between a win and no wins. Regardless of which number you put on it though, the Red Sox needed someone to pitch innings and Fister did that without getting hurt and generally without setting off the pitching version of a grenade in the first inning. It’s not the type of thing that gets your face mangled on a copper plaque in upstate New York, but it was the minimum requirement for the Red Sox to meet in order to finish the season in first place. Fister met that requirement and the Red Sox met theirs. Fister pitched so acceptably that he got the start in Game Three of the ALDS against Houston. In retrospect, that start went appropriately well as Fister got bazooka-bombed for three runs in an inning and a third. It probably should have been much worse, but the Red Sox won anyway.

I discussed Fister back in September in a piece called The Same Old Doug Fister. The notable thing about Fister’s success was how much it lacked note. It wasn’t based on anything particularly new or noteworthy beyond a slight uptick in velocity. All of that was and remains true. Fister could go to Texas and get cut in May or he could wind up pitching in the All-Star game. It’s pitching. None of those outcomes are off the table.

What Went Wrong

What went wrong was the confluence of events that led to the Red Sox signing Fister in the first place. Eduardo Rodriguez’s injuries, Steven Wright’s season-ending injury, and of course, the pièce de résistance, David Price’s on-again-off-again injury status. All of those guys possibly save Wright would have been upgrades on the pitching Fister gave Boston. In the end though it’s difficult to say it would have made much of a difference in the end though. Perhaps if Price had stayed healthy all season and contended for the Cy Young, the Red Sox might have been able to beat the Astros, but even then that would have been an extremely tall order. But I digress.

As for Fister, what went wrong was pretty much nothing. He came to Boston and pitched well enough and now he has a team to pitch for in 2018. Happy things.

What To Expect

Who cares because he signed with the Texas Rangers so hopefully he’s terrible again. Fister had a bounce-back season in 2017 as pitchers sometimes do. That it was for the Red Sox rather than against them was, I suppose, preferable as these things go. Fister was able to throw pitches and get some outs for our team when we needed someone who could do those things. He did them, and now he’s going to do them elsewhere which, in the end, is probably the best of possible outcomes for the Red Sox, then, now, and in the future.

Photo by Ken Blaze – USA TODAY Sports

The Same Old Doug Fister

Matthew Kory — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 13:00:08 +0000

The first word I think of when I think of Doug Fister’s 2017 season is fluky. When you pick a pitcher up off the scrap heap and he starts putting up results commensurate with a top starter, it’s probably fair to assume it was luck. If he was this good, why didn’t any other teams want him? In Fister’s case, why did at least two other teams actively attempt to get rid of him? Thinking this way is probably a personal failing of mine, on which helps squeeze the joy from baseball, like a boa constrictor squeezing joy from baseball. Still though, Doug Fister. What the heck, right?

History is littered with pitchers who showed up out of nowhere, pitched well for half a season or so, then got shelled so badly their careers were over. But Doug Fister isn’t Kason Gabbard, Aaron Small, or Devern Hansack (seriously, real guy). Fister has had real actual success before in the form of a five win season (2011) and several three win seasons besides. He’s a guy with a legitimate career, who has, in the not distant past, made many hitters out. He’s won many games! He received some Cy Young votes! Three years ago is not that long!

And still, since receiving those Cy votes, Fister has been about as desirable as Gabbard, Small, or Hansack are right now. Last season he posted 4.64 ERA with some subpar strikeout and walk numbers with the Nationals. Couple that with a minor home run issue and *flash forward* you get a guy on his fourth organization in three seasons. Now add in the fact that pitchers at his age (33) don’t tend to suddenly get much better and you get my immediate reaction of “Fluke!” Didn’t the Red Sox just try this exact thing with Kyle Kendrick?

However, as some are quite fond of pointing out, pitchers are human beings and not spreadsheets, so this kind of thing, while not common, has happened. Rich Hill, anyone? Also, not everyone is Kyle Kendrick. This is a researched fact. So Fister. Is he any good?

The first and easiest starting point is to compare his ERA to his FIP. FIP attempts to take the luck of good (or bad) fielders and good (or bad) timing out of ERA. It’s not without its warts, but comparing FIP to ERA is a good quick-’n-dirty way of seeing how lucky a pitcher is. Fister’s ERA is 3.91 and his FIP is 3.99 so by FIP at least, Fister has come by his results honestly.

But we can’t sleep soundly yet because another and slightly different form of this is xFIP which is like FIP but controls for home run rate by ‘fixing’ the number of homers the pitcher ‘should have’ given up. Fister’s xFIP is 4.36, which is to say he’s gotten a bit lucky in terms of allowing home runs. Thing is though, it just so happens that the league wide ERA this season is 4.36, so even that number would be pretty valuable considering where the Red Sox got Fister and what they gave up for him. But if you exclude relievers from the league wide sample, the league wide ERA jumps to 4.49, so even adjusting Fister’s ERA twice has him at better than league average.

So the numbers like him, but what happened to the guy who wasn’t re-signed by Washington, cut by the Astros, and couldn’t reach the majors in the Angels organization?

So the numbers like him, but what happened to the guy who wasn’t re-signed by Washington, cut by the Astros, and couldn’t reach the majors in the Angels organization? It’s hard to say. That’s not that there aren’t differences between the two Fisters. There are, it’s just tough to suss out what is and what isn’t important. But let’s try anyway!

The first thing that jumps out about Fister’s 2017 other than his ERA is his ground ball rate, which sits, tantalizingly like a pie on a counter, at 50.2 percent. Fister is a sinkerball pitcher so perhaps that rate shouldn’t come as a surprise. Indeed it’s not too far off his career ground ball rate of 48.4 percent. But compare it to his last two seasons which were 44.6 percent and 45.3 percent. Those are big differences. He’s getting more grounders this season. So that’s one thing.

Another is how he’s getting that ground ball rate. You might think he would be throwing more sinkers. Sinkers equal ground balls, right? Well, maybe not so much in this case. He’s thrown fewer sinkers compared to last season and the season before that, though those percentages have bounced around during his career. In lieu of some of those sinkers, Fister is throwing a cutter. He’s always thrown the cutter throughout his career, but this is the most he’s ever thrown it as a percentage of his pitching mix. In 2016 and 2015 Fister cut way back on his cutter usage but now it’s back. It’s getting very slightly more horizontal movement but less vertical movement. And he’s throwing it faster (by 1/2 a mph). Is any of that good? Maybe? The fact that he keeps throwing it and that he’s had success probably tells us it’s not bad.

One notable difference between this season and Fister’s recent past is his velocity. Velocity is key for a guy like Fister who depends on movement and location for outs. That’s maybe a strange sentence to read but it’s true. A slight uptick in velocity for Fister could give him new life on his pitches, and that slight uptick is exactly what he’s got. The velocity on Fister’s sinker is up to the highest (89.83 mph) it’s been since his 2011 season when it was 90.68. Admittedly we’re talking about tenths of a mph here so it’s unclear what the actual difference is for hitters, but there’s two things we do know. First is that pitchers Fister’s age typically experience a velocity loss, so anything that isn’t a loss is, in effect, a gain. Second, hitters are telling us about the effectiveness of Fister’s pitches through their inability to repeatedly square them up.

One reason for Fister’s success this season could be if he were to face an inordinate number of lousy hitting teams. Facing bad lineups will make any pitcher look good, or at least better. So I went through his game logs and ranked the teams he’s faced based on their runs scored at the moment of his writing (for example: Angels are 21st in runs scored), then I averaged them out. As it turns out, the average offense Fister has faced is ranked 14th. Almost exactly average. So that’s not it.

If a slight note of caution is to be sounded it’s due to his walks. Fister has walked 9.9 percent of the hitters he’s faced, a number well above any he’s posted in any season in his career. So far it’s been offset by a big jump in strikeout rate to 20.8 percent from last season’s 14 percent. Perhaps that’s the work of the velocity increase coupled with throwing more cutters. In any case, the walk rate itself is fine as long as the strikeouts are there, but if the strikeouts go back to rates resembling last season’s, the walks will become very difficult to overcome.

Through all of this though Doug Fister appears to be the same guy he’s always been. His strikeouts and walks are up a bit, but they’re not way up in a silly way. He’s not generating ridiculous numbers of ground balls or fly balls, nor is he throwing a new pitch or from a different angle. He’s been neither extraordinarily lucky nor unlucky and faced perfectly average competition along the way. He’s not bad nor is he fantastic. He’s just Doug Fister: tall dude in a hat. That’s not bad for the Red Sox though. In fact, it’s pretty fantastic. That’s the word that should come to mind when thinking of Doug Fister’s season.

Photo by Kim Klement – USA TODAY Sports

This Red Sox Team Is Fun

Matthew Kory — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 13:00:13 +0000

There’s been much discussion of the Red Sox and how they’re fun or, if you’re wrong, how they’re not fun. Let me be plain about where I stand. This Red Sox team is fun. They are. You know that silly little dance the Red Sox outfielders do after a win? That’s fun! Sometimes Benintendi does his Michael Jackson leg swing thing, other times it’s Jackie Bradley doing his ski jump (Jackie looooves a good ski jump), but mostly it’s Mookie doing whatever it is he feels like. I love it because it’s funny, but also because it’s fun when they’re have fun. Fun, like a yawn on the subway, is contagious. They can’t do the dance without smiling, and I can’t watch it without having the same reaction. It’s not possible.

It’s fun because it’s silly, because it’s juvenile, and because it’s utterly unnecessary. I love that they’ve spent time figuring this thing out – you do this, and you do this and I’ll do this, no wait let’s try it this way, and on and on – time which has been spent together, working as friends.

Winning baseball is fun. Any team that wins is fun. And this 2017 Red Sox team wins, so by definition they are fun. But this team is more than fun-because-they-win fun. This team is straight up roller-coaster milk-coming-out-your-nose yelling-out-the-moon-roof-of-a-moving-car fun, and the outfield dance is only one reason. Here are many, many others.

Anytime anyone tries to hit a ball past Dustin Pedroia.
Chili Davis. On one end of the cool cat scale you have former Yankees catcher Brian McCann, who probably dresses like an old timey school marm and hits puppies with sticks for fun. On the other end of the cool cat scale you have Chili Davis, who plays jazz trumpet in clubs until 4am and will chat you up long after that. Does he really play jazz trumpet in clubs after games? Who knows, but metaphorically speaking absolutely.
Hanley. The Red Sox drafted him and then they dealt him away. That happens. Baseball is a business. But through all that, through two other organizations and a literal decade of time, dude still felt an attachment to Boston and wanted to come back. I’ll never forget that. Also he’s a total goofball whose helmet needs to be crazy-glued to his hair. We should get a Kickstarter rolling for that.
Hanley’s homers. GOOD GOD Y’ALL, those things GO. When he gets a hold of one it’s a sight to see. I tell ya, A SIGHT TO SEE!
You know what’s fun? Stuff that is exciting! And you know what’s exciting? Any time the Red Sox get a base runner! Will he steal? Maybe! Will he be thrown out at home by 30 feet? Maybe! Exciting! Fun!
Andrew Benintendi’s hair.
Andrew Benintendi’s swing.
Andrew Benintendi.
You know how when Mookie stands in the batter’s box and glares back at the pitcher his lip does this little curl thing, kinda like Elvis Presley used to do? I love that.
Craig Kimbrel is striking out more than half the batters he’s faced this season. He’s at 51.8 percent right now! Exclamation point! Vomit! YELLING! Fifty-one point eight perWHAT! AHHHHHHH! That’s a lot is what I’m saying.
So this kid who is 20 years old was playing for Salem, Virginia in the Carolina League last season and now he’s the starting third baseman for the Red Sox and he’s always smiling like that time he smiled after he turned around a 103 mph fastball from Aroldis Chapman and tied the game in ninth inning. That was a smile!
Joe Kelly’s velocity readings are fun!
Joe Kelly’s great stuff is funny because it’s not real, which is fun!
You know how the Yankees aren’t doing great and are always mad and they are paying Aroldis Chapman a lot of money to be awful? That’s not directly related to the Red Sox but it sure is fun anyway!
The standings! You should look at them sometime. They are great fun.
Mookie sometimes fools fielders and thieves bases from them.
Jackie’s defense. Have you ever seen him miss a ball? Like, ever?
Sandy Leon and his occasional magic. You never see it coming and then POW! Right in the kisser!
Brandon Workman last pitched in the majors in 2014. You know who started the most games for that team? Jon Lester, John Lackey, Clay Buchholz, Jake Peavy, Rubby De La Rosa, and Workman. That’s a long time ago! Then Workman got hurt and rehabbed and then he got hurt again and rehabbed and his rehab didn’t take and he had to start and stop and start and stop and start and stop again. Poor guy as recently as this season was throwing 87 in the minors and getting lit up. Now he’s back in the mid-90s and looking like a worthwhile piece of a major league bullpen. That’s persistence. That’s perseverance. That’s impressive. Also, remember that time he batted in the World Series? Less fun, that.
Addison Reed will probably help eventually!
Eduardo Nunez: How bad must the Giants have been that they couldn’t win with this guy?
Remember that time Doug Fister looked like Chris Sale? That was fun! (We’ll ignore the time Chris Sale looked like Doug Fister.)
Robby Scott might not be your favorite Red Sox, but he’s one of mine. Remember Daniel Nava? Scott is the reliever version of Nava. Like Nava, Scott went undrafted and started his career in pro ball only Scott played for the Yuma Scorpions of the independent league where he was teammates with Jose and Ozzie Canseco. It’s like wanting to be a baseball player and the only job available was with the circus. He almost quit baseball to become a teacher, which considering his circumstances, made perfect sense. But now he’s in a major league bullpen!
Fenway Park. I don’t care that the seats are small and everything costs a fortune. Okay, I care, but the point is that’s the place Ruth played, where Williams and Yaz and Ortiz all made their names. It’s worth it, it’s worth every bit of it. Fenway is on the top of any list of major league ballparks because it’s living history, but also because it’s damn beautiful right now. Really, it’s at the top of any list of pro sports stadiums that you have to visit. It’s the best.
Fernando Abad has been okay!
Rick Porcello’s immaculate inning. Remember that?! That was crazy!
Rafael Devers’ triple play. Remember that?!? That was crazy!
Unexpected stuff is lots of fun, when it’s good, and Porcello’s 2016 was exactly that. Drew Pomeranz has taken up where Rick Porcello’s 2016 season left off. Pomeranz has been as valuable as Jose Quintana and Jake Arrieta by BP’s metrics, and as valuable as Dallas Keuchel and Justin Verlander by Baseball Reference. Pomeranz has been what the Red Sox thought they were getting when they signed David Price. He’s been that good.
Chris Young’s weird short-armed swing is so weird. How does he hit the ball? I don’t know!
Chris Sale has over 253 strikeouts which coincidentally is the same number of times I would strike out against Chris Sale were I to bat against him 253 times.
Heath Hembree’s hair. It’s like he saw the movie Coming To America where Eddie Murphy’s character wears soul glow hair goop and thought, yeah, that’s what I want.
Have you seen those embarrassing high school pictures the relievers (probably Joe Kelly) have hung in the bullpen? They’re hilarious!

This is only a partial list. There’s also Brian Johnson’s complete game five-hitter against the Mariners in May, Tzu-Wei Lin getting three hits in a 15-1 win over the Blue Jays, and of course, that time Deven Marrero hit two homers in the same game off Jose Quintana. It really does go on and on with this team. They are a ton of fun, and that will be true whether they go out meekly in the first round, or win the World Series. Even after a spanking from Cleveland, I look forward to the next Red Sox game. Fun times are good.

Photo by Ken Blaze – USA TODAY Sports