One and Done?

Gustavo burst out onto the major league scene as a 24 year old, relative unknown in 2005.  His 34 starts were tied for the third most in the AL and he went 13 - 9 in 203 innings.  He finished 5th in Rookie Of The Year voting, receiving 10% of the total vote and 2% of the first place vote.  Prior to that magical season, in 2004, he had pitched 167.1 innings at 3 separate levels.  And prior to that, in 2003, he pitched only 69.1 innings total.    

Year	Team	League	GP	GS	W	L	SV	CG	Sho	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA

2004	Toronto	AL	2	2	1	1	0	0	0	14.0	8	4	4	0	3	6	2.57
2004	Syracuse	AAA	2	2	2	0	0	0	0	11.2	16	4	3	0	3	14	2.31
2004	New Hampshire	AA	25	25	16	2	0	0	0	141.2	113	53	46	15	49	109	2.92
2003	New Haven	AA	46	2	3	4	2	0	0	69.1	78	39	32	1	29	55	4.15

He hurt his wing early in the 2006 campaign and has not returned to form since.

Courtesy of TSN:

Transactions / Injuries / Suspensions

09-May-08	Designated for assignment by the Toronto Blue Jays.
12-Mar-08	Optioned to Syracuse (AAA).
17-Jan-08	Re-signed by the Toronto Blue Jays to a one-year contract.
01-Oct-07	Missed the last 136 games of the regular season (left elbow injury).
04-Sep-07	Transferred from the 15-day DL to the 60-day DL (left elbow injury).
30-Jul-07	Voided the option to Syracuse (AAA).
27-Jul-07	Missed 78 games and optioned to Syracuse (AAA).
30-Apr-07	Left elbow injury, 15-day DL.
04-Mar-07	Re-signed by the Toronto Blue Jays to a one-year contract.
23-Aug-06	Missed 66 games (elbow injury).
10-Jun-06	Elbow injury, 15-day DL.
30-May-06	Missed 17 games (elbow injury).
16-May-06	Elbow injury, 15-day DL (retroactive May 11th).
18-Feb-05	Re-signed by the Toronto Blue Jays to a one-year contract.
19-Sep-04	Contract purchased from New Hampshire (AA).

If you need a refresher, here are his minor league stats from 2006 to 2009 here they are courtesy of Minor League Stats dot com:
 

Yr	Age	Team	Lg	Org/Lev		IP	FIP		BF	H	2B	HR	W	IW	K		AVG	BABIP	WHIP		GB%	LD%	FB%	IF/F	HR/F
2006	25	Total				15.3	3.56		82	28	8	1	7	0	16		0.373	0.466	2.28		61.0%	6.8%	32.2%	26.1%	5.3%
2006	25	Dunedin	FSL	TOR/A+		4.7	3.94		24	6	3	0	4	0	5		0.300	0.400	2.14		66.7%	0.0%	33.3%	20.0%	0.0%
2006	25	Syracuse	IL	TOR/AAA		10.7	3.34		58	22	5	1	3	0	11		0.400	0.488	2.34		59.1%	9.1%	31.8%	27.8%	7.1%
2007	26	Syracuse	IL	TOR/AAA		10.7	4.46		43	13	2	1	3	0	5		0.333	0.364	1.50		45.7%	28.6%	25.7%	10.5%	11.1%
2008	27	Dunedin	FSL	TOR/A+		47.3	5.81		209	72	16	9	12	0	22		0.369	0.384	1.77		31.5%	24.2%	43.3%	10.8%	11.7%
2009	28	Total				108.7	4.47		438	100	22	9	41	0	62		0.254	0.282	1.30		38.2%	20.1%	39.4%	11.6%	6.6%
2009	28	Reading	EL	PHI/AA		5.0	2.87		20	4	0	0	1	0	3		0.211	0.250	1.00		50.0%	6.3%	43.8%	12.5%	0.0%
2009	28	Lehigh Valley	IL	PHI/AAA		103.7	4.49		418	96	22	9	40	0	59		0.256	0.283	1.31		37.7%	20.8%	39.2%	11.6%	6.9%
Career						182.0	4.73		772	213	48	20	63	0	105		0.303	0.334	1.52		38.9%	20.5%	39.0%	12.2%	8.3%

For those that don't know what some of the stat lines mean click here for THT Glossary.  You may want to bookmark that one ;)

His projections for 2010 courtesy of CHONE:

Player	Age	G	GS	Won	Lost	IP	Hits	BB	SO	HR	HB	Runs	ER	ERA

Gustavo Chacin

29

15

15

3

6

78

89

31

42

13

3

50

46

5.31

He will be reunited with former pitching coach Brad Arnsberg in Houston.  Please note: Arnsberg was in his first year as pitching coach for us in the 2005 season.  

Verducci Effect:

Named for Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated, this is a negative forward indicator for pitcher workload. Verducci, found that pitchers under the age of 25 who have 30-inning increases year over year tend to underperform. Will Carroll independently found that pitchers who break the "Rule of 30" tend to get injured. Carroll renamed this 'rule' the Verducci Effect in honor of the man who initially found the evidence.

Our boy "Smells like Victory" was named in the article as a victim of the effect.  For all you fantasy pool players out there, click here for this years candidates.

Initially this theory met some resistance.  THT refuted Verducci's findings the next day and concluded: Pitchers who see a large increase in workload are more likely to continue to be successful than those who don’t.  To see their article in it's entirety, click here.

I am bringing this to your attention because our pitching staff is exceptionally young.  Most of the guys are in the clear but four names do jump out at me as possible candidates for the Verducci Effect in the future if their innings pitched are not monitored closely this season.  Their names and dates of birth are as follows:

• Marc Rzepczynski, Aug. 29, 1985
• Brett Cecil, July 2, 1986
• Kyle Drabek, Dec. 8, 1987
• Zach Stewart, Sept. 28, 1986

Let's take a look at their innings pitched in the last two years:

Rzep: 124.3 in 2008, 154.3 in 2009
Cecil: 125.3 in 2008, 155 in 2009
Drabek:  34 in 2008, 163 in 2009
Stewart: 34 in 2008, 108 in 2009

Righthander Kyle Drabek had Tommy John surgery in 2007 and I'm not sure what effect, if any, that will have on his innings cap.  I think he will top out at about 190 innings this season and be ready to go in 2011 with no innings restrictions, that is if he does not suffer from the Verducci Effect this season.....

I think it is fair to say that the two young lefties, Rzepczynski and Cecil, will have their innings capped at right about 185 this year or roughly 28 starts.  I also think it is fair to say that their innings can be manipulated easier at the minor league level.  I see both of these guys, barring injury,  pitching in our major league rotation in 2011 restriction free.  They are right on schedule.

Righthander Zach Stewart was drafted as a reliever and is the prime candidate to suffer from the Verducci Effect out of this group moving forward.  It is imperative that we do not allow him to exceed 140 innings pitched this season.  Even that may be too many.  He will then need another year in the minors to build his stamina up to around 170 innings in 2011.  I think of him as a guy that will be in a position to enter the rotation sometime in 2012.  

In Conclusion:

These four guys are the future of our Major League starting rotation.  We must be patient with them and resist the urge to rush them to the majors for the upcoming 2010 season "just to see what they got".  New pitching coach Bruce Walton has brought with him a new philosophy.  He seems to believe the innings cap can be manipulated if his pitchers tweak their off day routines.  To read all about it, click here.

This upcoming baseball season will not be a pretty one to watch in Toronto.  But hang in there guys, these four pitchers are the future and we must keep in mind that they are still a year away at best.....and we must also never forget what happened to young Gustavo Chacin.

Hope...Part Two...The Starting 5...

The definition of hope from Webster's website:

Intransitive Verb

1 : to cherish a desire with anticipation(hopes)

Transitive Verb

1 : to desire with expectation of obtainment

2 : to expect with confidence

Kind of fitting when discussing the starting rotation. When it comes to hope and your 2010 Toronto Blue Jays that GM AA is assembling, I’ve thrown most of my hope towards the starting rotation army of all 12 of them. Yes that’s right, as it stands right now, the mighty Cito has 12 guys to make up his rotation. At this point he can have a pre and post all star break rotation. Which might be exactly what we need, as I write this we’ve got so many guys that are going to be on innings watch or coming back from injuries, most of our guys probably won’t be able to make it all season. I just grabbed Jordan Bastian's picks from his blog on who he thinks might be the starting 5.

Ricky Romero
Shaun Marcum
Marc Rzepczynski
Brett Cecil
Brandon Morrow

I like the names for the most part, I'd change one, but I'd totally change the order.
Let's dig into this and take a closer look.

Returning from injury list:

Jesse Litsch
Shaun Marcum
Dustin McGowan

Innings Watch List:

Brett Cecil
Brad Mills
Brandon Morrow
Robert Ray
Ricky Romero
Marc Rzepczynski

Then we’ve got David Purcey, Brian Tallet and Casey Janssen as other candidates.

Most of the guys that are on the innings watch list are very young and management will probably want to keep a close eye on them as they’ll never have pitched the amount of innings that’ll be needed of them before. Hell with Doc gone, a lot pitchers are going to have to do a lot more then ever before. Somebody wake up the bullpen, they don’t get every 5th day off anymore. But back to the starters, let’s look at my starting 5.

From the all star break last year, all I kept hearing was that we have Shaun Marcum coming back “soon” and he got hyped up to the point he was going to be our savior. Ummm, did I slip into a coma and miss a season or two? He’s good, but he’s going to have to get a hell of a lot better, with a career high in wins with 12, that’s just not going to cut it this year. That being said I just don’t see how Marcum isn’t on the hill April 5th in Texas . Out of this group, he’s got the most experience and I just don’t see who else could pitch game 1 of what could be a very, very long season.



Ricky, as soon as Halladay was traded it was apparently common knowledge to all sports reporters that Ricky don’t call me LL Romero was going to be leading the charge for this rotation. How in the holy hell can that be? Here we have a kid, who most people questioned being picked 6th I might add, who is 25 and has pitched 1 year in the bigs and we expect him to lead this rotation. He might have the best stuff but that doesn’t mean he should be the leader of the rotation.

Brandon 2.0 , in reading about this kid after we traded one of half of the tattoo twins to get him; he’s supposed to have some great stuff. It’s just unfortunate that Seattle jerked around with him and messed him up. I’m glad to hear AA has stepped up and said he’s going to be a starter for us. I say pencil him in at number 3 and let him work his way up if he’s got the stuff people think he has.

Slots 4 and 5 are where things start to get really interesting. In 4 I’ll pencil in Rzpczynski, we didn’t see much of this kid, but of what I saw I liked. He had a good start to his pro career after posting some very good numbers in the minors. Let’s see what he can do over the year. The 5 spot; Cito being Cito, I have to expect that somehow Scott Richmond will get penciled in here. I’m not sure how the f Cito throws this guy out there every 5th day. Don’t we have kids waiting in the wings with much, much better stuff? I’m torn on this one, I’d like to see what Janssen can really do, but I think he’s a much better pitcher in the pen. Do we throw in Brian Porno Set Extra Tallet? To wrap up my “dream” rotation, I’m throwing in Robert Ray into the fire. It’s more then likely going to be a long season of 162 this year, I say throw the kids in and lets see what we got. What do we have to lose? The GM has already said that we’re not playing for this year. 2010 for these Jays is going to be the longest spring training schedule in history. Every young kid we got needs to get a chance and needs to get a lengthy chance. Do you hear me Cito? Don’t put a kid in there twice and decide he’s shit and throw Richmond back in his spot. Give these kids a chance to show us something. For f’ sakes Cito, these kids will be on this team long after you’re kicked up stairs to collect your money to watch baseball.

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that we've got a small army of players in the starting position. We all know that Cito is going to burn through a lot of these young arms. Then we got the cursed training staff who seemed to bust a starting pitcher every few weeks last season. At least we've got plenty of options to go along with that bucket of hope.

I'm not telling you anything most of you don't already know. I'm just trying to dig through the mid rotation guys to put a starting rotation together. Let the prediction game begin, it's the only game we've got until spring training starts. Who do you have in your starting 5?