There are tons of #4 starters around the majors who don’t throw harder than 92 (just to throw out another random number). You need 4 post-season starters to win a World Series. Paul Byrd has thrown a lot of post-season innings. So have Zito and Brad Radke. Every year journeymen make important post-season starts. I seem to remember some guy from the Mets…shit that was depressing. It’s just the way it works. No, I wouldn’t be excited if Zito was our Game 7 starter in the World Series. But you need four starters in the post-season and there has never been a team with four Tim Lincecums.

/kicks Xanthan

Overvalued? Compared to whom?

That’s insane. You could say the same thing about Villalona. Or Noonan.

Yeah, there’s a reason teams dislike starters under six-feet and catchers over six-five. How many starters under six-feet are in the Hall of Fame? One. Who’s the only catcher at six-five to play longer than Joe Mauer? Sandy Alomar, Jr. Yeah, there are exceptions (Pedro, Tim, Joe Mauer), but they are exceptionally rare and succeed because of equally rare talent.

I agree that guys like Pedro and Timmeh are outliers – they can/could both bring the heat, but also both have/had devastating change-ups to keep the poor hitters off-balance.

I totally disagree with you that the game has changed so much, and umpiring has changed so much, that pitchers that rely on location, command, and guile wouldn’t succeed now at the same rate they did in the past. Maddux and Glavine were quite successful as late as 3 years ago – and the reason they declined was due to age, not the effectiveness of their pitching style. All you have to do is look at how successful Moyer was just last year. Just look at his stellar stats pitching in an extreme hitter’s park in 2008 at the age of 45. Besides that, guys like Brandon Webb, Derek Lowe, and our own Noah Lowry have been highly successful as late as last year (not Lowry due to injury). To further prove my point, I ask you this, if a young Maddux, Hersheiser, or Rueschel were to come into the league today are you telling me that they wouldn’t be as successful as they were before?

I do agree with your assertion that the average FB velocity has increased recently, but I don’t agree with your reasoning why. It’s my assertion that this is a product of the herd mentality of modern-day GMs, scouts, and the various team’s Minor League Development Divisions. Due to the development of the internet, specialized TV sports channels, and the player super-agents there is much less of a chance for a command and control pitcher to be given the time to develope their craft in the Minors. Information is deseminated around the country so quickly today that if a pitching prospect has 1 bad outing the fans go nuts and the team fires their GM. In the draft and in the Minors, all anybody wants is a 6’2", or taller, 200 lb., or heavier, flame-thrower that can throw a FB > 95 MPH and K a million batters a game. This is mostly group-think, and it goes in cycles, just like speed & D vs. power does with hitters. Someday soon a smart GM will see an opportunity and start to stockpile command and control pitchers – realizing that they’re cheap, less likely to blow out their arms, and plentiful because nobody else wants them. As soon as that team is successful then others will run to copy them and the pendulum will swing back a bit.

Webb & Alderson have two completely different pitching styles and cannot really be compared.

1. Webb didn’t get a lot of groundballs or Ks his first 1.5 years in the Minors. He had to learn how to throw that sinker. Besides that, I brought him up not as an example of what Alderson could be like, but as an example of a highly-successful pitcher that doesn’t rely on heat.

2. Hershiser was not all about sink, he was more about movement, a la Greg Maddux, he also had a good curve (like Alderson).

3. Perry started with a low- to mid-90s, but became successful when he backed off and threw in the 88-90 range. He rarely threw a spitter – he used the threat of it and the natural movement of his FB to mess with the hitter’s minds.

4. Hoffman never threw 95+ during his salad days as a great reliever. He was low 90s with movement, but mostly he located and got people out with the change. And, he’s still dominating this year, check out his stats. Moyer being LH is a disqualification? I could see that being true if he were a mid-90’s FB/slider power pitcher, but since he’s a junker his left-handedness doesn’t DQ him.

5. Rueschel threw mainly high 80s, but every once in a while he would wing it in about 92. The thing about him was that he could throw much faster, but when he did he lost his movement and became very hittable. The other thing about him, like Mariano Rivera, is that he basically only threw that one pitch – a fastball that he could move in many directions (but mainly downward). Jim Barr threw low-90s, but he had awesome command of his location – both in and out, and up and down. He had many stretches where he would go 20-40 innings without walking a batter.

Of course, Alderson is not at any of these guys’ level, but if you compare him to how successful these others were in the minors at the tender age of 20, he doesn’t look bad. Alderson still has to improve, but if he can just develope a repeatably effective off-speed pitch I believe that he’ll be very successful in the Majors throwing a 90 MPH FB, because of his ++ control.

Low walks, ERA, and BAA, as well as the ablility to pitch deep into a game – that’s what you look for in good to great pitchers. Good velocity is not that important – movement is much more valuable at the MLB level. Almost all MLB hitters will feast on a straight FB between 92-96 MPH. Velocity is just the current rage among evaluators because it’s so easy to see and measure, all you need is a handy jug gun. Even fans can easily look at the screen, read the print-out and say, “Wow, he threw that won 96!” Let me ask you this. Radar guns weren’t readily available until the late 70s, so talent evaluators had no way of knowing how fast somebody threw except by comparison with others. However, everybody could see movement, command, and control with their naked eye. So, since they have velocity info at the tips of their fingers, why aren’t the talent evaluators doing so much better at finding and defining a talented pitcher now than they were in the 40s, 50s, and 60s? The failure rate is no better now than it was before.

It’s also true that for every guy with a mid-90s or greater heater that became an ace, there are 99 guys that failed. Besides which there is a much higher incidence of arm injuries for those types of pitchers. To get back to my point, I in no way believe that Alderson should be expected to be an “ace” of our staff in the future. Not because of his 88-90 MPH FB, but because it’s stupid to expect any 20 year old AA pitcher to be an ace. The percentages of that happening are even worse than 1%. By the same token, it’s not smart to write off a 20 year old pitcher with Alderson’s early success as already a disappointment. The main thing to ask in order to decide his potential are things like:
1. Can he locate and control a variety of pitches?
2. Can he change speeds well and adjust to hitters throughout the game?
3. Is he efficient and often able to pitch deep into games with a limited pitch count?
4. Is he consistent?
5. Does he pick up new things quickly?
6. Is he more worried about protecting his stats than he is about doing the work to develope himself as a good MLB pitcher?

When you look at that list I think that Alderson comes out looking quite good right now.
To focus on a small sample of games where he had fewer Ks or gave up a lot of runs and hits at this point in his career is not smart. For all we know he could have been working on using a new grip, throwing an inordinate amount of a particular pitch for development purposes, or doing something else out of the ordinary in order to try and better himself. Even if that’s not the case, even the best pitchers (yes even The Freak) go through slumps now and then.

I think that it’s fair to expect that Alderson currently has an above average chance of being a good MLB pitcher (projecting somebody as #1-#5 is kind of silly because it’s been shown time and again to be such an inexact science)

That was well said. Would you then be an Alderson Agnostic? Are you excited only about Posey and Bumgarner? What do you think of Thomas Neal?

I wouldn’t be broken up if he’s dealt. I love his potentila but there is a LOT that can go wrong with a long road to travel until he gets to the bigs…

pretty high standards, 3.50 is a top 20 pitcher pretty much every year.

Beckett, Sabathia, Haren, Hamels and Felix Hernandez all have career ERA’s north of 3.50 and I wouldn’t hesitate to call any of them #1 starters (well maybe Hamels this year).

I enjoy eating Tim Alderson. It is delicious.

Actually, I don’t think that he’ll get much above slot. I read somehing recently that stated something like > 90% of all 1st round signings this year haven’t been above slot. I believe that Wheeler will eventually sign for around slot, but not until close to the deadline. What’s going on right now is that his agent his probably advising him to wait it out and see if the Giants will blink first.

FYI, the 2 picks immediately ahead of Wheeler have already signed for basically slot (Tony Sanchez with the Pirates for $2.5M and Matt Hobgood with the O’s for $2.422M), so they’ve set a pretty good precedent for Wheeler. I think that it’s safe to assume that he’ll sign for about $2.3 – 2.4M, since he really wants to start pro ball, and has only a committment to a minor regional college as leverage. Even if he were to go to college and pitch lights out for 2 years, he’s not likely to make much more than this as a bonus, and that’s a big IF.

/head explodes

- Sanchez should to use it more often with his slurve.

- MadBum changeup with his slider/fast ball = ZOMG DEVASTATOR

- Lowry had a great changeup. Poor Noah. =(

Yeah, even Pedro Feliz had a great changeup. Oh, wait…. nevermind.

what is stupid about this command/control is the extreme variablity in umpires

My observations:

He’ll miss it at times. But when he does hit them, he can get in a groove. He is particularly more aggressive at this point and starts pounding the strike zone.

Rorsavelt, I would like to introduce you to the original member of the Pablo Sandoval bandwagon.

The scouting report on Greinke also mentions he can elevate to mid-90s when needed… I’m not sure Alderson can do that.