The starting rotation: Huff, Gomez and McAllister

by APV on Feb 6, 2012 3:50 PM EST in Analysis

This is the second in a series of pieces previewing the Indians starting rotation options heading into 2012. The first piece, examining Derek Lowe and Kevin Slowey can be viewed here.

Assuming a starting rotation of Masterson, Jimenez, Lowe, Tomlin and Slowey break camp (admittedly, not necessarily a safe assumption), the three guys competing for the first call-up in the rotation will once again be David Huff, Jeanmar Gomez and Zach McAllister. These are the same three who occupied that role last year, each of whom ended up spending time in Cleveland during the second half. Looking at their results from last year, it seems as if the path to improvement for each of them is in improving their secondary offerings as a way to work better of their primary pitches.

David Huff

Once a top prospect, David Huff has opted out of that role in recent years, instead auditioning yearly for the role of most hated pitcher in Cleveland. The dislike comes from his failure to live up to his high credentials, as well as the mediocre stuff he seems to bring to the mound with him in his starts. For 2012, though, he is the member of this group that I like the best. Part of this is that he is the only left-handed starter likely to see much time in Cleveland this year. But it is also because I remain somewhat intrigued by Huff's potential to "put it all together" one of these years and actually pitch up to his billing.

Huff actually got off to a good start with Cleveland last season, beginning with his 7-inning zero run performance against Minnesota on July 18th. In four of his first five starts in July and August he allowed a single earned run or less while averaging six innings a start. The rest of his starts, needless to say, were not as good. Some of this was bad bullpen work, as they only held 58% of the runners Huff left on, leading to a few extra runs getting tacked on to Huff's lines. But some of it was just more of the long-ABs, long-innings, and short outings we have come to expect from Huff.

Huff works with what amounts to a four-pitch mix, all of it playing off his fourseam fastball, but including a slider (used almost exclusively against left-handers), curve, and changeup (used more against right-handers). Huff's problems stem from not getting enough out of his fastball given his extremely high usage (72%) of the pitch. Last season, only 6% of his fastballs resulted in a swing and a miss. Another way of considering that number is that 83% of the time batters swung at his fastball they made contact with it. Huff's fastball was not entirely terrible, though (fangraphs actually rated it as a net-positive pitch), as Huff was able to get a substantial number of called strikes (19%) and foul balls (21%) off the pitch.

David Huff	W-L	ERA	BB%	K%	GB%	OPS	IP
2011 MLB	2-6	4.09	7.5	15.9	32.4	.757	50.2
MLB (career)	15-25	5.50	7.9	11.8	36.3	.845	258.2
AAA (career)	37-13	3.84	6.6	18.3	42.0	-	408.1

Jeanmar Gomez

Jeanmar Gomez, on the other hand, seems to occupy the opposite position in Cleveland's mindset. An unheralded prospect (always young for his level) who has seemingly performed above expectation in his two stints in Cleveland. The truth is that he had about as much success as Huff last year, with similarly depressing strikeout numbers (considerably worse, actually), but much better ball-in-play numbers.

Gomez works almost exclusively with a sinker, slider (used a little more against righties), changeup (used a little more against lefties) combination. The sinker, obviously, is his best pitch, getting a good number of called strikes (24%) and producing a huge number of ground balls (55% of balls-in-play). When he throws it well, his slider can be a plus pitch and is his best swing and miss weapon, but too often the pitch flattens out on him and gets pounded (25% LD-rate on the pitch in 2011). While Gomez in general has excellent control and above average GB-tendencies on all of his pitches, his changeup gave him the most control and fly-ball problems a year ago.

Jeanmar Gomez	W-L	ERA	BB%	K%	GB%	OPS	IP
2011 MLB	5-3	4.47	5.8	12.0	52.8	.804	58.1
MLB (career)	9-8	4.58	7.1	12.4	49.9	.823	116.0
AAA (career)	18-15	3.76	8.5	17.1	48.0	-	253.2

Zach McAllister

McAllister has had the least exposure to Cleveland, proving the least amount of data to work from. McAllister also had the broadest array of pitches, as he showed five or six different pitches during his Cleveland stint last September. His actual line from that time period looks terrible, but again this is at least part to do with poor bullpen support (53% LOB%) and bad luck (.403 BABIP). McAllister pitched great in Columbus, though, and with two options remaining, should have plenty of time to improve his performance.

McAllister's pitching mix begins with a four-seam fastball that sits in the low-90s and that he employs just over half the time. Off of this, he mixes in a two-seam fastball, cutter, changeup and curve against left-handers and a two-seam fastball, cutter, slider and curve against right-handers. With the exception of the changeup, McAllister has shown the ability to consistently throw all of them for strikes. McAllister's problem is that none of them, by themselves, look particularly great. On the bright side, none of them seem particularly bad either. All of his pitches produce a moderate number of swings and misses, go for strikes, and even induce a decent number of groundballs (aided by McAllister's 6'6" frame). For McAllister to succeed at the major league level, it seems as if he needs to get a little more out of at least a few of his pitches, particularly making sure to limit the damage on balls put in play against him (opponents regularly put up ropes against him during his September stint in Cleveland).

The challenge for Cleveland vis-a-vis McAllister is figuring out how to get him the development he needs. He showed last year he can handle AAA hitters with aplomb, but there isn't currently a spot in Cleveland for him to develop his stuff against major league caliber hitters.

Zach McAllister	W-L	ERA	BB%	K%	GB%	OPS	IP
2011 MLB	0-1	6.11	8.3	16.7	42.9	.860	17.2
MLB (career)	0-1	6.11	8.3	16.7	42.9	.860	17.2
AAA (career)	33-18	3.96	5.5	18.1	38.0	-	459

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Comments

Well I don’t think they’ll hesitate to pull the trigger on demoting Kevin Slowey if he struggles (whether rightly or wrongly) and the same could be said of Tomlin. I think there will be an opportunity between the 4 and 5 spots in the rotation throughout the season at the least. And if not, that’ll be a good problem to have. Perhaps McAllister plays himself into trade-able asset and resolves are 1B/LF problem.

by hans on Feb 6, 2012 4:04 PM EST reply actions

I agree. Unless everyone stays very healthy and performs well, I think we could see all three of these guys at some point in the first half of the season, if not right out of spring training.

by APV on Feb 6, 2012 4:28 PM EST up reply actions

Well I don’t think they’ll hesitate to pull the trigger on demoting Kevin Slowey if he struggles (whether rightly or wrongly) and the same could be said of Tomlin. I think there will be an opportunity between the 4 and 5 spots in the rotation throughout the season at the least. And if not, that’ll be a good problem to have. Perhaps McAllister plays himself into trade-able asset and resolves are 1B/LF problem.

I like ex-Phillies prospects.

by Gradyforpresident on Feb 6, 2012 5:50 PM EST up reply actions

our (the royal “our”)

by hans on Feb 6, 2012 8:28 PM EST up reply actions

Even though he doesn’t have ML experience yet, I’d put Scott Barnes on that list of depth starters. He could easily make it clear in the first month that he is the first lefty to go to. No comparison at all between him and Huff in terms of stuff.

by mcrose on Feb 6, 2012 5:27 PM EST reply actions

I would guess that Barnes is in a similar position as McAllister last year, and he seem him as a more likely late season call-up than a mid-season contributor. If he really dominates in Columbus, that could change of course.

by APV on Feb 6, 2012 6:45 PM EST up reply actions

Yep. There’s the whole “start the clock” thing too, altho I don’t think that’ll enter into it too much next year – if they need a starter callup, they’ll go with whoever has a clear edge. But if Gomez and Huff do well, they’ll get first call based on experience.

Despite his ML numbers last year, Gomez is the youngest of the bunch and has steadily improved his skills and performance every year without a real setback yet. Still on the ascending curve, altho the apex is no more than a 4-5 starter. Barnes I think has the potential to be more than that given his K-rate, but he’s got a pretty funky delivery, harder to repeat over time.

by mcrose on Feb 6, 2012 9:58 PM EST up reply actions

I think his delivery and injury history are two reasons they’re not likely to focus much on starting his clock. If he looks like the best option, I could see him get the call regardless of what point in the season they’re currently in, similar to the team calling up White early last year.

by callmrplow on Feb 7, 2012 11:16 AM EST up reply actions

Huff is deceiving because of his minor league stats. Lefties that can command more than 1 decent pitch don’t last long in the minors, so the ones that stick around posted inflated stats that don’t translate well.

His velocity is deceiving as well, given how straight and life-less his fastball is.

Huff needs to improve his change up or curve, or add a cutter. These are low probability improvements at this point in his development, so I say send him down to the NL to see how he does.

Jeanmar is a definite major leaguer with that 2 seamer/sinker. Even if he only improves his command, we’ve got ourselves a cheap #3.

Most arguments are really about context.

by SheaWasBettor21 on Feb 6, 2012 10:36 PM EST reply actions

Huff added a cutter last spring, and threw it pretty well over the course of the summer. It was a developing pitch but he used it to pretty good effect.

by MTF on Feb 7, 2012 7:18 AM EST up reply actions

His cutter, to the extent that he calls it that, is not a very well differentiated pitch at this point. The Brooksbaseball numbers cluster all his fastballs under a generic rubric, whereas Fangraphs data selects out a 2-seam fastball that Huff uses a minority of the time (~7%). I think what Huff is calling his cutter is not really either of those pitches, but a subset of each (in Brooks’ data, I think it is more frequently his slider getting misidentified. I think if Huff gets better at throwing that pitch it will be more obviously recognizable in the pitch f/x record, and in turn will actually help him considerably. Right now at the low end of his fastball (in terms of speed) is a mass of pitches with quite a lot of variation in their horizontal component. These I think range from bad fastballs, to bad cutters, to good cutters. Being able to more consistently hit the latter category would be a good thing. If you compare Huff’s pitch cloud in the link above to this one from Cliff Lee, who has one of the better cutters in the league, the clear separation between slider and fastball is much more apparent.

by APV on Feb 7, 2012 10:58 AM EST up reply actions 1 recs