The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: Anthony Vasquez
By Aaron Somers
Many popular opinions of pitching prospects are formed from general scouting reports. While these reports are invaluable resources, they can’t always be trusted. Hundreds of minor league hurlers are credited with “mid-90′s velocity,” but very few MLB starters actually have that grade of heat, for example. It’s incredibly frustrating to hear about a pitcher with “a mid-90′s heater and plus curve,” only to have him come up to the big leagues and show a fastball that averages 90.5 mph and a slider.
When a pitcher come up to the majors, we can finally get a foolproof reading on what exactly his arsenal is comprised of, thanks to the great Pitch F/X system. In this series, I analyze just that–the “stuff” of recently-promoted MLB pitchers. Now that they’ve achieved their big league dreams and thus factor directly into the MLB picture, it’s high time that we know exactly what these guys are providing.
This time, I’m taking a look at Mariners starter Anthony Vasquez.
27 1/3 innings. Twelve strikeouts, ten walks. Twelve home runs allowed. 8.89 ERA, 9.27 FIP, -1.1 WAR.
Anthony Vasquez’s first six MLB starts have not been pretty.
A control artist in the lower minors, Vasquez had opened the season with 16 solid starts in Double-A Jackson, with a 59/19 K/BB in 100 1/3 innings. His performance in Triple-A after a promotion (32/18 in 53 1/3) left something to be desired, but Seattle called the 25-year-old lefthander up to the big leagues anyway. Clearly, he wasn’t ready.
I’ve got less to say about Vasquez than I do about any of the other pitchers I’ve covered so far in this series, and that’s because all I really need to do is say what his pitches are, and it’ll make perfect sense why he’s struggling.
His three pitches are: 1) an 82-88 mph running fastball, averaging 85.3 mph, 2) a 72-75 mph changeup, averaging 73.5 mph, and 3) a slow curveball from 66-72 mph, averaging 69.0.
Make sense? Vasquez is one of the slowest throwers in baseball, and simply pounding the zone with that isn’t going to cut it against big league hitters; they don’t just get themselves out like Double-A guys do.
Clearly, Vasquez is trying to be a Dallas Braden type of pitcher, as he gets excellent speed separation on his changeup, and he uses the change 33.5% of the time. The problem is that Braden barely has enough velocity to get by, and Vasquez throws well over 2 mph slower than Braden does.
Vasquez’s fastball is so slow that Pitch F/X gets confused and usually classifies it as a changeup, which hinders my ability to isolate the pitches and break down what his approach and results are with each. But his Pitch Type Linear Weights tell the expected story: the fastball is a whopping 3.69 runs below average per 100 pitches; the changeup is less terrible at 1.20 below average, and the curveball (small sample, he doesn’t use it much) is a horrific 7.74 below.
Vasquez’s changeup means he’s actually better to righties than lefties; his show-pitch eephus-esque curve does nothing to get southpaws to stop sitting on the fastball. As a result, his FIP split is 8.22 against righties and 14.38 against lefties. Yes, 14.38. Four homers in 29 batters will do that for you, I suppose.
Now, Vasquez’s 26.7% HR/FB ratio is likely to come down somewhat, but given his utter lack of stuff, it’s still to expect it to drop to an average rate, even with the lefty pitching half his games in Safeco Field. And hypothetically, even if Vasquez’s HR/FB rate was entirely a fluke, he’d still be bad, as his 5.63 xFIP indicates. After all, he’s a flyball pitcher who walks nearly as many guys as he strikes out.
Given how little he has to work with, Vasquez’s only has two possible routes to success. He can either a) develop absolutely pinpoint control, something which his pitch locations reveal he certainly doesn’t have right now…
…or b) he could adopt the Livan Hernandez approach to pitching, which basically consists of throwing the ball outside the zone as much as possible, meaning that when a batter inevitably puts his bat on your ball, it’s at least a tough pitch to drive. Look at Livan’s locations this season, as a contrast with Vasquez’s:
Okay, that Livan chart is so dense that it’s tough to interpret, but look at where the pitches seem to cluster. He’s throwing his junk mostly below the belt, and you can see some whitespace in the middle part of the plate. There are also a ton of pitches that are just a few inches off the corners. That’s a huge contrast to what Vasquez is doing; there’s not much of a pattern to Vasquez’s pitches, and the closest thing to a pattern is that he throws a bunch of pitches high and down the middle–exactly the location that Livan eschews.
Needless to say, I’m not optimistic Vasquez can contribute much to a staff. There are some pitchers who can survive with this lack of stuff, but he doesn’t have enough of a track record to suggest that he’ll adjust and become the one Jamie Moyer or LIvan Hernandez and not one of the dozens of Josh Geers.
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