Ron I had trouble with the link so i went out and copied and pasted it... Interesting article
From Ducks on the Pod.
MLS: When Lines Deceive
Posted on June 16, 2012
One of the more troubling aspects of the rough opening third of the season for the Tigers has been that, despite turmoil in the rotation, Jacob Turner has been conspicuously absent in the major leagues. Turner was the favorite to win a job out of ST as the Tigers’ top prospect, but despite an open 5th spot and a nagging injury to Fister, Turner has yet to get the call. We know he battled shoulder trouble in the spring, but he’s now pitched 11 starts in the minors while Adam Wilk, Drew Smyly, Casey Crosby, and (almost) Duane Below were taking the mound in Detroit.
Adding to the consternation has been Turner’s results. One might expect a MLB-ready top 30 prospect to blow up minor league competition, but Jake has not turned anyone’s heads with his play, at least not in a positive manner. The ERA sits at a fine 2.83 in 63.2 innings, but including unearned runs brings the runs allowed to a more mediocre 3.53. The peripherals are downright bad–his 26 BBs and 44 Ks speak much more towards “organization guy” than “elite prospect.” While a great hit rate (.224 BAA) and homer rate (0.28) show that he’s not exactly getting hit around, the Tigers are not grooming Turner to be a #5. The suggestions naturally follow that he’s either still hurt, not ready, overrated, degrading, or all of the above.
However, I took a long look at the video for his Toledo starts, and I’m here to tell you that it’s all good.
It occurred to me that, if Turner was already deemed major league ready by the organization (and make no mistake, they did exactly that), it does Turner no good to pitch 100% and prove how much better he is than the International League. Rather, they would probably give him instructions on what to work on while he was there, to make sure he’s at his best when the call comes. Having already pitched in the big leagues, he and the brass know what’s missing and what to fix. On a whim, I watched the last inning of his June 9th start, paying close attention to his pitch selection, and I found my answer. In that inning, he threw almost the same amount of fastballs, breakers, and changeups–about 7 each. That’s pretty rare in general, and it produced some unconventional pitch sequences with varying degrees of success. And if each of his starts is being devoted to tinkering, or in some way not pitching the way he would in the majors, the results can be more or less dismissed outright. So for this study I watched two full games: June 4th against Buffalo, and June 15th against Norfolk.
As a baseline, in Turner’s first MLB start, he threw 96 pitches. 66% were fastballs, 24% curveballs, and the other 10% being changeups. That’s a pretty standard spread for a pitcher of the standard RH starter repertoire (maybe a little heavy on fastballs, as you might expect for a rookie). As a note, these %s are approximate, as pitch f/x has its limits.
Looking at the June 4th start, Turner spent the 1st half of the game (3 innings) with the usual spread of pitches: 59% fastballs, 29% breakers, 12% offspeed. He threw 49 pitches over 3 innings, 33 for strikes. His fastball command was not sharp, and he recorded 3 hits, 2 walks, and a K. No runs as most of the hits were weak contact, but locating the fastball on corners was a challenge. But from the 4th inning on, he altered his plan, and with 52 pitches to finish the game (29 strikes), he threw only 52% fastballs, with breakers now comprising 36%. While that difference seems slight, it represents different strategies to attack hitters. His breaker seemed more on point on this day–particularly in the second half–and in those innings he only gave up 1 hit, 1 walk, and struck out 2. He did allow a run, but that was from leaving a runner on first when he was pulled and the run being allowed by the bullpen.
Now, working on things is great and all, but it doesn’t matter until he gets to the big leagues. With Smyly still holding his own, and Fister poised to come back to relieve the embattled Crosby, Turner’s tinkering is just analysis fodder for dorks like me. But then Smyly got a pretty disgusting blister (if you haven’t seen it, it looked like gangrene. Seriously, it was ugly). He hit the DL, and Fister went to cover his spot instead. This conveniently set up a June 15th where Crosby and Turner were both starting. Despite facing drastically different competition, no doubt that they were fighting for next week’s start. And while you likely saw Crosby pitch his way off the team, Turner did just as much to pitch himself on.
Turner pitched more conventionally against Norfolk on the 15th, although he was still more breaker heavy than you might see in the show. The spread was 53% fastball, 32% breaker, 15% change, but the story was simply being really good. Turner threw 6 innings, 4 hits, 2 runs (1 earned), 2 walks, and 6 Ks in 104 pitches, and a lot of the inefficiency was still throwing extra curves to work out the kinks. His fastball was completely on, as Turner was able to work all over the zone and get both strikeouts and ground balls. Every one of Turner’s outs were grounders, infield flies, or strikeouts until the 6th inning, where he gave up one outfield fly on a sac fly. Only two of the hits allowed were for extra bases, two doubles in an inning where he briefly lost command. While Norfolk doesn’t track velocity, Turner worked the 2-seamer to get effective downward movement, and he had the command to elevate and leave the zone with a purpose. His breaking balls showed depth and bite most of the time, although he probably threw the breakers too often, leading to a lot of waste pitches. Turner judiciously used his changeup to fool lefties in key spots, and the pitch rarely got hit with any authority. He even helped out the catcher with the running game and picked off a runner, although that hasn’t been a requirement for Tigers pitchers lately. The run came in the two doubles inning, and then unearned run was on a completely inexcusable error by Brantly on an attempted pickoff throw (the run might have scored anyway).
If there was one source of concern, it was that he struggled to command low pitches. A lot of pitches that might have been good chase pitches low ended up harmlessly spiked for a ball. While the fastball had good sinking action when thrown near the zone, when they started low they likewise ended up diving too low to fool the hitter. His command was fine above the knees, so the good news is that it didn’t expose him to hard hit balls. It also wasn’t frequent enough to create control problems. As I mentioned earlier, they were just waste pitches; they didn’t impact the results, but it drove up the pitch count and hurt his efficiency. Turner will either need to fix the issue, limit his pitches down, or settle for 6 innings or less on a night.
After last night’s games, Crosby was optioned along with Matt Young to make room for Fister, with Thad Weber coming up as well. Make no mistake though, Weber is not a big league starter. There’s no doubt that the Tigers were watching Turner’s start very closely, and I’m betting they liked what they saw. If Turner can bring his stuff from that game with him, he’ll bring the rotation carousel to a satisfying halt.
