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On March 31st, Scott Servais called Donn Roach THE surprise of spring training. Of course, this followed Dr. D's own such pronouncement on Mar. 24th and followed Jerry DiPoto's desperate last-second deal to get Roach off the roster. "We go by track records, not by spring training," they said on Mar. 1. They weren't kidding.
And there was an SSI Denizen or six who wanted to know, on Mar. 16th, why Donn Roach wasn't on the Mainframe radar yet. But do not distract us with naive questions. We've got our "Tomorrow's News Today" time warp up to six days here.
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There are groundballers and there are Groundballers. The pitcher in question would be the latter. On Mar. 16, there had not yet been any live video feeds of Roach's supersinker and therefore, this information was not yet inputted. Who do you blame, them or me. :: grumble ::
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There are finesse guys - groundball guys and then there are All-Stars. The latter is what occurs when you cross [1+ walks or 60% plus grounders] with [average-plus strikeout rates]. Donn Roach had a control ratio of 15:0 (!!) in 17 innings. If this were even a suggestion of what he could really do? -- say he could really fan 6+ men and walk 2+? -- then he would be a completely projectable impact starter in the American League.
One thing is for sure: you do NOT strike big league hitters out with sinking fastballs. So Roach must have been throwing some kind of offspeed pitch to do that. Coincidentally, Servais and DiPoto have been praising Roach's offspeed stuff to the skies.
Here's a March 2016 videotape:
- Heavy sinker
- Heavy sinker
- Heavy sinker
- Oh! Here's a big overhand curve
- Sinker stays up, batter does what batters do with high sinkers
There were no strikeouts on that tape. Very possibly, Roach won't strike out 15 men per 17 innings when the real shooting starts. Or, we just didn't get much of a look at the 2-strike weaponry.
There are no other 2016 spring training videos on MLB.com. And you can't go to past years because Servais says that NOW he has gotten his breaking stuff together.
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In any case, Donn Roach is my own #7 starter, clearly ahead of Nuno and way ahead of Mike Montgomery. Iwakuma goes down, Paxton's in there. Then Taijuan's shoulder pinches, Roach is in there. And! It says here that Roach, given 20 starts to play with, would have a 2:1, 3:1 chance to keep his ERA below 4 in Safeco Field. Yep. If somebody wanted to bet me even money that Roach's ERA would be north of 3.99, he'd be flushing his wallet down the toilet.
From a certain point of view, you might say his percentage chance to have a 3+ ERA in the rotation -- April and May 2016 -- is better than Paxton's. Obviously the long-term thing is another conversation. It's Baseball America all over again: do you want to draft an 80% chance of a Nori Aoki or do you want a 30% chance of an Ichiro. (Actually, the M's want to draft a 100% chance of a complete embarrassment.)
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As a completely separate issue, if Roach's breaking stuff is as good as Servais (and the 15 K's) suggest it is, you cannot rule out a 120 ERA+ for Roach over the next couple of years. Hey, if Roach were in some other AL West city, it would be a guarantee...
We're talking about for a year or two. Groundballers are not known for staying healthy, or for staying ahead of the league's book. But one year at a 121 ERA+ followed by another year at 116, followed by retreat back into obscurity? If Roach's offspeed is legit, then this is just the kind of pitcher who could do that.
There are guys who get hot for a while. But this guy's template, and seismos, set alarm bells clanging all over the lab.
BABVA,
Dr D
