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One of the most pitcher-favorable umpires in baseball...both Gio GOnzalez and Jason Vargas benefited from a giant strikezone...especially the outside corner.
M's 4, A's 2
Q. How did Vargas do it?
A. With a Frank Caliendo-class imitation of Jamie Moyer.
First of all, he had plus-plus command of his 87 fastball. If Vargas were to throw with that kind of command every game, he'd be at least an average-solid pitcher.
It seemed like every time he centered a fastball, somebody ripped it hard somewhere -- but he centered remarkably few heaters. In fact, Brooks Baseball had Vargas' fastball at 5.05 for nibbleness, meaning that his typical fastball was five inches inside (strike) or outside (ball) of a normalized strike zone.
..............
Then, because the A's were frustrated at all of the 87 fastballs just outside their reach -- when Vargas threw his changeup, he showed them more of the plate, and they jumped out of their shoes reading fastball. Way in front.
As an illustration of the way Vargas did it, look at the GameDay strike zone map on Kurt Suzuki in the first inning. Nine out of 10 pitches were exquisite little nibbles, and then on pitch 10, Vargas showed him pretty good location -- on a changeup. Suzuki thought he had his pitch, jumped at it with gusto, and it wasn't there yet.
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Q. Six strikeouts? That's quite a few.
A. Yep, he gave them some fits at times. The six strikeouts:
- RH Suzuki 1st inning: swung through a centered changeup on 3-2
- LH Patterson 2nd inning: took a zippy little FB right on the black
- RH Pennington 3rd inning: after three nibbly changeups, got a little cut fastball a little too low, passed on it... ump disagreed, rung him up
- RH Kouzmanoff 4th inning: after two frustrating called strikes, and two fastballs running it to 2-2, Vargas threw a Jamie Moyer dead-fish changeup, low-away, Kouz swung thru
- LH Gross 4th inning: 2-2 count, Vargas change dove like a Peregrine falcon at Gross' shoes; garbage swing K
- LH Patterson 5th inning: 2-2 on various slop, Vargas throws an 83 "slider" out and over the plate - Patterson, looking for something else, takes it for called strike three
Six strikeouts, no walks.
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Q. Could Vargas do it again?
A. As you know, I think he's defying gravity, trying to be super-precise with very questionable stuff. And he had to be hair-fine with his command Thursday, certainly.
And IMHO the A's put some weak AB's together -- for example, Patterson whiffing on an 83 mushball centered in the 5th. Probably they deserved 3-4 runs.
Still, can't take anything away from him. He got a lot of garbage swings.
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Q. The upside?
A. We notice that Vargas has 11 strikeouts and 1 walk (!!) after two games and 11.1 innings.
I did like the fact that he threw 40 offspeed pitches against 49 fastballs -- and got 8 swinging strikes with the change in only 24 pitches. For one game, Vargas was Jamie Moyer -- tease them with the heater on the edges, show them the change, and get them lunging.
As the game went on, Vargas got a genuinely good feel for his change, and even started getting a nice dead-fish drop on it, just like Moyer.
.............
Can he repeat this kind of precision? I'll believe it when I see it. But except for a missing change-curve, that was pretty Moyeresque.
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My $0.02,
Dr D
Comments
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Strike zone looked big to me on first take too...
Though BP's umps report has had Eddings about the middle of the pack, and Brooks seemed to have a pretty midstream zone.
Couldn't really reconcile those two things :- ) and also, couldn't find Eddings in the BP reports for the year 2008.
Thoughts?
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But even if Eddings is coming up middle of the pack in UmpERA...there is a lot of room for that to be luck/random distribution of pitchers called...From 2002 (the year he cracked the rotation of MLB umps for good) to 2008, Eddings had an umpire factor of 90. That's a bigger influence on scoring than any ballpark in the bigs on the pitching side. He could be improving...his yearly ump factors ran: 91, 84, 88, 101, 86, 90, 92...not seeing a trend through 2008. But you never know. I tend to trust my multivariable matrix solver over the linear reports that BP offers for first-glance stuff. Though I will grant you that Brooks has the strikezone broken down and Eddings didn't look nearly as bad as I remember him looking in 2007.
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Your 2002-08 numbers are very convincing. A single season in 2009, in which he was still moderately a pitcher's ump, doesn't negate the career numbers.
Great stuff. I'd also thought that Vargas had benefitted from a real big zone - not to take anything away from his fine performance.
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Eddings might have been in a stingy mood to make the zone roughly fair...don't know. It looks like he called a pretty fair game, which is a welcome change as far as I'm concerned. And yes...on the whole, I think Eddings is going to continue to be a wide-corner pitcher's ump.
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Lets see if Vargas can continue getting guys to miss on that changeup. He'll probably regress, but he has more upside than Fister for me.
At the end of the day, I think both are true talent 5ish ERA guys who the park+defense might make mid-to-high 4 guys.
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If Vargas can command like that, and get that sort of deadfish action on his change, and throw 40-for-89 offspeed pitches, he's definitely up for re-evaluation IMHO...