Is Ian Kennedy a good comp for Beaven?
The numers say:
Kennedy minor league stats: 0.4-HR; 2.8-BB; 9.9-K -- 3.55-K/BB (248 IP)
B.Beaven minor league stat: 0.7-HR; 1.5-BB; 5.2-K -- 3.41-K/BB (584 IP)
From their stats, they aren't in the same hemisphere. Kennedy struggled in his first couple of flashes, 26-BB and 27-K in 39-IP in his 9 2008 starts. (ouch!) But at 25, he was already fanning 8 guys a game, (okay, 7.8) ... but Kennedy always had stuff ... he had to "learn" control, (he was originally a 3 walk per game guy in the minors -- he just "became" a 2.2 and then 1.7 BB/9 guy in the majors).
Fister, however ... there's a great comp. A control artist from day one, that "learned" how to miss bats since reaching the majors. Make no mistake. THAT is the much harder route. Guys who throw 98 are much more "capable" of backing off and gaining control than guys with 5-K minors walk rates are capable of pushing that up toward 7 after making the bigs.
This is not to say Beaven "might" not be for real.
My position is unchanged. Prospects do not improve by getting older. They improve by fixing SOMETHING. I, being a Maddux fan, have always had a personal bias toward the cerebral "pitcher" over the athletic "thrower". I actually like the Moyer, Vargas, Washburn kind of pitcher more than the Morrow type guys with so much more talent and so much less upstairs.
So, let me make this perfectly clear. I think Doc's comp of Ian Kennedy is (and sorry for the language), utterly ridiculous.
The comp Doc SHOULD have used is ...
Greg Maddux. minor league: 0.3; 2.7; 5.7
Maddux didn't break the 6-K barrier until almost a thousand innings into his MLB career. Of course, Maddux managed a 1.0; 4.3; 5.8 line as a rookie, with the accordingly awful 5.61 ERA in 155 innings.
The defining characteristic (for me) in all of the truly great players remains ... can they LEARN? Obviously, if you start with talent AND learn, you become great.
So, I'm suitably impressed by the return of Beavan. But it's way too early to assume he'll be this new guy "consistently". Remember, Vargas goes through bad spells. Heck, even Felix goes through bad spells. And much of the final picture for any SP is what is the ratio of the good days from the bad. Phil Humber can throw a no hitter on a given day. That alone does not mean he is a good pitcher. How bad are the bad days, and more important - how frequently do they come?
I watched Glavine stink for a full year.
I know Maddux stank for a full year.
The key point with both was a willingness to learn, and a refusal to let a year of bad results defeat them. Most MLB players were the best at every level. The pitchers are ALL used to going 25-3 against inferior competition. How they react, when they're going 7-17 with Boeing ERAs (7.07; 7.47; 7.57) ... is key to reading their future.
Ian Snell had "stuff". He didn't have the head to handle adversity and adapt once his stuff wasn't enough. Beavan seems to have embraced his 2012 struggles and come out the other side better for it. He appears to be doing exactly what I said it was possible for Noesi to do. It's still possible for Noesi to come around, of course. But, once a player shows the SKILL of "learning", he is (IMO) a much better prospect for finding a way to stick around.
Q. Wow, two good starts for your old whipping boy Blake Beavan. What could possibly go wrong?
A. The thing that Dr. D fears the most is that Beavan will start using some breaking pitch other than his slider.
He's got a curve and a change, nominally, but they need to be stowed. Today's pitch mix was, er, pitch-perfect: 61 fastballs, 29 sliders, and 6 curves sprinkled in and he made sure to bury them.
The slider is improving on a game-by-game basis, too. Last year it broke back to about 0" by 0", like a cutter. His first two starts back out of the minors, it broke 2" by 2". July 27th against the Royals, it broke a full 4" by 4". It's not that the two inches miss the bat. It's that he's snapping off the slider with gusto, getting a feel for it because he's only using two pitches.
He can throw the slider to drop below the knees. He can throw it to break off the plate for a Beltre swing. He can throw it back door to lefties. And he can throw it right down the middle like a super-change.
Love love love the slider he threw Friday. Gotta have it. ... if the pitch mix changes, so does our prognosis.
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Q. Realistically, does Beavan's slider now GIVE him a shot at becoming Ian Kennedy.
A. Kennedy's catchers don't wear lead chest protectors. There's nothing radioactive going on when he's throwing. The most difficult part of this template -- 70 sharp little fastballs thrown right into the pocket of a catcher's glove -- Beavan already had that.
As San-Man would cheerfully remind us, it was a while before Ian Kennedy was Ian Kennedy.
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Q. So where does Beavan sit. Can you win your next pennant with this player?
A. Where this player sits is here: the next six or eight starts going forward become quite an intriguing sound check for him in our cyber-world. If the K's are reliably over 6 and the walks remain under 2, well, you can take it from there. He goes into 2013 as a mini-Doug.
Could Beavan then just keep hopping one plateau after another, like Doogie did, and spiral off into his own universe? I can't see it. Fister is a freakish athlete six ways from Sunday. But am sure you amigos will explain it to me.
Zduriencik thought Beavan had "It" when he grabbed him from the stRangers. Friday night, the evidence came in in Jay-Z's favor. Go with the slider there dude. And don't get into peoples' knees.
BABVA,
Dr D
Comments
Even so, that doesn't make him worth nothing. He BELIEVES he's a big-leaguer. He's confident past the point of cocky, and was while K-ing 4 per 9. He can find the zone whenever he wants - that's not his problem.
As Sandy said, he's proved that his ridiculous confidence is not getting in the way of the humility to learn something new and try something different. I'm glad to see it.
But an aimable fastball and a decent slider doesn't get him to the finish line, for me. It's better than nothing, and I've been saying all along that there's no way you throw a low-20s pitcher away who's proven he doesn't sweat the pressure AT ALL. If I could put Beavan's head on Noesi's shoulders we'd have a legit #3.
If Beavan can be a legit #5 instead of the 6 or 7 he's been, that's good enough for now. IMO, Erasmo is the short version of that Beavan/Noesi pairing, a man with a good, aimable fastball and nasty offspeed stuff who thinks his way through his outings. What we're trying to do is fill out the rotation with battlers.
Noesi in his current frame of mind has no business seeing a start for us again. Felix is a fighter, as is Vargas. If Vargas goes we need a guy like Beavan to step up. If Vargas stays, and Erasmo and Hultzen are both rotation mainstays next year, then we've only got one spot up for grabs, and that'll be the one Beavan is trying to hold off Walker and Paxton for.
Assuming both those guys are still here, they actually HAVE out-pitches. Beavan's gonna need that 6K and not 4K - he's gotta keep that plateau. Absolutely agreed, Doc - I believe attitude and intelligence are weapons, just as "motor" is an under-rated basketball tool.
Beavan's always had attitude, and he's showing some intelligence. I've said before that he'll be a big league pitcher. He's got that Ryan Franklin kind of chip, and his fastball has come up from the high 80s into the 90s and he can make that work for him.
But unless Walker or Paxton gets moved for a monster of some stripe, he'll need that Vargas trade in the next 3 days to get a long-term shot with us.
We'll see what the trade deadline brings for the Mariners and Mr. Beavan.
~G
For the record, it would be acceptable for Beavan to turn into Greg Madux instead of Ian Kennedy. I'd totally be ok with that.
The 50% being the stats, of course -- you're overlooking the fact that Ian Kennedy has had an offspeed game since his days at USC.
Blake Beavan (supposedly) developed an offspeed game two starts ago. It is the old Blake Beavan that is not only a poor comparison for Ian Kennedy, but also for the new Blake Beavan.
Pitchers morph and change -- sometimes into completely different templates. You're not going to be able to deploy your simplistic paint-by-numbers back-of-the baseball card matchups in order to understand them.
Honestly, Sandy. Brandon McCarthy's 2003 minor league season, Derek Lowe's 2006 minor league season, Jamie Moyer's 1985 minor league season, those statlines are not going to help you understand their stardom in the major leagues.
You might be able to get away with the minor leagues stats dogma with hitters. Pitchers develop new motions and new pitches.
IF Blake Beavan goes with fastball and slider, throwing the slider with conviction like he did last night, I'll cheerfully predict him to take his place among the league's good #3-4 starters. Beginning yesterday.
I've got 9,000 kinds of respect for the game he threw last night. A located fastball is a whale of a pitch. And now they can't use the batting-cage timing to defend themselves.
IMHO, the out pitches are essentially the same ones that Doogie's were early on. Three spots for fastballs, and the offspeed pitch on the edge or breaking off it.
This is kinda like a 50-50 soccer tackle for a loose ball. :- ) Let's see who comes up with this one amigo.
Personally I thought the slider had more impact than you did Gordon, but that's cool... the QuesTec system does require three vectors, after all ... :- )
Where we have always agreed on Beavan: that 92 mph PITCH TO CONTACT game deserves a short, cheap, and irreverent funeral. I'd sooner watch Miguel Olivo bat against Jered Weaver than to watch the old Blake Beavan stand out there and throw BP to locations where they can't QUITE barrel it up.
Yet a lot of baseball people thoroughly enjoy that approach. I'm watching something other than baseball that day.
Remains questionable, as you noted.
Beavan could rock the 6.0 to 6.5 strikeout rate, still run the 1+ walk rates ... and fail to become rich because of the HR rate. He's at 1.3 this year, 1.25 career, and with the way he challenges the gopher rate will remain key.
Last night there was a slider, thigh-high, that was pounded to just in front of the warning track in deep left-center. At Safeco.
But you know and I know that if he fans 6+, walks 1+ and has a normal HR rate then he's going to make a lot of dinero. Your point seems to be that the 6+ K's are not feasible...
The "little bit shaky" Fister before he hit the afterburners. To riff on my post on the other thread, Fister was striking out 5 and 6 guys in 25ish percent of his starts his first 2 big-league seasons. Beavan did it once in 28 starts. He's now done it in each of his last two starts, but that still only gets him to the back-end version of Fister.
He's got another plateau to leap, IMO, to get to Frontline Fister. That's why I'm saying if this Beavan is Early Fister, then he can hang...but he's not that #3 starter you're talking about for me even if he's keeping this up.
I'm still happy to see it, believe me - there's no way Beavan isn't my backup plan if the doctor or ineptness come calling with our other young prospects.
But I'm still not saying, "Well since we have Beavan, we can safely trade Vargas and Paxton, no worries there." My confidence factor in Beavan is about 4.5. Let's get that a bit higher with more repeat performances, shall we?
~G
But it's a good start. 6K/1.8 BB type Beavan would make himself a lot of dough, and that's where he needs to be. Now that teams know he's gonna throw that slider and challenge inside and high with the heat, we'll see if he gets treated differently. We were always terrible with our scouting reports on guys we'd never seen, and hitters had never seen this Blake Beavan. Confused scouting reports can lead to confused hitters.
When he can do that as people are expecting him to do it, then I'll believe he's leapt that plateau and can now be counted as a legit competitor for a rotation spot. Looking forward to his next start, which may be the first time I've ever been able to say that. ;-)
~G
If Beavan executed these pitches each time out, then we're talking the 2009-10 Fister. Not the fire-breathing monster that Fister has become since. (I'm seriously wondering if a 12-year run of good health wouldn't result in some kind of HOF-type career. Fister is making Orel Hershiser look like a dead man.)
Can't alter any trade strategy this July 31. Beavan has flashed the #3SP form in two games. Next four-five games tell.
Another nice outing today. Oh yeah. Given health... bank on the HOF career. How do I know? because we traded him (tongue only slightly in cheek).