Welcome to the Robles fan club.
I've been calling him the next Erik Bedard for a while now. He's short, so he's undervalued. If someone like, say, Dan Cortes would throw in the mid-90s with a great changeup and an improving and potentially deadly curveball, he would be the #1 pitching prospect in someone's system. Oh, wait, Cortes was...and without the ability to control anything he throws.
Robles has his control issue days, but most of his control problems this season came in a month of working on mechanics, not as a general rule.
April: 9 K/3.5 BB (perfectly fine for a power pitcher)
May: 10.5 K/4.5BB (borderline with the BB but still 2.35:1 control)
June: 8.5 K/6BB (cue mechanical work that threw him off the wagon)
July: 9 K/1BB (wait, what?)
He's gonna have his walks. Most power pitchers ARE 8-9K /3.5 BB guys. Bedard? 8.8 K/ 3.6BB. A career ERA+ of 121 says that the lefty power FB/Curve/Change pitcher can work better than most skillsets out there.
Robles will have Bedard Disease in that he strikes out a lot of guys but can take a number of pitches to do it. That means his outings might only go 5 or 6 innings, and the fact that he seems to wear out at 100 pitches also limits his top-end.
I can live with that. He hasn't yet gotten tired as the SEASON goes along, and he will have his games where he doesn't get tired and mows down the lineup forever. But just look at his by-inning stats this year and you'll see what happens (sample size alert).
1st: 8.9K / 3.5 BB
2nd: 10.3 K/ 2.3 BB
3rd: 10.3 K / 3.6 BB
4th: 10 K / 3.7 BB
5th: 6.9 K / 8.5 BB
6th: 8.7 K/ 4.8 BB
Good in the first, KILLS in innings 2-4, hits a wall in the 5th. If he's still going in the 6th it's not terrible.
Over his career, it's basically the same sort of story. IF he's going past the 5th, he's decent, but he's a 5-6 inning pitcher. Again, there are worse things. The guy has a ridiculous arm, and the fewer pitches he can throw in the beginning of games the better he'll be as a starter. If he can get weak contact instead of no contact (and can get better fielders behind him) then he can stay a starter. The need to strike everyone out is a power pitcher's strength, and his weakness. As Robles matures, I'm curious to see if he can save his Ks for when he needs em and get some 10 pitch innings to let him go later.
But I try not to pre-judge my talent. We moved Soriano to the pen because he only had one weapon (that FB) and after 4 innings guys could catch it. Mauricio has 3 potential weapons. Those who want to move Robles to the pen have apparently forgotten that he's worse against lefties than righties, so you'd need to use him as something other than a lefty specialist - and since there's nothing WRONG with his mechanics that would force him to the pen, let the kid start.
As a true power pitcher who has made it to AAA at the age of 21, he's got the best non-Pineda starting arm in our minors. Let him use it, until he proves his starting capabilities one way or the other.
~G
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