Gil Meche and his $55 Million Slider

by
November 28, 2008

Gil Meche has survived and thrived despite two rotator cuff surgeries. The 1996 first-round pick of the Seattle Mariners, Meche made his Major League debut as a 20-year old in 1999. However, he did not pitch in the majors in either 2001 or 2002 due to his injured shoulder and it took several years to re-emerge as something more than a fringe player.

In 2006, Meche added a slider to his repertoire. His O-Swing% jumped from 17.1 to 22.5 percent, his GB% went from 38.9 to 43.1 percent and his K/9 went from 5.21 to 7.52 percent. It was also the final year of his contract and he parlayed his success into a five-year, $55 million contract with the Royals, which was lampooned at the time by the mainstream media and most statheads.

But Meche has been extremely effective in his first two years with Kansas City. He has thrown 426.1 innings and posted a 3.91 ERA in that span. He made the All-Star team in 2007, notched 14 wins last year, and was one of the top pitchers in the league in the second half. In his final 14 starts, Meche was 8-2 with a 3.00 ERA and 95 strikeouts in 90 innings. He had 11 QS in 14 outings and did this all with a .309 BABIP after the break.

There were two big reasons for Meche’s success last season. He notched the highest strikeout rate for any full season in the majors of his career, as he posted 7.83 K/9. Also, Meche allowed a home run on just 7.9 percent of his fly balls, which ranked 18th in the majors. He cut back on his curve and change to focus more on his fastball and slider. Meche used his slider 16.6 percent of the time last year, nearly as often as he threw his curve (17.8).

Meche was a lower-level number-three type fantasy starter in a standard 12-team mixed league last year. Barring some unforeseen improvement in his WHIP, that is probably his upside. But he is very reliable, having made 100 starts the past three seasons, he won’t kill you in any category and is a plus pitcher in strikeouts. Since many fantasy owners do not hold Meche in high regard (ADP in the 220s last year), he is someone who can provide great value in the high teens of your draft.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.




 

Comments are closed.