Kyle Gibson’s Ceiling

Kyle Gibson ranked 64th in Zach Sanders’ end of season rankings, which in terms of real-life utility puts a guy somewhere between Nos. 2-3 starter territory, but depending on the league, on the back-end or streamer landscape based on how many teams you play with or format.

The names Gibson finished in front of aren’t particularly impressive, nor is the fact that he threw nearly 200 innings while many of his contemporaries threw far fewer than that in the 60-69 range. But it’s not like Gibson is certainly a finished product; maybe there’s more than meets the eye?

There are a few inalienable facts about Gibson:

  1. He’s incredibly tall
  2. He’s older than most think
  3. He throws a bowling-ball sinker
    a. It gets a ton of grounders

On the age thing, he’s two years older than Madison Bumgarner and has thrown more than 700 fewer big league innings. And clearly there are mitigating factors here, such as Bumgarner being a high school draft pick and Gibson spending significant time at Missouri. Besides that, Gibson missed a large chunk of time due to Tommy John surgery, so it’s not terribly surprising that he’ll spend his final pre-arb season at age-28. In fact, Gibson was born on the day between Games 5 and 6 of the 1987 World Series — which his Minnesota Twins won.

But anyway, back to him as a pitcher. Even if post-TJ he was never expected to be an ace, he’s fallen perhaps short of expectations on the strikeouts front, as he’s morphed into the prototypical Twins pitcher, perhaps cut right out of that 1987 era. It has gotten better however, in both a micro and macro sense. He’s amidst a three-year progression — interesting since that’s how many years he’s played, huh — in strikeout rate, and when broken down it looks even better during his 2015 season.

Sure 6.7 K/9 is no great shakes — under the AL starter average rate of 7.3 — but it certainly can be massaged with a great groundball rate. Gibson’s was 53.4 percent, tying him for 10th-best in baseball among 78 qualified starters with A.J. Burnett. It’s a formula that has worked, or at least been the inner, early workings of something that has worked for guys like Dallas Keuchel. Could it be true with Gibson too?

The strikeouts have to continue to improve for Gibson to make any sort of meaningful breakout. But for most of his 2015, they did just that:

Month by Month K/9 for Gibson, 2015

April 2.4
May 5.4
June 8.2
July 8.6
August 6.1
September 8.3

After striking out just six batters in the entire month of April, Gibson went on to have 12 starts the rest of the way in which he fanned six or more. In fact, strip out the month of April — and I know this is arbitrary but it’s such an aberration — and his K/9 is that magical 7.3 mark. And keep in mind, this is 172.1 innings of consecutive work from May 1 on. Or let’s re-frame that, seven innings fewer than he threw TOTAL in 2014.

His age complicates things a little, but maybe he’s onto something.

It’s not something I’ve heard a lot but it makes sense to question, and it’s that as a tall pitcher, it’s worth wondering if Gibson has trouble repeating his mechanics. For a guy who doesn’t seem to have any trouble throwing strikes — at least to a casual observer who also watched a lot of Samuel Deduno — Gibson has walked 3.0 batters per nine in his career, and was right at that mark in 2015 — signaling little progression. A strikeout rate increase in isolation would improve his chances greatly of a breakout, but any sort of meaningful improvement in walk rate helps a lot, especially for a guy who is still bound to give up his fair share of his by relying so heavily on a sinker. I have no meaningful analysis on if this is likely or even possible, but it just seems like a natural progression for him to see improvement.

Another thing that seems strange on the surface is how many home runs Gibson gives up for being such a heavy groundball guy. Then again, a furtive glance at the leaderboard shows that Gibson’s 0.83 HR/9 rate is a couple things. First, it’s pretty much right in the middle of his rookie and 2014 campaigns. Could it be him settling in around his career rate (0.78)? Sure. But there’s also this: the groundballers ahead of Gibson on the leaderboard — keeping in mind they’ve all thrown at least 162 innings so it’s a pretty good sample — have wildly aberrant home run rates. Brett Anderson, Tyson Ross and Keuchel were the top three, and their home run rates were:

0.41
0.66
0.90

I won’t tell you which belongs to who, but that’s some pretty wild fluctuation among the only three guys to have groundball rates over 60 percent. Felix Hernandez and Jon Niese — both also top-10 grounder guys — were above a home run per nine innings, while the stability seems to show up more behind Gibson with guys like Chris Heston, Sonny Gray, Yordano Ventura and Carlos Carrasco all in the .70-.90 range. Absent a really good way to add it all up and calculate it because I’m not so great with the math, it feels as though Gibson has sort of settled in to where he’ll stay in terms of home runs allowed. Playing at Target Field should help one might think, but 12 of his 18 home runs allowed came in the friendly confines in Minneapolis. He also was indiscriminate about handedness; eight came to lefties and 10 to righties. With no discernible platoon split anyway (.309 wOBA to LHH, .299 to RHH), that isn’t terribly surprising, though Target Field typically plays a bit bigger for LHH home run-wise.

What’s enthusing about Gibson’s pitch progression is that his sinker-slider repertoire has continued to evolve into a pretty nice marriage. The slider peaked at a 20.3 percent whiff rate, while he was able to get away from the four-seamer to throw 600 more two-seamers (1,237-637), which is big. Gibson’s four-seamer has been battered in his career (.330/.419/.494). My first theory was that Gibson exhibited better control of the two-seamer, which allowed him to pitch into better counts and avoid using the four, but that doesn’t appear to be true at this time. Still, the more he can eliminate the four, the better.

Another pleasant surprise was the changeup, which peaked with an 18.4 percent whiff rate — up from 13.8 the year before. Gibson turned to it nearly twice as often in 2015, keying in on the fact that he was probably keen on it being better, but it was reportedly an emphasis with pitching coach Neil Allen coming over from Tampa Bay.

In other words, there seems to be the possible evolution of a three-pitch mix, and with the improvement of command, could there be something here? I tend to think….maybe. As in, maybe there’s top-50 upside here. I don’t necessarily think he’ll be the next Keuchel. Hell, he’s older than Keuchel. But I think there’s still room for Gibson to grow. Not height-wise though. That would be crazy.





In addition to Rotographs, Warne writes about the Minnesota Twins for The Athletic and is a sportswriter for Sportradar U.S. in downtown Minneapolis. Follow him on Twitter @Brandon_Warne, or feel free to email him to do podcasts or for any old reason at brandon.r.warne@gmail-dot-com

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bartelsjason
8 years ago

I wonder if Gibson went to a sinker, “hard” slider, and changeup if he’d be even better? Been reading about this here at Fangraphs, so I wonder if this would take him to the next level, and be gb% super-elite, and get more whiffs on the change.

bartelsjason
8 years ago
Reply to  Brandon Warne

Yes, exactly.

Hollywood Hills
8 years ago
Reply to  bartelsjason

There is absolutely no change whatsoever in how the Phillies are run.

Bill Giles put the ownership group together with people who think like him 35 years ago. Guess what? Bill Giles is still there. He took part in the hiring of MacPhail and Klentak both. He was at the press conference announcing the hiring of Klentak.

35 Years.

Jim Thome and Cliff Lee

That’s it.

35 Years.

Carlos Ruiz and Maikel Franco, the only two starting quality players signed out of Latin America. Ruiz was signed out of Panama for eight thousand dollars. Need that in numerical form? $8,000- Eight Stacks.

Maikel Franco was signed for $100,000- That’s one hundred thousand American dollars. One hundred Stacks.

The Red Sox paid $63 million to sign Yoan Moncada. The Phillies paid $108,000- to sign both Carlos Ruiz and Maikel Franco.

Two real free agents and two starting position players from Latin America signed for nothing.

The Phillies Way is unchanged. They will sit in the cellar until they collect enough free talent in the MLB Plantation Slave Auction held every June. These young slave/intern players will be exploited to the max by the Phillies bloodsucking ownership cabal. For seven years they will make these bloodsucking criminals massive profits. If a few become fan favorites and the crowds are still huge as they near free agency then they will be signed to short, team friendly deals. If any have slipped through their screening process and turn out to be normal players seeking long contracts they will be demonized and booted out the door.

The Phillies after telling lies to their fan base from 2012 onward finally admitted they were “rebuilding”. The truth of the matter is they are already planning their next rebuild as they conduct this one.

THAT is The Phillies Way.
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Hollywood Hills
8 years ago

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esdrtfyu
8 years ago

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Google: Kevin Maitan FREE_AEC
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