Monitoring Kyle Gibson Trends

Gibson ranked 109th on Zach Sanders’ postseason starting pitcher rankings.

Tommy John surgery cost Kyle Gibson a significant part of 2011, and nearly the entire 2012 season. As a result, the former first-round pick — as a college pitcher — didn’t debut until he was 25, or see full-time action in the big leagues until he was 26. Being a bit behind the curve has sort of been the key theme in Gibson’s career, but he made headway in that department in 2014 — in some respects.

Gibson’s overall like of 13-12, 4.47 ERA and 5.4 K/9 is definitely not what some might consider progress. In fact, the American League average starting pitcher had a 3.92 ERA, 3.85 FIP and 7.4 K/9 — marks Gibson missed by quite a bit. But where the tall righty gets a pass is in groundball rate, where his 54.4 percent mark doesn’t only smoke the league average rate (43.2 percent), but rather ranks seventh league wide. A 6-foot-6 righthander getting that kind of downward plane is a very, very good thing.

The PITCHf/x profile for Gibson in 2014 is sort of a fun one. Gibson threw five different offerings at one point or another last season, and none resulted in a batting average over .300, with the highest being a .287 mark on his four-seamer — his third favorite pitch.

Gibson’s slider came to life in 2014, holding batters to a slash of .210/.241/.275 — easily his best in that respect — after opponents slaughtered it to the tune of a .303/.361/.485 mark in his 2013 cup of coffee. The slider has always been the pitch Gibson needs to keep hitters off his heavy two-seamer and rather ordinary four-seamer. This provides hope. A perfect-world progression for Gibson would be to the Justin Masterson of old. Masterson’s secondary weapon of choice? The slider.

Gibson’s two-seamer is extremely hittable. He threw it 1,149 times last season with a contact rate of 87.4 percent, and a zone contact rate of 94.5 percent. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it resulted in a groundball rate of 62 percent, an opponents’ batting line of .269/.331/.375, and strikes 62.6 percent of the time.

A pitch to keep an eye on with Gibson will be the changeup. With Neil Allen coming over from Tampa — where they love the changeup — there’s always the sliver of a chance that he brings that ideology with him. Gibson threw 354 changeups in 2014 with great success, allowing just a .242/.260/.341 line.

The changeup was also one of three pitches — with the slider and little-used curve — to have double-digit whiff rates for Gibson. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t expect someone with sub-6.0 K/9 to have three pitches that high.

A big thing Gibson struggled with in 2014 was consistency. In wins, Gibson had a 1.42 ERA, 1.05 WHIP and 5.7 K/9. In losses, he had a 11.04 ERA, 1.96 WHIP and 4.8 K/9. In no decisions, 2.41, 1.02 and 5.8. And while there’s the obvious caveat that this would apply to every pitcher — and of course that’s true — take a look at the AL splits for those situations:

In wins: 1.90 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 7.6 K/9
In losses: 7.63 ERA, 1.79 WHIP, 7.1 K/9
In no decisions: 3.38 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 7.9 K/9

Even with the noise that could be generated by relievers in one-inning samples — which I tend to think would smooth out in multiple thousands of innings samples — Gibson appears to have what I would imagine to be one of the biggest disparities between good cop and bad cop.

I’m not completely confident what we can draw from that. In coach-speak you might suggest he just needs to get more consistent, or that he’ll only get better as he gets more used to the league. I don’t know if I can buy that. What I do think works in Gibson’s favor is an arsenal that I think he’s gradually getting back post-TJ, and with his groundball profile could be a nice stealth add for the back-end of your fantasy rotation.

Oh, and to close on sort of an interesting note: Gibson was the No. 109 pitcher on Sanders’ rankings, right ahead of Justin Verlander at 110. Verlander opened the season at No. 3. Man.





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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ILikeTacoBellToo
9 years ago

“Oh, and to close on sort of an interesting note: Gibson was the No. 109 pitcher on Sanders’ rankings, right ahead of Justin Verlander at 110. Verlander opened the season at No. 3. Man.”

I hope he was pitching hurt last season and comes back strong. 2013 wasn’t Verlanderesque, either, though.

Ray
9 years ago

except for short stints, Verlander is toast.