Pitcher Spotlight: That Just Happened – Pomeranz & Pruitt

Some quick thoughts on a pair of AL East arms who threw on Monday:

Pomeranz Soaring Despite An Interesting Flaw

It wasn’t Drew Pomeranz’s best effort, but he managed a baseline quality start and wiggled out trouble that a 2.00 WHIP would normally lead allowing him to hand a lead to the bullpen after the Red Sox jumped the Jays for four in the seventh. I don’t hear many Red Sox fans clamoring for Anderson Espinoza these days (the return for Pomy last summer) as Pomeranz has been the team’s second-best starter behind Chris Sale this year.

He is just a two-pitch pitcher so you might expect a platoon issue with righties, but it’s been lefties that have done the damage against him this year thanks to a .466 (!) BABIP, including a .522 mark on the curveball in 40 PA. That’s highest BABIP lefty hitters have against any pitch this year (min. 40 PA). The whopping .053 ISO tells me that there is some misfortune tied to this gaudy number. I’ve got receipts, too:

Some of them are well-struck without a doubt, including Brad Miller’s shown above, but it’s also placed PERFECTLY to get through as a hit. A few inches one way or the other and it’s a routine groundball to the first or second baseman. The others are just comically unfair, but they seem to be the norm this year for Pomeranz’s curve against lefties. That said, Pomeranz isn’t doing himself any favors with the pitch. His 57% Zone rating (again, this is all curves vs. lefties only) is highest in the league and his 10% swinging strike is 7th-lowest and well below the 15% average among the 42 pitchers in the sample.

He only had six plate appearances against lefties on Monday (1-for-5, 2 K, 1 BB) and threw just four lefty-lefty curves, but it’s something to keep an eye on going forward. The season may run out before regression can kick in for Pomeranz and lower that AVG on lefty-lefty curves, but there’s also the fact that non-star lefties are regularly given a breather against good lefty arms when a viable platoon exists so this might be something that doesn’t really hurt him down the stretch, especially with September roster expansion making a platoon option more likely. I’d continue to start Pomeranz in just about every situation over the final month.

Can Pruitt Do It Again?

One of the more underreported stories out of Player’s Weekend that took place this past Friday through Sunday is that the league let Missouri’s Little League World Series qualifying team play in place of the Kansas City Royals. Unfortunately, the young bucks didn’t score a single run so the league gave ‘em another game on Monday and they were once again shutout. The jump from little league to major league is just too severe. Tampa Bay starter Austin Pruitt didn’t mind, though, as he dropped six innings of one-hit on the tykes with six strikeouts and just one walk.

*holds finger to earpiece he’s weirdly wearing while writing this*

I’m being told that it was the actual Kansas City Royals playing the last four games, not a group of little leaguers. Hmm, interesting. Anyway…

The start was Pruitt’s third with a 55 or better Game Score (it was actually a season-high 75), yet it only brought his ERA down to 4.50 since being slotted into the rotation back on July 28th. That’s because he’s either great or horrible – no in between. He has three 55+ Game Scores and three other starts of 5+ earned runs. There was the one 6 IP/3 ER vs. Cleveland which would qualify as an “in between” start, but he’s mostly guardrail-to-guardrail. A comically bad fastball has been the primary factor in his struggles.

He has allowed a .358/.393/.717 line on the pitch since joining the rotation with more homers allowed (4) than walks (3). He does somehow have an 18% K rate with the pitch despite a 4% swinging strike rate. Righties are the problem here. They have a 1.382 OPS, 2 K, 2 HR, and 1 BB off the pitch in 26 PA. Unsurprisingly, he throws it in the middle of the zone 50% of the time against righties, most in the league (min. 25 PA). He leaves the majority of them middle-out and batters are teeing off. His 1.651 OPS in those situations (outer half heaters to righties) is the league’s worst (min. 90 pitches thrown).

Pruitt seems to be fully aware of his fastball’s shortcomings which is why he uses it just 43% of the time, 9th-lowest in the 2nd half and 20th-lowest on the season. I simply don’t have enough trust in his trio of his secondary pitches that live in a tight 7 mph band (88 mph cutter, 85 mph changeup, and 81 mph curveball) to give him a shot down the stretch, especially with back-to-back starts against Boston after he faces the White Sox this weekend.

The Red Sox have a righty-heavy lineup and replacements for all of their lefties if they want go that route and exploit Pruitt’s reverse platoon. And even the White Sox might be a problem as they don’t have any prominent lefties so they could feasibly run nine righties out there against him if Omar Narvaez sits. I know it’s tempting to scoop any available arm flashing some strong numbers down the stretch as the pool of available starts rapidly narrows and you’re fighting for every single point, but Pruitt has more than the normal risk associated with streaming starters. Be careful. Wait no, forget being careful — just flat out avoid him!