Mound Talk

A little Baker Bashing on a Wednesday is always fun. It’s particularly fun when Dusty Baker rides his star young pitcher into the ground. Edison Volquez is dominating the league ranking near the top in strikeouts & ERA. Though he has struggled with walks, as he has throughout his career, Volquez has been very effective. What I wanted to look at today is how Baker has been using Volquez.

Typically, having a pitcher throw more than 100 pitches in a game is not good. At least not good in the sense that it creates a higher risk of injury & has a negative impact on short-term future starts. Baseball Prospectus has done wonderful work on this subject. Buy a subscription & read their work. I promise it won’t be a bad investment. But keeping in mind that pitchers are at added risk when they throw more than 100 pitches, let’s look at Volquez’ last five starts and Baker’s in-game decisions.

There are a few important pieces of information to note first. Most importantly, the Reds bullpen isn’t great so squeezing a few more pitches out of Volquez in a tight game might be better than letting the bullpen come in for 4 full innings of work. Second, Baker needs to win now. The shelf life for a losing manager is short & especially when the Reds are a team that is built to compete this year & the future has some big question marks. With those two pieces of information in mind, let’s look at the last five Volquez starts.

Game 1: 112 Pitches, 5 innings, Reds leading 5-1
Volquez allowed just four hits through five innings and struck out seven but he did walk four batters. It was a good outting for him & I don’t think there is any evidence to suggest Baker mishandled him. In fact, Volquez went 1-2-3 on Ryan Theriot, Derrek Lee & Aramis Ramirez in the fifth so if anything, it might have given Baker credence to send him back out there.

Game 2: 105 pitches, 7 innings, Reds leading 7-1
Another good outting as Volquez gave up three hits & four walks in seven innings. He struck out seven, again & only gave up one run. He was obviously more effective & efficient in this game as he lasted two more innings with seven less pitches. With the lead the Reds had, there was no reason to run him back out there for the eighth & Baker made the right move pulling him when he did. However, it marks two straight games over 100 pitches for Volquez.

Game 3: 104 pitches, 7 innings, Reds leading 9-1
This was probably his best outting of the year allowing five hits & three walks in seven innings. He struck out ten. Baker pulled him for a pinch hitter in the eighth (Is Paul Bako really an upgrade?). The lead was sufficient & the opponent was the Giants. Again, doesn’t seem to be anything wrong here. It’s his third straight game with over 100 pitches but two were barely over 100 & a good starter needs to be durable.

Game 4: 100 pitches, 6 innings, Reds trailing 0-2
Through six innings, Volquez gave up four hits & two walks. He struck out nine but gave up a home run (his first of the year). He was pulled in the seventh for Jeremy Affeldt. I find this to be the curious outting for Volquez and Baker. Volquez had a bit of a shaky statistical sixth allowing two walks, a strikeout swinging & two grounders while facing Yunel Escobar, Chipper Jones, Mark Teixeira, Brian McCann & Jeff Francoeur. The previous inning he went 1-2-3 on the back end of the Braves lineup. The pitcher was due up in the eighth inning for the Reds & as mentioned, the Reds ‘pen isn’t that great. So the move to pull Volquez after just 100 pitches when he seemed to be doing pretty well based off the game log, is curious, to say the least.

Game 5: 118 pitches, 7 innings, Reds leading 9-0
Another very strong outting allowing four hits & six walks while fanning ten. A little background for you before diving into this. The Reds have used five relievers in the last two days. One was used on both days & for the sake of argument, I’ll consider him unavailable. The others pitched an inning or less and shouldn’t have been unavailable. The Reds certainly were not strapped for relievers & with a nine run lead, it was not an issue. Where Baker made a mistake was after the sixth inning he let Volquez go out for another inning of work with over 100 pitches thrown in an uneccesary situation.

Clearly this isn’t a blog post to rip Baker but one to show a trend developing with, yet another, Baker-managed young pitcher. Volquez owners beware!