I’ve been blessed with the responsibility of making sure the cat doesn’t die. The cat is Mr. Oliver P. Fucker, or Pussy Fucker for short. He’s nutless now, but at one point I thought he’d be knockin’ up all the neighborhood kitties.
Alas, I was excited to check out the Athletics / Mariners Game on Sportsnet Pacific (Friday Night), but then shit hit the fan in the Blue Jays / Indians game. A 3-hour rain delay, and a high scoring game meant the Jays game went from 4pm until 11:20.
I missed Brett Anderson’s first 4 Innings, and I was less than pleased. Needless to say, I didn’t catch Anderson’s 5 earned run blow-up in the second Inning.
At first glance, there’s really nothing in Anderson’s pitching line that screams ‘waiver-wire-add’, but the potential is there — it’s definitely there.
For reference, Anderson’s full line was 6IP, 5ER, 7H, 2BB, 2K.
After Anderson’s big second, he retired 8 of the next 10 batters he faced — (Chavez Singled – Erased by DP, Griffey Walked).
Anderson threw 85 pitches of which 50 were strikes, and induced 12 grounders to 9 fly-balls. All and all, other than the big inning, Anderson had a stellar debut.
Anderson’s 5 Run, Second Inning: After Beltre flied out to Cust, the problems started. Anderson had been consistently hitting 92mph on his fastball, and was locating it adequately. Anderson and Suzuki pitched around Griffey, and was consistently out of the strike-zone after a first pitch strike. Lopez and Branyan both singled on high-fastballs, that were by no means mistakes, to load the bases. With Kenji Johjima at bat, it’s clear that Anderson started overthrowing as he was hitting 93+, and leaving his fastball way up. Eventually, he toned it down and Johjima hit a solid curve that Anderson couldn’t have placed any better on the inside corner. After a mound visit, Betancourt managed to double off another high-hard one by Anderson. At this point, Anderson’s thrown three good fastballs that barely brushed the top of the strike-zone and each one’s been hit hard. Anderson finally made a mistake, hanging a slider to Thank-God-It’s-Endy-Chavez, but promptly got Franklin Guetierrez to chase a nice change-up and ground into a double-play.
Not nearly as bad as the 5ER would lead you to believe.
Anderson’s Stuff:
Anderson’s stuff is great, and he isn’t hesitant to throw any one of his four pitches. Unfortunately, MLB Gameday Data and Other Pitch Classification systems, have decided to break my head.
What I know for sure, is that Anderson has a big-breaking curve that normally comes in at 75mph and’ll buckle your knees.
Unfortunately, he only threw that pitch twice, both times to Mike Sweeney– and the rest is a mess. It’s easy to pick out Anderson’s fastball and change, as both have distinctive movement. The problem’s coming with what GameDay classifies as both a Curveball and a Slider.
Without spending too much time on this, I’d have to assume that all of the 84mph Curveballs were actually sliders which would validate Fangraphs.com Data of:
- 59 % Fastball averaging 91mph
- 27.4 % Slider averaging 83mph
- 2.4 % Curveball averaging 75mph
- 10.7% Change Up averaging 83mph
With that said, Anderson’s fastball has terrific movement and he should induce plenty of groundballs. In Anderson’s brief minor-league career, he posted high strike-out rates topping a strike-out per inning at each level. In 31 Double-A innings, Anderson improved his strike-out rate to 11K/9.
I wouldn’t expect Anderson to repeat those numbers this year, as he’ll more than likely pitch to contact until he gets comfortable. Anderson would be wise to take advantage of Oakland’s solid defense: forcing opponents to pound the ball into the ground.
Anderson’s Immediate Fantasy Impact
I’d expect Anderson to induce plenty of ground balls rather than attacking hitters full-bore, at least to start the season. This should result in a K-Rate of about 6-7 Batters per 9, rather than the High-8′s you’d expect.
This should result in Anderson also posting a useful ERA and WHIP. Anderson’s control is above-average, but he’ll have to avoid the big inning. Like almost all young players, once Anderson learns to trust his stuff, he’ll be successful.
Pitching in a great pitchers park, with a solid defense behind him, should give Anderson some extra fantasy leeway.
I’m not comfortable predicting final stats for Anderson until I see another start, but he should be at least as valuable as any rookie currently in the bigs. I’d have no problem rostering Anderson in deep leagues, as his upside is tremendous. If Anderson was rostered prior to his 5ER performance but was dropped — he’s worth a look.
There are a lot of good things you can pick out from Anderson’s start against Seattle, but in the end they are Seattle. The one thing I cannot stress enough is Anderson’s lack of experience. He’s got the make-up to succeed and he’s more major league ready than just about any young pitcher, but he’s only pitched 225 innings of pro-ball. The Athletics may be very cautious with Anderson, and I wouldn’t expect to see him come close to a full season.
Anderson along with Cahill are the Athletics’ future, and if they’re not in contention; I doubt they’d risk injuring either of their two future stars. Both are capable of epic 110-pitch, 10-K, 8-inning games, but I wouldn’t expect to see them anytime soon.
Adam, over at Project Prospect, has put together an in-depth look at Anderson’s start against the Mariners. It’s definitely worth a read, probably even more-so than this little diddy — That’s why I linked at the end, so you’d have to read this sucker first.
