Luke Hochevar: Starter? (Again)

With the departure of Ervin Santana and Bruce Chen, and the ineffectiveness of Wade Davis, the Royals are looking for some starting pitching depth. To replace Santana, the Royals signed Jason Vargas. The rotation is Shields, Guthrie, and Vargas at the top; while that isn’t that bad, it doesn’t scream playoffs. The Royals have a multitude of players for the other two rotation spots, including Danny Duffy, Yordano Ventura, Wade Davis, and Luke Hochevar. Wait, Hochevar? Again? Yes, again. The Royals are aiming to give him another shot. What can we expect? 

Jeremy Guthrie and the Value of Defense

           Jeremy Guthrie seems to be an interesting person. His Twitter feed is often full of shoe giveaways and other assorted things. As a baseball player, and from a statistical perspective, he is equally interesting. Throughout his career, he has maintained a below-average K% and yet has remained an effective “innings eater”*. He doesn’t generate ground balls more than other pitchers, and he doesn’t strand more baserunners than other pitchers. He is roughly average in those categories. However, he does have a below average (or above average, depending on your perspective) career BABIP; essentially, fewer balls in play go for base hits against Guthrie than the league average, which is odd because the vast majority of pitchers have little to no control over their BABIPs.

*Innings eaters. A nice way of saying, “You’re not very good, but you’re not bad, and you’re healthy, which is valuable”