Misching Something: Some Comments on Misch

I was discussing Misch on another site, so I thought I would post my thoughts and research here as well (modified to work here as a standalone post):

According to the prospect book I got, the author projected Misch as a #5 starter debuting in 2007. It noted that Misch's command took a beating when he was promoted to AAA in 2005 and that he needs to have that to succeed because he's a contact pitcher with below average velocity (85-88) and strikeout rate. He needs to mix pitches to survive.

I wouldn't count him out for 2007, and I wouldn't compare him with Verlander or other pitchers who rely on a fastball to get batters out. Misch is a pitcher, not a thrower, and he needs to trick hitters into missing his balls or hitting them to his fielders and keeping it in the park. Even in a hitter's league like the PCL, he was able to keep his HR/9 under the key 1.0 benchmark.

Plus he made a huge leap between 2005 and 2006 in his AAA performance. He had a 6.35 ERA in 2005 and got it down to 4.02 in 2006. He had a horrible 69/40 K/BB ratio in 2005 but raised it to 57/11 in 2006 (for Fresno again). And his G/F ratio was 1.17 in Fresno, 1.32 in Connecticutt.

And as far as carrying over performance from the minors to the majors, I think Lowry would be a better example to observe - as Lefty noted, Misch has been a Lowry-lite. In 2004, Lowry's H9, HR9, BB9, and K9 were all virtually identical between AAA and majors. In 2005, they were all about the same as 2004, except that BB9 was higher (badly so, at 3.34, where 3.0 is the max you want to see) but K9 was higher as well, keeping the key K/BB safely above the 2.0 mark (2.6 in 2004, 2.3 in 2005).

Misch this season:

Team City - BB9 - K9 - HR9 - K/BB
Fresno - 1.53 - 7.93 - 0.97 - 5.2
Connect - 2.08 - 6.86 - 0.61 - 3.3

Misch has actually struck out more than Lowry did in AAA, on a K9 basis, and walked a lot less. But ignore his low AA HR/9 rate, as I've shown, Dowd totally dampens HR rates - in about equal IP, Misch gave up 1 at home, 6 on the road, resulting in 0.2 HR/9 at home and 1.0 HR/9 on road. The latter is pretty close to the AAA rate. Plus his K/BB on road is 3.9 because his BB9 on road is 1.83 (again close to AAA rate; Dowd does some wacky stuff to pitchers and hitters).

Basically, almost any prospect who isn't a team's top 10 prospect (and Misch isn't) should be happy to have a career like Zerbe. But Misch appears to be following the Lowry path to the majors, and he has arguably outpitched Lowry at each level in his climb up, following in Lowry's footsteps. So, I would not count out Misch in the competition for the 5th spot in the rotation in 2007.