Ortiz Looks to Get Lincecumed Soon

I was going to write up the data I had compiled on PQS for April 2007 that I had covered last season, but I think the more relevant thing now is whether Lincecum will get called up soon and whom would he replace. Based on PQS, the only starter until tonight to have a Disaster game was Matt Morris. But Ortiz just had a monsterly bad game. Zito, even when he was being battered early, showed enough sabermetrically that they were not considered badly pitched games - sometimes bad luck results in a lot of earned runs. It happens.

However, Ortiz is the first to have a 0 PQS start, with less than 5 IP thrown. And he and Morris are the only starters to have a disaster start and the lowest average PQS of the group by far: Zito 3.0 PQS; Cain 3.6 PQS; Lowry 3.2 PQS; Morris 2.6 PQS; and Ortiz 2.0 PQS. Plus, his starts have gotten worse over time, with his second start looking like the aberration, not the norm.

Ortiz's Main Virtue - Less Hits - Is Not There

The frightening thing is that Ortiz main competitive advantage during his career was his ability to keep opposing teams from getting hits on balls in play. Unfortunately, his BABIP this season is .350 right now, though Fangraphs show his FIP as 3.78 probably based on that high rate. However, part of the reason why .300 BABIP is the mean that pitchers regress to is that pitchers who cannot get it down that low get replaced by better pitchers, generally.

So Who You Gonna Call? Tim Lincecum!

And right now, there is no better pitcher than Tim Lincecum cooling his heels in the minors. In his last start last Sunday, in 6 IP, 86 pitches, 3 hits, 0 walks, 0 runs/ER, 16 strikeouts. That's 76% of the batters he faced. Since the start of the season, 31 IP, 12 hits, 11 walks, 46 strikeouts (13.4 K/9), 1 ER for 0.29 ERA.

Over his short pro career: 62.2 IP in 13 games, 26 hits, 7 ER, 3 HR, 23 BB, 104 K's, 0.78 WHIP, 1.01 ERA. Per inning rates: 14.9 K/9; 3.30 BB/9; 4.52 K/BB; 0.43 HR/9; .240 BABIP. Scary good, eh?

Irresistible Force Against a Very Movable Object

While Ortiz was a feel good story for Spring Training and the early part of the season, unfortunately, he has not really shown much except for that second game. And it is not that he is really pitching that poorly, at least until today's game, it is just that he's not pitching that particularly well either. The odd thing is that the reason his ERA until today's game was decent was because he was keeping his walks down, his rate is still only 2.76 BB/9 after today's debacle, and his HR rate, which is now high. But everything else is not looking so good, he has a very low K/9, high HR/9 rate, though oddly his K/BB is good at 2.00, but even that cannot combat a low K/9 rate combined with a high BABIP.

If he does not start pitching much better over his next 2-3 starts, taking the season into mid-to-late May, he will find himself pushed aside for Lincecum, because there's no reason to keep Tim down there the way he is pitching, he is just embarrassing the other teams right now. I think if Ortiz can still pitch respectably, the Giants might be able to trade him to another team for a low level prospect, much like the trade of Michael Tucker for Kelvin Pichardo a couple of years ago. After all, there was still a market for Sidney Ponson, Jeff Weaver, and other pretty sad starting pitchers this past off-season, so Ortiz should be able to fetch a nice prospect from another team.

But he also might end up pushing someone out of the bullpen as he was a long time closer in our farm system before being brought up as a starter. Vinnie Chulk, unfortunately has not been doing as well as I (and the Giants) thought he might. He was the initial go-to guy for setup duties at the start of the season, though Bochy has purposefully kept most roles fluid until naming Hennessey the main setup guy either yesterday or today, in an article on the Giants website.

But, like Ortiz, he has had his good points and his bad points, his good games and his bad games, and if there were no alternatives, both would probably not be on the firing line. However, the dominos start with Lincecum and both Ortiz and Chulk could fall from him coming up. They are pitching for their major league roster spots right now. Russ, especially, must turn things around if he still wants to stay in the majors, whether here or somewhere else, as a starter or a reliever. At the rate he is going, he's not going to displace Chulk from the bullpen, but if he can at least pitch decently enough, he might be able to grab Chulk's spot.

And that's assuming that there is spot to grab. Bochy has been openingly saying that Frandsen will be brought up soon (he's hitting over .400 after all) and that it might be accomplished by going with an 11 main pitching staff, instead of the current 12. The next couple of weeks will be critical for determining what happens next for these players.