For those of you not paying attention, the Arizona Diamondbacks have 52 wins, which, despite being well behind the Braves in the Wild Card and 3.5 games behind the Giants in the NL West, is rather impressive. After seriously struggling last season and not having a single pitcher with double digit wins, the Dbacks already have 2 guys who have accomplished the feat this season, Ian Kennedy and Dan Hudson. It is the third guy in the rotation, Josh Collmenter, whom I’d like to focus on. Collmenter has a 2.65 ERA in 85 innings this season including 12 starts, stats that definitely put him in the discussion for Rookie of the Year honors. But he’s only 5-5 and won last night for the first time since June 3rd against the Nationals. Bottom line is, I’m having a lot of trouble deciding wether or not Josh Collmenter is good.
Everyone who follows the sport has a gut reaction to every player. Like you just know that Albert Pujols is good and Ronnie Cedeno isn’t. If you had to place a bet on one of two teams and you had only two seconds to decide and the only info you had was that Justin Verlander was starting for one team and Doug Fister was pitching for the other team, you’d instinctively choose the Verlander team because you just know that he’s better (unless you were Doug’s dad or something, then I’d hope that you would pick him). I’m not sure where Collmenter falls in this test now, which is ok because he is a rookie but, the thing is, I have no clue where he’ll fall in the future, and that’s unusual.
Most of the time, the gut feeling system works. It’s not my gut, mind you, it’s a collective gut. An unspoken body of knowledge based on real statistics but not tied to them. Sometimes, players shed their initial gut rating. For instance, basically the entire Pirates pitching staff this year: Charlie Morton, Jeff Karstens etc. But most of the time, the gut gets it right and I have no reading on Collmenter what so ever.
Perhaps part of the reason that I’m not sold on a guy with an impressive 2.65 ERA in quite a few innings is that Josh has a very funky delivery. I’m usually very open to this type of thing and certainly do not discriminate against guys like Chad Bradford, Kevin Brown, and others who have little oddities in their pitching motion, but I just can’t help thinking that a lot of Collmeter’s success is due to the fact that guys have never seen a ball coming towards them that way. It’s hard to describe Collmenter’s motion so won’t even try, instead click here to see it for yourself.
I’ve seen interviews with guys who claim that the biggest difficulty in hitting against Collmenter is finding the ball out of his hand. I’d be very interested to see how batters fare in their second, third, fourth, or more at bats against him compared to their first. I will be very interested to see how he does when he’s been around a season or two and everyone knows him and has faced him. It’s possible that he’ll continue to be dominant but it seems equally possible that the more exposure he gets, the more hittable he’ll become. Perhaps we can reserve gut judgement until then.
Stat of the Day: Who says AJ Burnett isn’t efficient? Last night it took him only 8 pitches to allow 2 runs to the Rays in he bottom of the 1st.
-Max Frankel
