Effectively Wild

Call me crazy, but I really enjoy the Orioles broadcast team, every single last one of them. They certainly don't have the nuance and polish of the more famed broadcast teams (for my money, the Mets team is the very best, but YMMV). But they're all so delightfully odd. Gary Thorne's drunken singing and "Please drink.............." routine aren't exactly the stuff of legends, but oh do they fit this ragtag group of Orioles. The dynamic between Gary and Jim Palmer is incredibly inviting, the Old Pro and the Drunk sitting at the bar, talking shop.

Even the secondary characters bring something to the table for me. Mike Flanagan is the yang to Palmer's ying, almost blending into the background with his completely inoffensive commentary. He is the pause to Palmer's music. And the radio guys! Joe Angel is a national treasure. But I think my favorite guy is the local color, Dave Johnson. His unmistakable accent and at first surprising insight really make him stand out from the group. It's a complete joy to hear him, as I did driving home from New York on Sunday, actually doing the game broadcast.

But Dave Johnson has his quirks, slightly noisome to the rest of his work. He seems to not express much interest or belief in DIPS theory (which he - and you - should) and while watching Jake Arrieta unload his corker on Sunday, I will paraphrase Johnson thusly:

I think what we've seen from Jake so far is that he can be effectively wild. That's kind of pitcher he can be. He'll walk his share of guys, 4 a game or so, but his stuff is so good that guys won't be making strong contact on it.

It echoes an oft-mocked (in my household) line Yankees' broadcaster Michael Kay blurted out earlier this year about A.J. Burnett, that his stuff is so, so good that even he can't control it. Johnson also provided some food for my thoughts, and in particular two questions for me to muse on:

1) Can a pitcher be reliably "effectively wild"?

What does it mean, anyhow, to be effectively wild? As any former Daniel Cabrera fan can tell you, the wild part is walks and HBP and lots of 'em. The effective part, though - what is that? Brandon Morrow is walking 4.12 men per nine, which puts him in the same boat as last year's prized winter acquisition Adam Eaton. But Morrow has a 3.30 FIP and a very bright future, and Eaton is out of baseball. So obviously there is effective pitching, and wild pitching, and they can overlap, but they don't have to.

Two things jump to mind. The first is that there seems to be a cut-off to how wild a start can be. Since 2006, only two starters have gotten enough innings to qualify for an ERA title and walked more than 5 batters per nine innings: Daisuke Matsuzaka and Barry Zito. Both of those pitchers are in long, expensive contracts, and would obviously get more chances to make good on their talents, but nobody sticks in the major leagues if they consistently walk that many batters. There can be no "effectively extremely wild" in major league baseball.

The second point comes back to DIPS theory: a pitcher can walk a high number of batters, but he can only get away with it if he's limiting home runs and if he's missing bats and striking guys out. Brandon Morrow, who walks so many, also happens to lead all starters in K-rate. He is effective because while he walks a lot of batters, he also strikes out A LOT of batters, over 10 per nine. But is that being effective DESPITE being wild, or - as Dave Johnson implies - being effective BECAUSE you are wild (but not too wild)? Or, to put it another way, can a pitcher who walks that many batters still be successful long-term, as if he were reliant on his wildness?

Pitchers with a minimum of 1000 innings pitched, BB-rates over 4.00 (as an arbitrary cutoff point), and FIPs under 4.00 (for more arbitrariness) number just 42. Ever. Just two of those pitchers had career FIPs under 3.00. So I gather that it is incredibly rare to be both that wild and still effective and make a career out of it as a starter. Guys who are wild - effecctive or no - almost always either learn control or fall apart. You can't bank on a kid walking four or so batters a game and still being effective.

But of course, the average walk rate in the majors usually hovers around 3.35 per nine or so. If we move the threshold to 3.5 walks per nine, the number of pitchers under 4.00 FIP and over 1000 IP increases dramatically, suggesting a pitcher certainly can be "effectively wild", even if it's hard to distinguish whether they are effective despite being wild, or effective because they are wild.

2) Can Jake Arrieta be "effectively wild"?

First things first: Arrieta hasn't been effectively anything at the major league level. He has a 6.10 xFIP, a 5.40 ERA, and a Brad Bergesen K-rate. He has had as many nice games as Disaster Starts. He certainly is wild, though. He has walked more hitters than he has struck out (28 to 21). He has walked a lot of batters period. He is in the bottom thirty of all starting pitchers in BB-rate. Point is: he's wild, he's young, he's not very good (yet).

In the minors, Arrieta was indeed "effectively wild". He walked 3.8 per nine but held a 3.56 FIP (and a 3.46 this year despite walking more batters than ever). It should come as no surprise that Arrieta, who was walking 4.2 this year at AAA Norfolk would see that number inflate to 5.2 in the major leagues. He's a wild pitcher, he always has been, it's a big part of who he is and the extra wildness this year is really nothing to be too, too concerned with long term in my opinion. If it persists however we will have a pretty big problem.

More troubling is Arrieta's highly, highly diminished K-rate, which needs to right itself or he stands no chance whatsoever at becoming even a slightly below-average pitcher. Anything I tell you about it just going to copy from here, so I recommend just going straight to the source for some more insight.

We've all been frustrated with this season and the development of our young players. Why can't we have Madison Bumgardner and Buster Posey, succeeding right out of the minor league gate? In Jake Arrieta's case, I think we're simply seeing the growing pains of the "effectively wild" type of pitcher if indeed he is going to ever be an effective big leaguer. As is too often the case, patience is what we need now.

Ugh. I hate needing patience.