Diamond Mine

Put up your Dukes!

Today Justin Duchscherer will start his first major league game since September 20^th 2003. Duchscherer lost that game and moved to the Oakland bullpen the following year. Justin has become a very valuable asset to the A’s bullpen since the move. Duchscherer was even the Athletics sole representative at the 2005 MLB All Star game. As a reliever, The Duke started as a the long reliever/ mop up man in the A’s pen as other relievers such as Kiko Celero, Chad Bradford, Jim Mecir, and Houston Street all had more prominent roles. 2005 was the year Justin was given the most opportunity to pitch late into games as he finished 14.8% of Oakland’s games second to only the team’s closer Houston Street.

            The interesting thing about Justin Duchscherer is that he’s never really been considered a “failure” as a starter. Not that he’s any great shakes as a a starter either. The truth is we just don’t know.

Here’s what we do know: Duchscherer as above average stamina for a pure relief pitcher. The Duke has pitched as a reliever in 192 Major league games and has averaged over an inning per appearance for the past 5 years. Most closers average almost exactly one inning per relief appearance (that’s usually the 9^th inning), and situational relievers pitch so little in most appearances that it’s easier to measure them by how many batters they face per game rather than how many innings they pitch.

We also know that Justin Duchscherer hasn’t pitched as a starter enough in the majors to make any real meaningful performance evaluations based on his 24 and 2/3rds innings pitched. So how do we know what Justin Duchscherer: Starting Pitcher is supposed to look like?

Here’s the premise- We’re going to say that AAA performance is about as good as MLB performance. So we’ll take a look at Justin in AAA, when he did start all the time, and discount those numbers by 20%. What we’re saying is that a AAA pitcher as 80% of a MLB pitcher.

yr                    level          ips        h         hr    bb    k          ERA    IP/GS    WHIP    IPOut    K/BB    STF    K/9    HR/9
4 seasons        AAA          266      274     0      35    222     3.69    6.33    1.14        798      6.34    28%      7.5    0
MLBEq                            212.8   328.8  0      42    177.6  5.63    6.33    1.71        638      4.23    28%      7.5    0

            It would seem that Justin still profiles as a bit of a reliever. High ERA/ High Whip guys that can strike batters out tend to perform better in relief roles than as everyday starters. Still we have to consider that there are players who’s performances improve to a degree as their usage increases. This sort of translation has it’s limits. You have to look at the numbers that matter for starters and ERA is one of the least of our concerns.

            The first thing to note is the durability. 6.3 innings a start isn’t half bad. In fact, it’s pretty good. It’s just a tad above average. Getting 28% of your outs from K’s indicates that Duchscherer can probably stay later into games in situations where he’ll need to keep the ball out of play. He also never gave up a home run in AAA. Since he never gave up a HR at the Triple A level, it’s impossible to “translate” nothing, but we can assume that he’s pretty good at keeping the ball in the park. Oddly, Duchscherer does have a pretty pedestrian GB% for his MLB career but the effects of that are minimized by the ballpark he plays in.