What history says about a potential Yusei Kikuchi bounce-back
While the Toronto Blue Jays have bolstered their beginning pitching depth with gamers like Drew Hutchison and Zach Thompson in latest days, Yusei Kikuchi stays the workforce’s most certainly fifth starter.
That’s not a thought that offers a lot consolation to followers who watched Kikuchi produce a 5.19 ERA in 100.2 innings final 12 months — repeatedly taxing the workforce’s bullpen with brief outings earlier than becoming a member of the reduction corps himself.
Despite that efficiency, Kikuchi is in pole place for a few causes. The first is a contract that pays him $20 million by means of 2024 and the second is the expertise that earned him that deal within the first place.
The southpaw got here to the Blue Jays with a profession ERA of 4.97 and famous command points. Toronto neglected these considerations due to his uncommon velocity from the left facet that got here packaged with the flexibility to combine speeds on gloveside breaking pitches and a growing changeup.
Despite that interesting toolbox, Kikuchi produced a -0.7 fWAR season that noticed him tinker along with his pitch combine…
… vertical launch level …
… and mound place…
… largely to no avail.
To be truthful to Kikuchi, he seemed higher out of the bullpen in September, but it surely’s powerful to show that he can replicate the success of a small pattern of reduction innings (13.1) in a beginning position.
The southpaw’s season was unhealthy sufficient that it’s value questioning if it was greater than only a misplaced marketing campaign, however slightly a sign that Kikuchi’s days as a helpful starter are over.
That could sound alarmist when speaking a couple of gifted 31-year-old, however Kikuchi’s 2022 put him in rarified air amongst ineffective pitchers.
In the final 25 MLB seasons there have been 3424 seasons of 100 or extra innings produced by particular person pitchers. Just 56 of them — or 1.7 per cent — resulted in an fWAR of -0.5 or worse.
So, it’s truthful to say that Kikuchi’s 2022 was one of many worst seasons by a pitcher in latest historical past. In order to determine what his probabilities of bouncing again in 2023 are, it’s instructive to take a look at who pitchers who produced these 56 seasons carried out the subsequent 12 months.
In three of these circumstances, we don’t know the reply as Kikuchi, Josiah Gray, and Jonathan Heasley all had their nightmare campaigns in 2022.
We can take away 16 extra pitchers from our pattern who didn’t pitch an MLB inning the next season.
However, these guys are extra instructive as seasons of the same ilk to Kikuchi’s usually resulted in pitchers by no means showing within the majors once more. That checklist contains some quasi-notable arms like Mike Pelfrey, Jon Niese, Mike Maroth, and Braden Looper.
If we break down the quantity of innings our 53 pitchers supplied the 12 months after their nightmare seasons, it’s clear that comparatively few had been full-time starters.
|
Did not pitch |
0.1-49 IP |
50-99 IP |
100-149 IP |
150+ IP |
|
16 |
15 |
9 |
5 |
8 |
Many grew to become swingmen, just a few transformed to full-time reduction and others held down jobs quickly. Just 13 of our 53-pitcher pattern produced one thing akin to a full-time starter’s workload.
In phrases of efficiency, detrimental or negligible fWAR was the commonest consequence.
|
Negative fWAR |
0-1 fWAR |
1.1-1.9 fWAR |
2.0+ fWAR |
|
11 |
18 |
4 |
4 |
Just 4 pitchers crossed the two.0 fWAR barrier, which serves as shorthand for a league-average season.
That group — Bronson Arroyo, Carlos Silva, Ervin Santana and Derek Holland — was composed solely of pitchers with a number of seasons over 2.0 fWAR beneath their belts earlier than their careers went off the rails.
For reference, Kikuchi’s career-high fWAR is 1.1.
Even producing a 1.0 fWAR season was a tall order for this group of pitchers. Just 21.6 per cent of the group that pitched the 12 months after their -0.5 fWAR or worse marketing campaign managed it. That quantity drops to fifteen.1% if we embody the fellows who didn’t pitch the next season.
What all of this tells us is that the chances are stacked towards Kikuchi. In latest historical past the vast majority of pitchers who’ve a season as unhealthy as his 2022 don’t make a lot of a optimistic contribution the subsequent 12 months.
The southpaw might be extra gifted than most of the different guys in our 53-pitcher pattern, however he’s much less established than lots of them on the MLB stage.
Believing in a Kikuchi resurgence is justifiable based mostly on his ceiling, however that perception faces the headwind of historic precedent.
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