Pirates Pursuing Derrick Turnbow
by Charlie Wilmoth on Dec 3, 2008 2:20 PM EST
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Just imagine the sound of the ball as it whizzes over Doumit's head (photo: Runaway Wind)
This should have been predictable:
The Pirates are in discussions with free-agent reliever Derrick Turnbow...
By mid-July, he stopped pitching and, at month's end, was diagnosed with a slight tear of the labrum in his right shoulder. He chose rest over surgery.
When healthy, Turnbow is a flamethrower with a 97-mph fastball, the primary reason he has 265 strikeouts in 257 2/3 career innings. But he always has had a wild component, as evidenced by 168 walks.
Pirates general manager Neal Huntington has displayed a liking for power pitchers in the bullpen, even if they have a history of struggling with control, including his trade acquisitions of Tyler Yates and Denny Bautista and the Rule 5 draft selection of Evan Meek.
...Not to mention the acquisition of Ross Ohlendorf (a hard thrower who's had control issues in the majors, though not really in the minors) and especially Craig Hansen in July.
At some point, it's fair to wonder what's driving Neal Huntington here--could he legitimately make a good case that there's some market inefficiency to be exploited by grabbing all these guys who throw hard but have no idea where the ball is going? Or does he really just love high numbers on the radar gun? It's true that lots of good relievers throw hard, but there are also plenty who don't--think of Trevor Hoffman, Chad Cordero, Chad Bradford, Keith Foulke, Eddie Guardado, Jamie Walker or Pat Neshek. It is a myth that a pitcher needs to throw hard to be successful as a reliever, or even as a closer.
I don't mean to downplay the importance of velocity here; obviously, throwing hard can be a very useful skill, and I wouldn't want Huntington running around collecting Brian Rogers types who couldn't break poster paper with their fastballs. Also, if a pitcher starts to lose velocity, there may be reason to worry. And believe me, I like a radar gun reading in the high 90s as much as the next guy.
But Huntington is trading in a skill that may be even more fundamental--the ability to throw strikes--to get all this velocity. If a pitcher can't throw strikes, his fastball isn't worth anything. Look at the pitchers who threw their fastballs hardest this year. There aren't many relievers on that list who figured out how to turn raw velocity into results as they got older, unless the reason they didn't get results at first was because they were starting and then moved to the bullpen. There's Matt Thornton and J.J. Putz. If you're feeling generous you could put Francisco Cordero on that list, too. A lot of the other pitchers followed a pretty typical development curve until their mid-20s and then been either good, or inconsistent, or bad throughout their careers.
To a certain extent, I think acquiring very young pitchers who have a lot of velocity but no real idea what to do with it makes a certain amount of sense. (Of course, most teams value those sorts of players, so they're not incredibly easy to acquire.) Hansen, who recently turned 25, is right at the tail end of being young enough that he's an interesting gamble. So was Evan Meek when he was acquired.
Turnbow, though? Yates? Bautista? I realize that Yates had a decent strikeout rate with the Braves in 2007 and that the prices for Bautista and Turnbow were, or are unlikely to be, high, but those pitchers are old enough that the chances they'll turn it around really are remote. If there's some competitive advantage to be gleaned by grabbing guys like Turnbow instead of actual pitchers, I don't really see it.
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I'd like to give
NH the benefit of the doubt and figure he’s operating on the theory that it’s easier to teach hard throwers to pitch than it is to teach pitchers to throw hard, and that he thinks he’s figured out how to do that. You’re right, the track record for that kind of thing isn’t good. Still … if you can figure out how to do it, or have a pitching coach who thinks he can, and you have a stable of hard throwers to experiment with, it’s hard to argue you shouldn’t give it a try.
BTW, this gives the signing of the two Indian guys a certain sense. They’d be the extreme guinea pigs in this experiment. If you can take two guys who have no association with baseball other than they can throw an object very hard and very fast and train them to hit a target 90% of the time, the whole world is suddenly your scouting territory.
Yeah, I hear you. There’s a certain amount of logic in that. There’s a difference, though, between the two Indian kids, who only cost a few thousand dollars, are pretty young, and have had virtually no coaching, and someone like Turnbow or Yates, who have to be paid real salaries, aren’t young, and have had tons of coaching. I assume both pitchers have had ten or more pitching coaches; if none of those coaches helped them figure it out, I’m not exactly confident that the Pirates can.
by Charlie Wilmoth on Dec 3, 2008 2:43 PM EST up reply actions
Maybe he just needed rest, not help
If Turnbow’s 2008 problem was his shoulder, and if he’s healthy, he’s got a pretty good chance to be a contributor, and very good trade bait. You know as well as anyone how reliever performance fluctuates year to year. Turnbow has had one near-average year, a couple pretty bad ones, and one very good one.
In 2007, his splits suggest he might have had health problems beginning in August. Or maybe he just “lost it”. From August 1, 2007 plus last year, he threw 27.1 innings with 30K and 36BB. That ratio is way out of whack with the rest of his career, even though he’s never had great control. Maybe he can find it. Maybe he’s healthy. They could cut him before Opening Day if they had to, and absorb the 1/6 salary as the cost of doing business.
Dude’s missed a lot of bats at times. He doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with Hansen and Yates.
He’s 30 years old and has only had one good big league season in his career. The chances a player like that gets straightened out are pretty slim.
But you’re right, the strikeouts are interesting. In isolation, I don’t really care that the Pirates are pursuing Turnbow. Without knowing what sort of money they might offer him, there’s nothing to complain about anyway. I am questioning pursuing the HighMPH/HighBB type as an overall strategy for finding veteran relievers, because it plainly doesn’t work very often and because if you fill up your ‘pen with Yateses and Bautistas and Turnbows (to go along with younger guys like Hansen and Meek), you’re begging for trouble. I appreciate that Littlefield left Huntington with very little to work with and that the bullpen is probably going to take a beating for a while no matter what, but it’s still unclear for me whether there’s some angle to this I just don’t see or whether Huntington merely likes hard-throwers.
by Charlie Wilmoth on Dec 3, 2008 5:14 PM EST up reply actions
I get pretty queasy at the thought of going through another year with Bautista and Yates, to say nothing of Hansen. At some point you have to have guys who can throw the ball over the plate.
In NH’s defense, though, he’s starting off with almost nothing in the farm system and trying to acquire hard throwers at the major league level. His method is really designed for a situation where the bulk of the hard throwers are coming up through the system and getting sorted out that way. That’s what the Tigers—Greg Smith’s alma mater—were doing. It’s harder to do the sorting in the majors. There’s a term for major league relievers with mid-90s fastball and good control: All-Star closer. This will work better when he’s acquiring guys like Bautista just to supplement what’s coming through the system.
Yeah, I agree. I just don’t get why the strategy needs to be used for older acquisitions as well as younger ones.
by Charlie Wilmoth on Dec 3, 2008 3:37 PM EST up reply actions
yep yep yep...
I noted he’d be a perfect fit back when he was DFA’d in May:
http://www.bucsdugout.com/2008/5/2/471767/the-pirates-should-sign-de
it’d be neat to watch who would be released first, him or Hansen. but towards winning baseball games, not so much.
Possibly
Should this happen, I see it in much the same mold as the Matt Morris trade, only on a much less costly scale.
For the sake of argument, say Morris had a solid, first half last season. The Pirates could have turned him around in much the same way the A’s dealt Joe Blanton, for some mid-level prospect.
Should we sign Turnbow, and should he be decent to solid for us, he becomes a tradeable commodity. Perhaps not as the centerpiece of a deal, but an attractive throw-in. And if he fizzles, owell. It was a risk worth taking.
These are the kind of players the Pirates need to sign while rebuilding. Not patches and stop-gaps as they’ve done in the past, but guys who, if they can catch fire, will have contenders breaking down our doors to get.
God Created the World Out Of Nothing, Paterno Built A National Superpower On Cow Fields...
You might as well suppose...
…for the sake of argument, that Morris would suddenly start to crap gold. It wasn’t going to happen. He was much, much less valuable than a guy like Blanton, who was younger, cheaper, and had better recent seasons on his resume, and everyone and their mother knew he was done.
Everybody and their mother
Evidently, this was almost literally true:
More recently, there was someone else telling me how all of Littlefield’s lieutenants were opposed to the Matt Morris trade except for one person who was not a baseball man.
by WTM on Dec 3, 2008 4:39 PM EST up reply actions
Btw, just in the last couple days . . .
. . . we’ve learned from Kovacevic that DL:
—was the only baseball person on the team who wanted Morris.
—reneged on his promise to Rene Gayo to invest more in Latin America
—had to be dragged to the Dominican by Bob Nutting to view the mess he’d created
—hurt the Pirates’ ability to recruit players by keeping prospects in the DSL longer than other teams
—had Gayo looking primarily for speed and defense rather than power
—and simply didn’t regard Latin America as a priority
It’s a miracle this team did as WELL under DL as it did.
by WTM on Dec 3, 2008 4:49 PM EST up reply actions
I look forward to the days when we’ll be down to one or two of these revelations per week.
by Charlie Wilmoth on Dec 3, 2008 5:15 PM EST up reply actions
Suckfield
Another reason why he shoulda never been in charge in the first place……….he also signed Jeromy Burnitz…..anyone else remember that disaster, or how bout the pat meares (he gave a Jack Wilson type contract to him), or how how he pasted up on numerous now all stars in the first year player drafts he was in charge of
I remember a game
He took his warm-up pitches and proceeded to send what looked like a .50 caliber round about a foot and a half over the head of the umpire. The catcher never broke his crouch, the batter never flinched and the ump didn’t move for a second or so. They all just looked at him. Then the ump turned and looked at the back stop, turned back and threw a new ball out to him. He settled behind that catcher so you almost couldn’t see him. The looks on the umps and batter’s faces were pretty funny and the whole thing would have been kind of cool if it was deliberate which it wasn’t.
My impression of the guy was that his problems were mental. He was really good when he was on, but a walking crisis when he wasn’t. In AAA they even did the minors routine where they start with the reliever and then go to the starter. Maybe he’s been meditating or seeing some sports psychologist. He could be great but I’d bet against it. Nice guy though – I wish him luck (except against the Brewers).
Does NH have foresight..
that in the post-steroids era, there will be almost no such thing as a flame thrower with good control? And that the walks will amount to no worse than the singles given up by the average control guy?
If he stockpiles ten potential Goose (Geese?) Gossages and one pulls through, we’re on to a winner, right?
I know it’s not that simple.
Maybe the GM thinks we have plenty of control starter types in the system – mainly from the Littlefield regime – that will be relieving within a year or two anyway and he’s trying to balance that.
Duke, Maholm, Karstens and Gorzo (unless he gets above 90 mph) in the same rotation again for a full season?
By July, the club will have a plethora of hittable soft-tossers and over paid hardball guys battling for Sean Burnett’s spot in the pen!
by RDV across the sea on Dec 3, 2008 8:01 PM EST reply actions
This...
would be a smart signing. I would even give him the closers job if he starts doing really well just to raise his value. It could be something similair to what the Rangers did a couple years ago with Eric Gagne(who is another person Huntington is probably looking at) build up his value and deal him at the deadline. Who knows we could end up getting a good package of young players like they did.
Great Idea
Especially because hell be a veteran arm in a young bullpen………and if capps goes down again we have another closer option…………SIGN TURNBOW ASAP HUNTINGTON
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