Following the Journey

[Frobby]

Michael Baumann’s no hitter yesterday got me to musing about how different players develop at different times, and how results don’t always track development exactly.   

I remember last year when the season ended, Baumann had dominated Delmarva (1.42 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, 11.1 K/9), got promoted, then had solid but not great numbers at Frederick (3.88, 1.32,  5.7).   Though the numbers didn’t look bad, Luke opined that Baumann really hadn’t had a good year from a development standpoint because his secondary pitches hadn’t developed at all.    

Then this year, Luke very quickly recognized that Baumann had made changes since last season and his stuff was ticking up.   That’s great, but there wasn’t a huge change in Baumann’s ERA (3.83) or WHIP (1.19) from the prior year at Frederick, even though his strikeouts (12.8 K/9) were at better than double the rate of the year before at Frederick.    But since the promotion to Bowie, the results have been there in spades (0.36 ERA, 0.67 WHIP, 10.7 K/9), culminating in last night’s masterpiece.

It seems like we’ve seen similar fits and starts with Akin, Hall, Hanifee and others.     They’ve all commented on how they are working on relying on their secondary pitches more, and how the data the O’s are supplying them is helping.    The results aren’t completely there yet, but hopefully they’re coming.

In any event, for me a big part of the fun of being a fan is following the journey these players take as they struggle to develop major league skills.   Thanks to Tony, Luke and others who regularly provide information you can’t find in a box score or a stat sheet.    Let’s hope that a few of these guys will become polished gems who will lead us out of this rebuilding period.

[LookinUp]

^^^ Brown noser.

In all seriousness, fair or not, it means more to me when our guys are doing this with great stuff (Hall, Baumann). While probabilities are dependent on the pitcher, guys with this kind of stuff establish their ceilings as much higher than several of our other guys who's results are great this year (Lowther, Wells, Rom). I'm guessing Hanifee is somewhere in between.