Printer-friendly

Contact Author

January 9, 2013

Fantasy Beat

Esmil Rogers, Fantasy Sleeper

by Jason Collette

When a pitcher throws in the mid-to-upper 90s, teams tend to give that player every chance to succeed. In the case of Esmil Rogers, the Rockies gave him 184 2/3 innings before deciding it was better to accept cash from the Cleveland Indians for the services of the out-of-options flamethrower.  The issue for Rogers in Colorado tended to be his inability to find the strike zone on a consistent basis. He had a 20 percent strikeout rate and just an 8 percent walk rate in 2010 but then went 16 and 12 in 2011 and 22 and 14 in 2012 before the Rockies pulled the plug on the live-armed hurler in early June. 

Coors Field is not a forgiving place to pitch; it has some of the highest batting averages on balls in play and line drive rates in the league over the past five seasons. It is tough to pitch in that environment when one of your primary pitches is a breaking ball; you wind up being unable to throw it as frequently as you would like to because you’re behind in too many counts. Leaving Denver was one of the best things that happened to Rogers; he was able to put up very good numbers under the radar in Cleveland last season. His strikeout rate with the Tribe was 25 percent while his walk rate plunged to 6 percent—both better than league average. He held batters to a .233 batting average, and his 3.06 ERA nearly matched his 3.08 FIP, which bested his previous career-best FIP by nearly a full run. 

If you watch video of him, it is essentially the same guy on the mound save for what appears to be a slight shift on the pitching rubber.

I asked Doug Thorburn if he noticed any differences in Rogers after his move from Colorado, including the rumors that he was tipping pitches at times in 2010 and 2011. Here is what he had to say:

I always wonder about rumors of pitch-tipping, as sometimes it's thrown out there as confirmation bias when a pitcher gets ripped. I had not heard of Rogers' pitch-tipping rumors before, so I checked it out of curiosity. A Google search led me to his game against Atlanta on August 25, 2010 in which he got tagged for eight hits and seven earned runs while getting just five outs (triggering non-specific rumors of pitch-tipping). I watched the outing carefully and captured a series of GIF's to watch in quick succession while I "guessed" what was coming (ignoring the catcher, of course). It was a pretty fun exercise, and though it was tempting to be lured by my own confirmation bias, I could not come up with anything that was a reliable indicator of fastball vs. breaking ball (of course I'm also limited by the camera view). He had some mechanical inconsistencies and a few odd patterns but nothing that was consistently inconsistent that would provide a "tell" as to pitch type. I also didn't see any obvious "twitchy" indicators like flaring the glove or adjusting his grip; Rogers did both of these things on occasion, but he did them randomly. What I saw was a pitcher who was getting hit up for all of the normal reasons: 1) he's not hitting his spots, 2) he's throwing too many fastballs early in the count, and 3) he's playing in Colorado. He got hit hard once or twice by Atlanta's best hitters, but otherwise he was giving up bleeders (there were no homers).

Then I went ahead and watched one of his worst outings from 2012: April 21 at Milwaukee. He didn't have the Colorado excuse this time, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about the blow-up. He gave up a bomb to Ryan Braun—which can happen to anyone—and then he lost his timing, resulting in missed targets all over the place. Some of the missed targets went to the backstop, and others missed in the zone, so they got ripped. At least he mixed his pitches better, but I didn't notice any mechanical trends that would tip the pitches. I do find it interesting that one of his other 2012 blow-ups was at home against Atlanta (same as 2010), though his numbers that day suggest that faulty pitch command was the culprit once again.

The table below shows his work over the last few seasons with 2012 being split between Colorado and Cleveland: