Not a Bard’s Tale: Joba Chamberlain and Finding A Real Comp for Daniel Bard
If you want to fire up Boston Red Sox fans, bring up the subject of Daniel Bard’s potential move to the bullpen. My colleague at Over the Monster, Matthew Kory, dug into this open wound yesterday, sparking a heated debate over there. I have given one defense for the move on these pages already. If you follow the comment thread in Matt’s piece or listen to the majority of detractors to the plan you will encounter two main arguments against Bard moving to the rotation.
First, everyone who opposes this move is quick to sight the brief 2007 season where Bard was a disaster as a starter. Grantland’s Rany Jazayerli sums this argument up perfectly:
It’s hard to convey just how absurd this idea is. Bard started his professional career as a starting pitcher and it nearly destroyed him. In 2007, Bard’s first pro season, he made 22 starts in the low minor leagues. In 75 innings, he walked 78 batters and threw 27 wild pitches. Before the whispers of “Steve Blass Disease” reached a crescendo, the Sox moved him to the bullpen, where he’s been effective ever since. And now they want to send him back into the dragon’s lair?
That is an impressive argument on the surface, but it does ignore two important points. In his first pro, the Red Sox attempted to alter Bard’s mechanics, a relatively standard practice. Bard adapted terribly to the change and had almost no command at all. Following that short A season, he returned to his old delivery and regained his velocity and command. Second, that was almost five years ago at a time when Bard was a 22 year old ex-college STARTER with no professional experience. According to Bard (as reported by WEEI’s Rob Bradford), his struggles were not about his role, but rather, inexperience:
“It wasn’t starting I had a problem with, it was pitching. You could have thrown me in any role my first year of pro ball and I would have stunk. It didn’t matter what inning I was pitching, or starting or relieving. It would just be progress in terms of my development as a pitcher.”
Whether it was mechanics or the stress of being a first year pro, it is not particularly relevant to the discussion after nearly three years of elite performance in the major leagues.
The second issue opponents raise is far more persuasive. Bard has been health and effective in role where he pitches 70-90 innings a year. Opponents of the Red Sox current plan fear that the move up a 160-200 inning role would create a significant risk for injury. Here the dark spectre of one failed “reliever turned starter” looms large in the collective baseball imagination- the New York Yankees Joba Chamberlain. Even my colleague at RantSports, gilgerard, has been haunted by this ghoul.
Back in 2007, while Daniel Bard was closing his eyes and heaving the ball plate-ward, the 22 year old Joba Chamberlain was setting the world on fire. After breezing through his first year as a pro, beginning in High A and coasting through AA, Chamberlain looked ready to help the big league club in a tough pennant race against the Red Sox. In 24 innings or relief work with the Yankees, Chamberlain was unhittable. He struck out 12.75 per nine and walked just 2.25 on his way to a ridiculous 0.38 ERA and 1.82 FIP. He looked like the heir-apparent to Mariano Rivera for many of the bleacher bums inBronx. The Yankee brass, however, did not want to see their top pitching prospect limited to just 60-70 innings a year and preceded with their plan of grooming him to start. Before his magical 24 innings as reliever, Joba had started 14 games in the minor in 2007 and his brief cup of coffee didn’t change a thing in the minds of the Yankee front office.
Against a deafening cry from the Sports Radio Air Waves, the Yankees started Joba and he blew out his shoulder. A curse was unleashed on the baseball world, stating that no man shall ever discuss the conversion of a reliever to a starter without releasing the grim specter of Joba Chamberlain and what might have been. Not surprisingly, the talk of Daniel Bard moving to the rotation has awoken this demon.
Why Joba would ever be brought up in a conversation about converting an established reliever into a starter is beyond. That he should be used as a comparison for Daniel Bard is just ridiculous. Chamberlain was not a reliever at that point. He was being given some exposure to the majors in a bullpen role. At the same time, Clay Buchholz was doing the same thing inBoston. David Price would cut his teeth that way in the 2008 pennant race and playoffs. What the Yankees did with Joba Chamberlain was a well established method of grooming a young starter.
The narrative has outshined the facts in this case; Joba was only ever a reliever in the minds of the fans who desperately wanted a player capable of replacing Mariano Rivera. He was not converted to anything in 2008. He was a young starter with questionable mechanics who was brilliant until he injured his shoulder and couldn’t start any more. The narrative that converting to starter ruined his career is dubious at best, a revisionist history based on the inspiration of a mere 24 innings.
Daniel Bard is very different. He has been a reliever since his ill-fated 2007 season and he has succeeded in that role for three years in the majors. He is also 27 years old, therefore almost certainly beyond the ligament and connective tissue development phase of his life. His mechanics have kept him effective an injury free for 197 Major League innings, all on erratic rest. He will truly be converting to starter, as he has not had to pitch through a batting order at any level higher than A ball. The comparison most proponents of the move want to make is the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim’s newly signed lefty C.J. Wilson.
While Wilson might represent the best case scenario for Bard in terms of end results, he is not a very good comp. Wilson is left handed and even as a reliever he threw a wider range of pitches than Bard, using both a change up and a curve ball as his off-speed pitches and possibly even beginning to employ a cutter (though the PitchFX data makes it hard to say definitively).Wilsondid not throw as hard as Bard or rely as heavily on his slider.
Looking for a better comp, we don’t have to stray far from Wilson and his old employers, the Texas Rangers. Led by Nolan Ryan and managed brilliantly by GM Jon Daniels, the Rangers have been looking to change the model for pitchers back to a time when starters threw 300 innings and relievers had a more flexible role. They have not yet reached that lofty goal, but they have done some incredible things with their staff, including the successful conversion ofWilsonand righty Alexi Ogando to starters. In Ogando, we find a player who is highly comparable to Mr. Bard.
Ogando is right handed. As a reliever; he threw very hard for an average of 96.2 mph, just shy of Bard’s 97.4 fastball average. Like Bard, he threw just three pitches as a reliever, a fastball, a slider and a change that he only employed against lefties. Here we have pitcher in the same league, one year removed, with the same repertoire converting to starter after being primarily a reliever in both the minor and his previous Major League experience. Ugando had less service time, both as a Major Leaguer and overall, but he still offers the best comp for Bard.
Ogando 2011 season would be a good starting point in projecting Daniel Bard as a starting pitcher. To start with, Ogando lost a few ticks on this fastball, dropping to an average velocity of 95 miles per hour. He threw a total of 169 innings with 29 starts and two relief appearances. He quadrupled his innings pitched and nearly did the same with his total pitches. Beyond that, he did not change much as pitcher, in either results or repertoire.
The most dramatic difference for Ogando was in his strikeout rate. He dropped from 8.42 K/9 as a reliever to 6.71 K/9 as a starter. He had a corresponding drop in his BB/9 which left his fielding independent pitching (FIP) and xFIP (expected FIP based on normalized HR/FB rates) up, but to a level that would be expected, or around ½ run higher. His pitching style did not change significantly at all. He continued to throw his fastball a vast majority of the time, primarily going up and away to lefties and everywhere away to righties. He threw his slider low and away to righties and lefties and reserved his change up for lefties only with rare exception.
All of this bodes well for Bard. He is older, which should reduce the risk of injury from added innings and pitches. He has a more well-established track record in the majors and a higher strike out rate than Ogando did as a reliever. Since Ogando shows that a pitcher can be successful as a starter with Bard’s repertoire, there need not be any pressure on Bard to add a pitch in Spring Training. Bard also has one major advantage over Ogando; Bard is great at keeping the ball on the ground. As a reliever, he has a career ground ball percentage of 48.8. Ogando is a fly ball pitcher, getting just 37.7% groundballs. Keeping the ball on the ground will help Bard immensely as he converts to a starter, limiting extra base hits and keeping his home run rate down.
If we see Bard’s stuff translate to the starter role the way that Oganda’s has, we could expect him to have a 7.78 K/9 rate, a 2.25 BB/9 rate and a FIP and xFIP around 3.75. Factor in Bard’s superlative ground ball rate and you have a pitcher that looks almost exactly like Hiroki Kuroda from a production stand point, only ten years younger and under team control.
Is it any wonder that the Sox aren’t making Kuroda their Holy Grail this off-season? Maybe they’ve told his agent, “we’ve already got one.”
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