Rick Porcello's Start Through PITCHf/x

Rick Porcello didn't get the win after being rightfully taken out for Fernando Rodney (yes, I do back the move Jim Leyland made), but he had a great start. First, the numbers:

8 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 91 pitches (67 strikes), 15 groundouts, 6 flyouts.

Porcello was dominant tonight and kept the ball on the ground when he didn't record a strikeout. Now, because I love graphs and am trying to learn the best routes to graph the things I want to look at (a.k.a. would like to be a Harry Pavlidis clone!), I've got an abundance of graphs.

First up, his selection of pitches to both right-handers and left-handers tonight. Click all images to enlarge:

I'm hoping I split up his fastballs correctly (I think I'm close, but I'm not entirely sure). Splitting two and four-seamers apart seems to be tricky. Same with curveball's and sliders -- Porcello's seemed to be identical so I lumped them in together as sliders, but don't take that moniker for 100% accuracy.

Anyways, you can see he abandoned the slider to LH hitters, although PITCHf/x only recorded 86 of his 91 pitches tonight. He did the same with RH hitters, but swapped out the slider for abolishing his change-up.

Now, his release points total:

I wish I'd gone with a different dot set and not this 2-D one (Harry's 3-D dot sets are much more clear). Live and learn. It's late and I'm tired and don't want to go back and change it. I've noticed it in the various times I've privately looked at his PITCHf/x data, but Rick Porcello releases his breaking ball a touch higher than his other pitches.

The strikezone plot really shows how much he pounded the zone tonight:

When he missed, he missed above or below the zone. I count 5 or 6 pitches being off the edge but between the chest and the knees. He really, really attacked the zone with all of his pitches, tonight.

And finally, the flight paths graph:

I know it's sometimes tough to read/comprehend when there's more than 3 or so pitch flights, but I included them all. But, his four-seamer (FF; blue line) was pretty straight tonight, and you can see the sink and arm-side run on the two-seamer (FT; orange line) that makes it such an effective pitch for Rick. His change-up (CH; white/yellow-ish line) mirrored his two-seamer almost identically. There's a gap of about 9 MPH between the two and giving a glance back to the release point chart shows just how tough his change-up is to recognize. Same release point + same flight path + 9 MPH difference between the two = great, great pitch. I think his change-up would grade out as a plus pitch on the scouting scale. Then again, I'm just a kid who's pretending to be a PITCHf/x guru, let alone know a lot about scouting. And the slider/curveball/breaking ball (SL; red line) has a bit of sweeping action but great downward movement.

All in all, this will be what Rick Porcello provides at the major league level at his best. I feel the strike outs will come with more regularity later in his career, but the Josh Beckett comp Scott Boras and the media was throwing out before the 2007 draft is completely false. He's a ground ball machine with above-average to plus ratings on his 2-seam, change-up and breaking ball and he can dial it up when he wants to the middle-90's. He's very much apart of the new hybrid of guys like a Roy Halladay or Brandon Webb that get gobs of ground balls and incorporate enough strikeouts to be a legitimate good K pitcher.

In short: Roy Halladay/Brandon Webb at his best, Derek Lowe at his worst. Yeah, I said it. Lofty expectations.

Valuing Roy Halladay

Bill already beat me to this, but I was planning on taking a look at Roy Halladay's value versus the package we'd be giving up. The reported package asked for was Rick Porcello, Casey Crosby and Ryan Perry. Bill's got Halladay at possibly adding about 4 wins to the Tigers the rest of the way. Sky Kalkman's Trade Value Calculator had Halladay at 3 wins the rest of the way as of July 15th. He's estimated Halladay to be worth 6 Wins Above Replacement next year as well, so we'll run with that and say that Halladay will give about 9 WAR to whatever team he goes to if he's dealt before the deadline tomorrow. That's a value of $46.1 million. He makes $22.8 million over that time span, meaning he he has a net value of $23.4 million.

Victor Wang's done some great research on the value of prospects for the Hardball Times. Erik Manning's summarized the research into this table. Rick Porcello was the 7th rated pitcher (21st player overall) in Baseball America's preseason top 100 prospects. Research values that at $15.2 million in value. Casey Crosby is just 20-years-old until mid-September and was graded a C+ by John Sickels. That is valued at $2.1 million. Finally, Ryan Perry turned 22 in February, and John Sickels graded him at a solid B. That puts him at $7.3 million in value.

Total that all up, Porcello, Crosby, and Perry are valued at a collective $24.6 million. Given that Halladay's projected to provide about $23.4 million for the duration of his contract that runs through 2010, that's a very even deal.

But, here's the one drawback of the deal: Mike Ilitch and Dave Dombrowski said before the season that the payroll is pretty maxed out. Given that we haven't really shed any money and opened the season with a payroll of $115,085,145 million. In trading Porcello, Crosby, and Perry, we're not dumping more than a couple of league-minimum salaries and taking on board the full ~$7 million left this year on Halladay's salary plus the $15.8 he makes in 2010. I'm not sure the Tigers can add that type of money to the books without clearing something out first.

Speaking of money: the Tigers traded Josh Anderson to the Kansas City Royals for cash-money as Kurt dubbed it. Dayton Moore's certainly got a love-affair for bad OBP players with little to no power, huh? My condolences to Royals fans. Hopefully he isn't used as much and as poorly as Jim Leyland used him.