Why Dasan Hill’s Start To The Season Is Alarming

I haven't seen him pitch but there's now one more start to look at.  On Wednesday April 22, whatever command issues were present in his first three games "magically" went away - 0 walks in his 4 innings.  The strikeouts were fantastic, as well - 7 of them - and Peoria so far has been leading the league in runs with very few strikeouts, so that's quite an accomplishment.  Only four base hits, so that should be a pretty good WHIP for the game. 

His first three innings were clean.  Immaculate, even*.  One fly out, one ground out, and the 7 Ks.

And yet - ultimately it wasn't a good outing, because he gave up 3 runs in the fourth, due to a sequence that involved all four of the base hits and culminated in a home run.  It might have been even worse, except the first of the base runners got picked off. 

The game lowered his season ERA to 10.50 - that's how bad things had been across the first 3 games. Oddly, his already unsightly BABIP for the season went up - the four base hits came from among a small number of balls in play because of all the strikeouts.

BABIP is one form of analysis that usually normalizes closer to .300 with time.  Another way of looking at the numbers is that for the young season his OPS-against is .829, which is bad but one that correlates to an ERA of more like, say, 5.50.  Sequences of hits is another thing that usually normalizes.

I don't like the word "luck", but it's very possible that we'll see better game results going forward, without there necessarily being big additional changes in the pitcher.  Fewer batted balls finding grass and a more typical number finding leather, plus base hits scattered more uniformly instead of bunched - it's easy to imagine far better results if yesterday's performance is a baseline.

That's based on a big assumption that the walk rates in the first three games were the anomaly and that the 0-walk performance yesterday represents him figuring something out that will be lasting.  It's also an assumption that the bunching of base hits isn't due to losing composure on the mound.  Both are things that hopefully the coaching staff can address.  So yes, a couple of big BIG assumptions.  But prospects are for hopes so I'm going with that 

* Ha, after posting this, I went back and looked at TD writer Matt Braun's game synopsis, and he chose the same word, "immaculate."  So it's a thing.😀