2015 Player Projection: C.J. Wilson

C.J. Wilson‘s 2014 season did not go well, he said in a giant understatement. Nobody really knows what even went wrong with him but the Angels are hoping that the southpaw can get back on the beam in 2015.

What happened in 2014?
In April, C.J. was great. In May, he was still pretty good. His strikeouts slipped a good amount, but these things happen over a five-start sample. In June…

He had a horrendous start in at the beginning of June against the Astros, one in which he was battling the flu. Contrary to what he would have you believe, he actually bounced back just fine the next two or three starts. But after that, things went south fast. He was giving up lots of hits, homers and walks and there was no real good explanation.

It continued straight on into July and only stopped because he sprained his ankle on a fielding play during a game in which he was getting shellacked by the Jays. He went on the DL for a month, but that didn’t help much as he got lit up in his first two starts back.

After some stern words from the Great and Mighty Sosh, C.J. did buckle down some. He still was having horrific control issues, but he strung together some starts in which he at least gave the Angels a chance to win, he just didn’t look good in doing it.

His performance started heading off the rails again in September as talk of him being left off the ALDS roster entirely began to surface. He seemed to put that to bed when he had a dazzling start against Seattle, but then he went and followed that up by getting bounced from a game against Oakland after getting just two outs. The only thing that saved him was that he was not terrible in his final start of the season. That proved to be enough for C.J. to get a start in Game 3 of the ALDS.

He didn’t make it out of the first inning in that game and rode off into the offseason sunset being followed by a mass of uncertainty regarding his future.

Other than that, everything went swimmingly for him in 2014.

[table id=71 /] *The MWAH projections are simply my best guess based off my own personal opinion and research (my wOBA calculation is approximate because my math skills are only “meh”)

What do the projections think he will do in 2015?
The good news is that nobody is projecting the kind of disaster we saw last season. CAIRO sees him as being a solid mid-rotation starter, which is no surprise since CAIRO is a pretty simple projection system. The bad news is that ZiPS and Steamer’s projections aren’t all that far from disaster. His strikeout and walk rates don’t appear all that off from his career norms, but they both have him with a 4.00+ ERA. This is all kinds of no good.

Does the Monkey agree or disagree?
I’m only slightly more optimistic than Steamer and ZiPS. We saw late in the season that C.J. can at least kind of hold it together for periods at a time, but that it just won’t be pretty (not that it is all that pretty when he is on his game). I’ve also got some degree of confidence that Wilson will have corrected at least some of his command issues. I’m still just very concerned that neither C.J. nor anyone on the coaching staff has been able to articulate a convincing (and “convincing” is the key word there) explanation for how his season went off the rails so badly.

THREE OPEN QUESTIONS FOR C.J. WILSON IN 2015
1) Is he “back on the beam?”
When we last saw him, C.J. was lasting a whopping two-thirds of an inning in the ALDS against the Royals, so he’s certainly not on it yet. What concerns me is that we haven’t heard a whole lot about things he’s done in the offseason to remedy his second half struggles. Well, unless you count taking tropical vacations with his lingerie model wife. That sure seems like it would cure a lot of whatever ailed me. I’m just sayin’.

This isn’t the first time C.J. has gone in the tank for a few months and he has pulled out of it before. The problem this time is there is so much more uncertainty about what even went wrong in the first place.

2) Do we actually know what went wrong last year?
Didn’t I just say that? Yeesh, pay attention, would ya?

If you believe C.J. the problem is that he had a hip problem. Oh, wait, no. That excuse didn’t work out. He “fixed” that problem last season and things didn’t get all that much better.

OK, if you believe the other C.J. explanation, the problem was that he got the flu and pitched through it, which messed with him for a few starts. Then he hurt his ankle and it never fully recovered, so it messed up his mechanics. But he was just trying to be tough and pitch through the pain for the good of the team. Isn’t he such a swell guy?

Oh, and I almost forgot, he also said something about how he was listening too much to fans about how he doesn’t throw enough strikes and that he’s just going to shutout those critics and stick to his game. That’s right, C.J., YOU JUST DO YOU! Besides, C.J. actually threw the fewest percentage of pitches in the zone of his career at 44.7% last year, so he must not have been listening to those fans very well. That was the twelfth-worst mark among qualified pitchers in baseball, by the way.

Or maybe there are other problems that C.J. doesn’t have a handle on. Seeing how he whiffed with his first excuse, I’m not sold that his three-for-one follow-up excuse really holds water. I especially don’t buy the “listening to fans” thing seeing how C.J.’s own personal Twitter hashtag is #throwstrikes. Maybe he needs to stop listening to himself.

3) Does he become public enemy #1 while Hamilton is out of the picture?
No offense to C.J., but the Angels fans always seem to need a punching bag on the active roster. C.J. has always been on the cusp of being that guy, but once Josh signed, he stepped right into the role. But with Hambone on the verge of a possibly lengthy suspension, Wilson might get thrust into the position. Well, unless we find out that Josh Rutledge drowns kittens as a recreational activity.

The Final Word (and GIF)
“Man down!”

OK, I cheated, that’s technically two words, but I made the rules in the first place so I get to bend them however I see fit. The GIF above pretty well represents how C.J. Wilson’s 2014 season went. It is also what he is poised to do this year if he struggles out of the gate. The Angels didn’t have a choice but to keep letting him start last year, but with all their newfound depth, if C.J. goes down again, they might not try and help him get back up and instead just replace him.