2015 Player Projection: Matt Shoemaker

Matt Shoemaker and his luxuriant beard emerged from obscurity to save the Angels 2014 season. Can his Cinderella story continue in 2015 or will he turn back into a pumpkin?

What happened in 2014?
Oh, nothing, just Matt Shoemaker coming out of nowhere to become arguably the second-best pitcher on the Angels staff.

Honestly, it was an upset when Shoe made the team as a long reliever out of training camp. He was supposed to just stick around to pitch in long relief and make some spot starts if needed. There was nothing in his history to suggest that he would be a quality MLB pitcher.

Then, wonder of wonders, after spending time shuttling between Anaheim and Salt Lake, Shoemaker was conscripted into the rotation. The rest, as they say, was history.

Shoemaker got off to a little bit of a slow start in the rotation, but after a mid-June start against Cleveland, something clicked for him and Scioscia noticed. No longer was Shoe on a short leash. Scioscia put some trust in Shoemaker and he was rewarded handsomely. Shoemaker not only began dominating, but he began dominating and going very deep into games. Maybe he wasn’t an ace, but he sure pitched like it for a few weeks.

The only negative of Matt Shoemaker’s season came when he strained an oblique in September, forcing him to miss the final few weeks. He did manage to recover just in time to make a very good start in Game 2 of the ALDS. That performance went for naught, but Shoemaker showed that despite his meager beginnings, he wasn’t scared by the big stage.

[table id=79 /] *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?
This is easily the most wildly disparate set of projections we’ve seen for an Angel player so far. Steamer sees Shoemaker coming back to earth and being merely a league average starter. ZiPS also sees some regression, but not a huge amount. He’d still be a solid mid-rotation guy with that line. Then CAIRO comes in and drops a deuce right in the middle of the dance floor. Interestingly, the projections seem to go as Shoemaker’s strikeout rate goes. We’ll discuss that more in a bit.

Does the Monkey agree or disagree?
I like Shoemaker a lot, but I wonder how much of his success comes from teams just not having any kind of scouting report on him. After all, he was a non-prospect entering the season, so reports on him are going to be a bit light. Even when he reached the majors, he never seemed likely to stick around so there was no reason to spend much time watching him. I think the league will catch up with him a bit this year.

Aside from that, I don’t see much reason to doubt Shoemaker. The strikeout number last year was probably a bit of a reach for him, but he has legitimate swing-and-miss stuff and is always around the zone. There are no smoke-and-mirrors here.

THREE OPEN QUESTIONS FOR MATT SHOEMAKER IN 2015
1) Is Shoemaker really this good?
Like I just said, he may not be quite this good, but he is good. I know it is weird that he basic one good year in a pitcher-friendly environment in the minors and that’s it, but when you watch him pitch, you wonder how it is that he didn’t have better minor league numbers rather than wonder how a guy with such bad minor league numbers is pitching so well in the majors.

There is also evidence of fastball-change guys with good command being able to outperform expectations in the majors. For some reason guys like Shoemaker are being underappreciated right now, though I have to think his success will cause that to start changing.

2) OK, fine, but where did all the strikeouts come from?
That’s my one real concern. Shoemaker fanned 22.8% of batters last season, the highest rate of his entire professional career. Granted, he spent a lot of his minor league career pitching at altitude, but that number looks to be an aberration. That doesn’t mean it is going to totally crater, but seeing it drop down closer to 20% wouldn’t be a big surprise. That is especially true if it turns out that part of his success in fanning batters comes from him throwing a split-change, a pitch that most batters don’t see very often, if ever.

3) Are homers going to be a problem for him?
Quite possibly. Shoemaker had major home run problems during his time at Salt Lake, but that was at Salt Lake. Still, it wasn’t like it was only at Salt Lake. He had issues in Arkansas, too. The problems weren’t as bad, but having a 0.98 HR/9 in a ballpark where dingers go to die is slightly concerning.

In the majors though, homers haven’t been all that big of a problem for him. Part of that is pitching in the Big A, but he also had a 9.4% HR/FB rate, which is about what you’d expect. It isn’t a great number, but it means that he didn’t get lucky on the homer front in 2014. If anything, he might’ve been a little bit unlucky.

The Final Word (and GIF)
“Pumpkin”

This is supposed to represent Matt Shoemaker’s magical rise, but I think it might actually say more about me being the father of a five-year old girl. As much as I think Shoemaker can sustain his success, there is always going to be the fear that the clock is going to strike midnight on him at any moment.