Will the Little Cowboy Ride Again?

Last season, Josh Tomlin was asked to plug the leak that was the back-end of the starting rotation, and surprisingly, he did just that and more. Through 10 starts, Tomlin posted a 3.02 ERA and the Indians won 8 of the game he pitched. He pitched 2 complete games in those 10 starts, more than any other season in his professional career. Everything seemed to be going great for Tomlin and it had many fans, once again, claiming he should be given an automatic spot in the Indians rotation in 2016, but baseball is a funny game and not everything is as it appears. The bottom line is, Josh Tomlin is just an average pitcher and while he’s shown the ability to be very, very good at times, he has shown more often that he can be very, very…. not so good.

In 2014, Josh Tomlin started off hot. From May 6, 2014 to June 7, 2014 he made six starts, striking out 7.81 per nine innings, walking just 1.12 per nine, while posting an excellent 3.12 ERA. However, as his 3.70 FIP indicated, he may have been playing at an unsustainable level, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what happened. From his next start on June 12th, all the way through his final appearance on September 19th he posted an unsightly 5.80 ERA and a less terrible, but still poor 4.20 FIP. By the end of the season he had long since played himself out of the starting rotation. Going into 2015 Tomlin was on the disabled list, these injuries coupled with his ineffectiveness made it seem like all but a given that he wouldn’t get much playing time in 2015. But things rarely play out as planned in baseball.

When I first heard Tomlin was going to be thrust into the Indians’ starting rotation, I cringed. As a Columbus resident, I get the opportunity to watch the Columbus Clippers on a regular basis. This meant I would be given the opportunity to watch Tomlin as he rehabbed his way through the Indians minor league system. Tomlin made 4 starts for the Clippers, racked up 21.1 innings pitched, surrendered 10 earned runs (3 home runs) for a 4.22 ERA. He looked like anything but a major league pitcher and certainly not ready for big league play.

Of course, Tomlin made me look silly in bashing him by pitching tremendously down the stretch when the Tribe was making a last ditch effort to grab a playoff spot. But this begs the question, can he do it over the course of an entire year? I’m still not convinced

Has Tomlin shown the ability to be a decent starter? Yes. Let’s not forget his one-hitter in 2o14 against the Mariners, proof that he has some great stuff. Unfortunately, for every one-hitter type performance, we are subjected to 8 multiple home run games where he only makes it through the 4th inning.

Josh Tomlin is a perfect example of why the Law of Averages exists. Over a short period of time, Tomlin can be very effective, we have seen that a number of times, but over the course of a season he’s just not capable of sustained success. His 2015 numbers lend strong support for the argument that he would have likely regressed to his 2014 self.

One of the biggest issues Tomlin has is that he allows home runs at a Trevor Bauer-esque rate. If we include all pitchers with 60 or more innings pitched this past season, Josh Tomlin ranks 4th in all of baseball with a 1.78 HR per nine innings pitched rate. Even Bauer, who gives up home runs like he gets paid to do it, had a 1.18 HR/9 rate. Yes, there’s a chance Tomlin’s rate would have regressed closer to league average had he played a full season, but history tells us this is just a part of his game. In 2014 his HR/9 was 1.56, in 2012 it was 1.57.

Then of course, there’s everyone’s favorite indicator of a pitcher’s impending regression, batting average on balls in play. A low BABiP isn’t always an indicator of regression to the mean, sometimes it’s a sign that a pitcher was just very good over a period of time. However, a .199 BABiP is completely unsustainable.

Tomlin’s chances of making the Indians’ starting rotation will largely be dependent on whether or not the team trades Carlos Carrasco or Danny Salazar. Should they deal one of those two, that would make it all the more likely for Tomlin to fulfill the Tribe’s 4th or 5th spot in the rotation. If he is an Opening Day member of the rotation and pitches throughout the season, expect numbers much closer to 2014 than 2015. By all indications, he has not become a different pitcher than he was two seasons ago, so there’s no real reason to believe 2015 was anything more than the product of a small sample size. This isn’t like Carrasco in 2014 who made a few great starts at the end of the season after re-tooling his entire method of pitching. This was just the case of a pitcher who was asked to fill a void in the rotation and did a tremendous job of it over a very short period of time.

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