Craig Hansen looks like a dominant reliever. A hulking 6-6, 240 pound righthander with excellent arm strength and a slider that can make grown men weep on occasion, Hansen was ticketed for near-immediate success following his selection in the first round of the 2005 amateur draft. The Boston Red Sox popped Hansen with the 26th overall pick, dishing out a $4.4M major league contract on the premise that the St. John's star would be ready to shoulder a high-leverage role in the bullpen in short order.

Suffice it to say, Hansen has not lived up to those expectations in his professional career. Hansen missed a good deal of bats in the minors (8.28 K/9) and posted a superficially impressive 2.62 ERA, but his inability to throw consistent strikes led to inflated walk totals (4.32 BB/9). In 76.1 career major league innings, Hansen has struck out just 6.84 batters per 9 innings, a tepid number for a reliever thought to possess dominant stuff, while dishing out 5.3 walks/9. The Red Sox, not exactly teeming with quality bullpen arms, were nonetheless willing to ship out Hansen as part of a much larger deal that netted Pittsburgh's Jason Bay.

Now in Pittsburgh, Hansen's chances to play a significant part in the 'pen have increased exponentially. With Matt Capps (shoulder) on the rehab trail and Damaso Marte now pitching in the Bronx, the esrtwhile top prospect can work his way into a prominent role, should Hansen's performance merit a chance at late-inning heroics.

What, exactly, has led to the discord between Hansen's scouting reports (high-90's gas, wicked slider) and his performance (1.29 K/BB, 76 ERA+)? To find out, I am going to delve into Hansen's Pitchf/x data, searching for a reason why the man ticketed to become Boston's closer is instead pitching mop-up innings for Pittsburgh.

The chart shows the vertical and horizontal movement (in inches) that Hansen got on his pitches, relative to a pitch thrown without spin. The X axis shows the amount of horizontal movement on Hansen’s pitches, while the Y axis shows the amount of vertical movement on the pitches. The chart is from the view of the catcher, so pitches with a negative horizontal (X axis) value are tailing in on a righthanded hitter. Pitches with a low vertical (Y axis) value are moving down in the strike zone; the lower the Y value, the more downward movement the pitch has.

Pitch MPH X(In.) Z(In.) %Thrown

FB 95.3 -4.38 7.38 65.4

SL 86.9 1.57 -0.14 33.8

CH 88.9 -11.12 5.20 0.8

Type is the type of pitch thrown. FB=Fastball, SL=Slider, CH=Changeup. MPH is the average initial velocity of the pitch. X is the amount of horizontal movement on the pitch. Remember, a negative X value means the pitch is moving toward a righthanded batter. Z is the amount of vertical movement on the pitch. The lower the Z value, the more downward movement on the pitch. %Thrown is the percentage that Hansen threw each pitch.

Hansen's fastball is a misleading pitch. It's the sort of offering that may look impressive at first glance because of its velocity, but upon further inspection is a bit more suspect than the radar gun would have you believe. While Hansen fires it an an average velocity of 95.3 MPH, the pitch actually has below-average horizontal and vertical movement. The 24 year-old's cheese does not tail in on righthanded hitters especially well (-4.38 X; the average is -5.46) and does not have the illusory "rising action" to compensate (7.38 X; 9.78 is the average vertical movement). In other words, Hansen's fastball is fairly "straight" to home plate. The old baseball axiom states that major league hitters will tee off on a straight fastball no matter its speed, and this appears to be the case with Hansen- opponents are hiting .288 versus his heater as of August 5th.

The St. Johns star's lofty prospect status was built largely upon his slider, a nasty pitch that can buckle hitters' knees at times. While Hansen is inconsistent with the pitch (look at how the red cluster has some "hanging sliders up in the heart of the zone and some deadly ones as low as -5X), his slider remains a plus pitch. Hansen's 87 MPH breaker has above-average horizontal movement away from righthanded hitters (1.57 X; the average is 0.7X) and plenty of tilting action (-0.14 Z; the average is 3.7 X). When Hansen spots the pitch well, it looks like something out of an old Nintendo RBI Baseball game. Unfortunately for Craig, the quality of the pitch varies quite a bit.

Hansen has also thrown a few changeups, but it's probably not wise to read much into such a small sample (0.8 percent of his total pitches). For what it's worth, the pitch has good fading action and a decent amount of drop compared to his fastball. Given his struggles against lefthanded batters (.315/.401/.476 career vs. LHB; .254/.359/.373 vs. RHB), perhaps Hansen should toss in a few more changeups to lefties, just for variety's sake.

So, where does Craig Hansen go from here? We have seen that his fastball is not all it's cracked up to be, but he still throws plenty hard and can unleash a devastating slider at times. According to Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA system, Hansen's most comparable player is Ryan Wagner, another college closer pegged for quick success who has fallen by the wayside (career 89 ERA+). Other recent comps include Blaine Boyer (95 ERA+), Gary Majewski (101 ERA+) and David Aardsma (102 ERA+).

At this point, the odds are against Hansen establishing himself as a late-inning force. If I had to peg odds off of the top of my head, I would say there's a 10 percent chance that he "gets it", makes a few mechanical changes and becomes a shutdown reliever, a 20 percent chance that he becomes the next Kyle Farnsworth and a 70 percent chance that he continues on his path of high-octane disappointment (then again, I suppose that is the Kyle Farnsworth career path). The Pirates received a fairly interesting player, as far as throw-ins go. Whether Hansen can make the necessary adjustments to succeed remains to be seen, but he will get the opportunity to redeem himself in a fluid bullpen situation in Pittsburgh.

A Journalism student at Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for Driveline Mechanics, the Transaction Guy on the MVN Network and Inside Edge Scouting Services. Contact David at david@drivelinemechanics.com or golebie1029@duq.edu