For those awaiting the exciting conclusion to "Pennants Added and the Hall of Fame", I will have it ready in a couple of days.  Today I wanted to take a look at a very efficient gem turned in by a certain AL starting pitcher earlier this week.  

A while ago, Jeff (TucsonRoyal) published an excellent post about whether or not Luke Hochevar of the Royals would be better off in the pen vs. being a starting.  He looked at extensive PITCHfx data and inning by innings splits, and eventually concluded:

Luke was decent in the minors as a starter, but I believe that he can not cut it as a major league starter.  The Royals will probably try to use Luke as a starter for a little longer, but his place is in the pen setting up Joakim Soria unless he finds a way to have some stamina to pitch into and past the 3rd inning.

Well, Luke apparently didn't care for all of those fancy stats and research, and decided to throw an 80 pitch complete game, only allowing 1 ER.  He allowed 3 hits (including a homer) and 1 walk, while striking out 3; so it wasn't exactly the most dominant start, but it was still great nonetheless.  And the way he did it was particularly surprising.  Jeff had shown that Hochevar tended to decline after the first couple of innings; however, in his last start, "all" of his 4 baserunners came before the 5th inning.  Then he was lights out the rest of the way.

So was this start just luck, or has Luke actually taken a step forward to being a better pitcher?  

First lets start off with pitch selection.  In his post, Jeff showed that Hochevar's fastball velocity and usage had declined in the later innings of the game.  So what happened last start?

Obviously we are dealing with an extremely small sample size, but the results are still revealing.  He started off throwing his fastball most of the time; however, especially in the middle innings, he integrated his offspeed pitches more.  That follows what his previously established pattern that Jeff illustrated.  In his post, Jeff noted that the reason Hochevar threw fewer fastballs as the game progress was likely due to it's declining velocity in the later innings.  Lets see if that was the case in his last start:  

Unlike his previous starts in which his fastball velocity declined in the later innings of the game, he maintained steady velocity throughout the game.  In fact, he actually increased his velocity as the game progressed.

So it appears that Hochevar had his stuff working for him that day.  His fastball stayed fast, and he integrated his curveball and slider nicely.  Overall, he seems to have had made the improvement, at least in his last start, that Jeff thought was necessary. 

However, while he may have improved upon his endurance, his command still appeared shoddy:

While he was clearly throwing a ton of strikes, his pitch location didn't look very good at all.  He threw way to many fastballs down the middle, in my opinion, and his curve and slider appeared to have hung up in the zone.  Overall, he allowed 23 balls in play, which is a very high number for such a dominant start, yet only 3 hits.  His FIP for that game was 4.31, which is good and a massive improvement over what he had previously offered, but not nearly as dominant as a quick glance at his game line leads you to think.    

He improved in terms of endurance, throwing just as hard in the 9th inning as in the 1st inning; however, he needs to miss more bats if he wants to continue with good results like this.  He threw way too many hittable pitches, and against a better offense than the Reds, he might not have had so much success.

Still, the fact that he was able to maintain his stuff into the late innings and throw strikes can only be encouraging to Royals fans.  A 4.31 FIP isn't bad at all, and if he can build on his last start he should be able to be a solid contributer as a major league starter.

Poll

What should Hochevar's role be?

75%

Starter

85 votes

24%

Reliever

28 votes

113 votes | Poll has closed