Angels right-hander Ricky Nolasco hasn’t eclipsed the 200-inning plateau since 2011, but he’s motivated to log at least 202 1/3 frames this year, writes Pedro Moura of the Los Angeles Times. That would give Nolasco 400 innings from 2016-17, meaning his $13MM club option for 2018 would vest; otherwise he could end up with a $1MM buyout next offseason. “It’s a big deal to me,” Nolasco told Moura. “I know what’s at stake — something that, obviously, I want to get to, no matter what happens. When I first signed that contract with the Twins, I thought, ‘Well, as long as I stay healthy, this is a five-year deal.’ It’s kind of been on my mind since day one.” Nolasco came close to 200 innings last year, when he combined for 197 2/3 with the Twins and Angels, and Halos general manager Billy Eppler is rooting for him to surpass the mark this season. “I hope Ricky takes the ball every fifth day and does his thing and goes deep in games and wins a lot of ballgames,” said Eppler. Manager Mike Scioscia, meanwhile, stated that he doesn’t “even want to hear about” Nolasco’s contract, adding that “he’s gonna pitch, and hopefully pitch well.”
More from the West Coast:
- Another Angels starter, left-hander Andrew Heaney, is recovering well from his Tommy John procedure last July and holding out hope for a return this season, per Moura. Scioscia isn’t optimistic, however. “From the information I have available right now, there is nothing that would make him available to pitch this year,” he said. “I just don’t see it happening.” Heaney took the mound only once last season, in a six-inning start on April 5, and attempted stem-cell therapy treatment on his elbow before opting for surgery. That worked for teammate Garrett Richards, but not Heaney.
- Before the Dodgers traded southpaw Vidal Nuno to the Orioles on Sunday, they offered him back to the Mariners, who declined thanks to a lack of roster space, reports Bob Dutton of the Tacoma News Tribune. Nuno spent most of the past two seasons in Seattle, which sent him to Los Angeles for catcher Carlos Ruiz in November.
- The Diamondbacks are “looking into building the industry’s most intelligent catchers,” including focusing on pitch framing, catching coach Robby Hammock told Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic. “The catching staff tries to throw out attempted base-stealers 80-120 times a year as opposed to receiving 20,000 to 25,000 pitches a year,” Hammock said. “What do you want to emphasize?” Hammock’s views explain the Diamondbacks’ offseason decision to jettison Welington Castillo, a poor framer, in favor of the defensively adept Jeff Mathis. Fellow free agent addition Chris Iannetta, on the other hand, hasn’t fared too well as a framer (via Baseball Prospectus), though the D-backs are optimistic they can help fix his issues. “It’s a skill,” analytics head Mike Fitzgerald observed. “So if it’s a skill, you can improve at it or decline at it. There’s a decent amount of empirical evidence that guys can improve on this.”
Nuño had great potential shouldn’t have gotten rid of him to be honest
Alot of dodgers have potential. There just wasnt any room
Guaranteed text from Eppler to Scoscia this Spring: Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES does Nolasco pitch more than 202 innings this season! Old school Charlie Comiskey block coming up.
If he can hit 200 innings this year, he’s probably a decent investment for 13m. Here are the pitchers who managed 200+ innings in 2016 fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&…
I think you’d probably take any of them for 1/13
I don’t know about that, he looked really good at the end of the year last year. He figured something out after the trade. He threw 43 innings of 1.47 ERA ball in from Aug 31 through the end of the year, including a CG shutout.
pretty sure he threw 400 innings between 2006 and now?????
If it’s a skill as Robby Hammock claims, then why wouldn’t they have taken the time to teach Castillo pitch-framing skills?
They potentially thought he wasn’t capable of learning it. A lot of things are skills – not everyone can be good at everything. Castillo was bad.
Watching the D’backs on a daily basis I can tell you that Castillo was absolutely god awful at pitch calling. He would always try to get cute instead of just getting the out. They’d get a guy 0-2 by blowing two fastballs by a him, then he’d call for something offspeed. Before you knew it it was a 3-2 count. He did it every single time to the point that it became predictable. I could see if the team had a bunch of veterans that could just shake him off, but with mostly young guys feeling their way, it’s important to have a catcher that calls a good game. I learned in little league that if you have a good fastball and the hitter is struggling to catch up to it you throw it till he proves that he can hit it.
Point taken, but not everything is simply revolved around pitch selection, location plays just as an important role.
Also, you can’t just throw FB after FB, until the hitter catches up, simply because at the ML level they will catch up, regardless of the speed…
Pitching is about keeping hitters off balance, and keeping hitters guessing. You accomplish that by varying location quadrants, varying pitch selections and their movements, and varying your pitches’ speeds.
Although, to a point you did make, once you become predictable as a pitcher, it is game over.
The job of the catcher is to know your pitcher, his pitches, and to know the batter and his strengths and weaknesses. Beyond that, the catcher must also manage the game, by “presenting” pitches well to and for the umpire, pick-up hitters in-game adjustments, and also he must understand which pitches are working well for his pitcher that particular outing.
For success at the ML level, is it vital to have your “battery” working at peak efficiency at all times, and at this level every advantage gained can be huge..and ultimately such seemingly minimal differences can be the actual difference between a win and a loss..
So, I am not the least bit suprised analytics are seemingly jumping on the “presenting” or framing bandwagon, either.
With this being the case, in order to continue their careers at the ML level, guys like Wellington Castillo, and others with a similar skillset, they are either going to have to completely reevaluate and work on their catching skills from the very basics on up, or they are simply going to have to change positions and hope their bats can find them a chance at another position…it is really that simple…Otherwise, they will toil away from organization to organization filling in at the AAA level, year after year.
I honestly put quite a bit of blame on Arizona’s catchers for Miller’s demise last season. They allowed him to get away from one of his best pitches, and they collectively just did not help him at all…
Of course Miller is just as much to blame, but like I mentioned before, the catcher owns a huge responsibility as well.. An experienced catcher should know a pitcher just as well as that pitcher knows himself.
In the circumstance of Miller, and several others, it seems as if Castillo did not put in the time or effort to truly gey to know Arizona’s pitchers, their strengths, nor their tendencies or weaknesses.
Obviously pitch location plays a huge (probably the most important) role, as does keeping the hitter off balance. The point that I’m making is that if a guy, say Robbie Ray throws two 97mph fastballs by a hitter and the hitter isn’t even close to sniffing it, then you decide to come with a slide piece, you’re only doing the batter a favor by coming with your second best pitch. This is only one example of the poor pitch calling by Castillo so I don’t want to get too hung up on it. Obviously there are pitchers that don’t throw as hard and need to pitch backwards and rely more on location.
I think Ianetta had a decent pitch framing year a couple years back, I may me misremembering, but maybe they took that as a sign of potential
Without looking it up, I believe you are correct. I do recall hearing or reading that Ianetta was indeed, at one point earlier, a serviceable to pretty good pitch framer or presenter, as I personally like to call it.