Honestly, Vance Worley is one of the pitchers that I found the most interesting as last year wore on, and he’s probably going to get the shortest post in this whole series. The reason is that Jeff Sullivan at FanGraphs more or less did my work for me here, with his post from late last summer entitled “Return of the Most Deceptive Pitcher in Basball” about Worley.
There is a bit of easy short-hand you can use for evaluating pitchers: if he’s right-handed, and he has trouble breaking 90 mph, chances are good that he’s going to have trouble getting hitters out. Vance Worley’s average fastball last year was 89.5 mph. For much of the season, I wrote him off as a smoke-and-mirrors guy; how much of a difference can command make if you can’t break a window with your fastball? Sullivan’s article answers that question: if you can put a little bit of movement on the fastball and throw it exactly where you want it when you want it, it can make a huge difference. Worley doesn’t even have the club’s best sinker or two-seamer (to be fair, with Charlie Morton’s crazy groundball rate and Gerrit Cole’s nasty 95 mph two-seamer, it’s difficult company) in terms of break or difficulty to hit; it’s all in the command and the late break and the deception created by those two things.
Suddenly, the Pirates’ emphasis on fastball command takes on a whole new world of meaning. It’s not just about throwing strikes, commanding the strike zone, getting ahead, etc., being able to throw a two-seam fastball and a four-seam fastball both for strikes is about deception.
Anyway, Worley is precisely why I almost implicitly trust the Pirates’ front office and coaching staff when it comes to their judgment as it relates to pitchers. Worley was, to all appearances, a smoke-and-mirrors guy with the Phillies who simply had the illusion wear off. When the Pirates looked at him, though, they saw something that made him different, they knew he could fix him, and they knew they could turn him into an asset again. Simply put, they were looking for and seeing something in him that I didn’t even know existed, and now that I know it’s there, I suddenly find Vance Worley to be endlessly fascinating. I was wrong about him, I’m happy to be wrong, and I’m happy to admit it.
<500 is an ongoing series previewing 2015 for each key Pirate in fewer than 500 words.
Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
