The Bullpen

[RingItUp!]

Whenever I see Jason Frasor warming up to come into a game, I start thinking about throwing up. Maybe it's the fear... maybe it's the disgust I have for his inability to pitch. Who can be sure?

There must be a better way. Hell, JP seems to think that Thigpen can do it all, so why not throw him on the mound??

All those in favour of pushing Frasor into traffic, say 'aye!'

[tsherkin]

I'm with you on this; Frasor has velocity and nothing else.

I know our bullpen has one of the 3 or 4 best ERAs in the American (or was it the Majors?) right now but Frasor is the anti-Terminator; everytime he starts warming up, I start swearing about how we're about to lose the game.

Frasor needs to quietly vanish from the Toronto baseball scene.

[beater97]

naye

[tsherkin]

naye

You know I've yet to see him pitch well? I've watched Frasor for a while now, most of the last four years, and I've yet to see him (live or on TV) pitch well. I know he does, from time to time, but I've yet to see it.

He has a crappy ERA for a relief pitcher; for a guy who averages about an inning pitched, per game he appears in, he's averaging over 1.2 WHIP and he has that ERA...

He has recorded 3 saves over the last three years.

This year, he's 1-3, has at LEAST 2 blown saves... He's walking a batter every other inning...

Frasor's nothing.

Even if he's not completely terrible, he's definitely mediocre and he really is more than mediocre. He's a velocity pitcher without control or a really great repetoire.

[RingItUp!]

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You know I've yet to see him pitch well? I've watched Frasor for a while now, most of the last four years, and I've yet to see him (live or on TV) pitch well. I know he does, from time to time, but I've yet to see it.

He has a crappy ERA for a relief pitcher; for a guy who averages about an inning pitched, per game he appears in, he's averaging over 1.2 WHIP and he has that ERA...

He has recorded 3 saves over the last three years.

This year, he's 1-3, has at LEAST 2 blown saves... He's walking a batter every other inning...

Frasor's nothing.

Even if he's not completely terrible, he's definitely mediocre and he really is more than mediocre. He's a velocity pitcher without control or a really great repetoire.

That goes for me too. I watch him, and I hear about how he's decent from the dubious Toronto TV commentating duos, but I don't SEE him pitch well. Hearsay is great and all, but, me, I like evidence. Call me crazy...

[tsherkin]

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That goes for me too. I watch him, and I hear about how he's decent from the dubious Toronto TV commentating duos, but I don't SEE him pitch well. Hearsay is great and all, but, me, I like evidence. Call me crazy...

It's unfortunate, too, because the REST of the Jays' pen is actually quite nice.

I've liked what I have seen thus far from Downs, Janssen, Accardo... Wolfe hasn't looked too bad too often (he does give up about a run per full inning appearance and he's hot-and-cold when it comes to hits; either none or like 2-4; all those numbers are over the last ten games).

Frasor, though... he's guaranteed to give up runs, I mean his ERA is 6.40 over the last ten games for a reason; he blows. His WHIP is 1.8 in that same span.

He's getting worse as the season progresses and he's already a middling relief pitcher to begin with.

[beater97]

He still aint as bad as a lot of other teams worst RPs or even in some cases some teams middle RPs. Now I aint saying he is great or anything, I'm just saying I aint mad about having him at the bottom of the pen.

[jalenrose#5]

Just took a peek at the numbers.....he ain't that bad at all. Pitchers go through bad stretches.....just look at Janssen....he was great for quite awhile....Has had a few stinkers and his ERA ballooned from like 0.95 to 2.37...

Frasor has a great fastball...but it can be too straight sometimes. His curveball or slider....whatever his out pitch is, is one of....if not the best pitch out of the BP along with Downs' curveball and Accardo's Splitter.

His control is his biggest flaw IMO. He needs to locate better....as does most of the pitchers in baseball. He's pitched 36 IP....has 36 K's...but 18 BB's......he needs a K/BB ratio of 3:1 to be successful IMO.....that's 12 BB's instead of 18 .

It could be worse guys....we could have a bullpen like the DRays.....now that's a heart attack waiting to happen.

The Jays BP when healthy....

Ryan....9 I
Accardo.....8 I
League....7 I
Downs....Specialist
Frasor.....6 I-9 I....depends on how the game is going.
Tallet.....Lefty Long Man
Towers.....Long Man (He likes the BP....stay there.)

Rotation....

Halladay
Marcum
McGowan
Burnett
Janssen/Chacin

I'm inclined to send Janssen down to AAA to work on starting again. Remember....he shot through the minor leagues....maybe another half a year might skyrocket the confidence even further.

Trade Bait....Burnett, Chacin, Adams, Wolfe, Phillips, Zaun and Clayton.

**Zaun hasn't impressed me at all. His bat blows and he throws like Annika Sorenstam, and Phillips throws like Lorie Kane....so that's just me though.

Go Jays Go

[beater97]

Just took a peek at the numbers.....he ain't that bad at all. Pitchers go through bad stretches.....just look at Janssen....he was great for quite awhile....Has had a few stinkers and his ERA ballooned from like 0.95 to 2.37...

Frasor has a great fastball...but it can be too straight sometimes. His curveball or slider....whatever his out pitch is, is one of....if not the best pitch out of the BP along with Downs' curveball and Accardo's Splitter.

His control is his biggest flaw IMO. He needs to locate better....as does most of the pitchers in baseball. He's pitched 36 IP....has 36 K's...but 18 BB's......he needs a K/BB ratio of 3:1 to be successful IMO.....that's 12 BB's instead of 18 .

It could be worse guys....we could have a bullpen like the DRays.....now that's a heart attack waiting to happen.

The Jays BP when healthy....

Ryan....9 I
Accardo.....8 I
League....7 I
Downs....Specialist
Frasor.....6 I-9 I....depends on how the game is going.
Tallet.....Lefty Long Man
Towers.....Long Man (He likes the BP....stay there.)

Rotation....

Halladay
Marcum
McGowan
Burnett
Janssen/Chacin

I'm inclined to send Janssen down to AAA to work on starting again. Remember....he shot through the minor leagues....maybe another half a year might skyrocket the confidence even further.

Trade Bait....Burnett, Chacin, Adams, Wolfe, Phillips, Zaun and Clayton.

**Zaun hasn't impressed me at all. His bat blows and he throws like Annika Sorenstam, and Phillips throws like Lorie Kane....so that's just me though.

Go Jays Go

"aye"

[risktaker91]

Whenever Towers gets the ball, I actually feel so nervous as if I was playing...

I have no idea how he manages to get outs...

[tsherkin]

He still aint as bad as a lot of other teams worst RPs or even in some cases some teams middle RPs. Now I aint saying he is great or anything, I'm just saying I aint mad about having him at the bottom of the pen.

There are worse pitchers in the league, undoubtedly. I mean, imagine Frasor without the velocity he has... he'd be godawful in ways I can't even describe right now.

But he's still a major weak link and has a propensity for blowing games. I don't like him because he's a waste of money.

Just took a peek at the numbers.....he ain't that bad at all. Pitchers go through bad stretches.....just look at Janssen....he was great for quite awhile....Has had a few stinkers and his ERA ballooned from like 0.95 to 2.37...

Frasor's "bad stretch" is most of his career, the problems I'm talking about haven't really gone away.

He's still got a WHIP over 1.3 on his career and though that is partially ballooned due to his rookie season, he's still a mediocre relief pitcher.

He's averaging about a walk every other inning and a hit in 9/10 innings. For a guy who averages just about an inning a game, that's not good, especially since he can reasonably expect to come into a game with a runner on base in a high percentage of his relief appearances.

His strike percentage is solid, his first strike percentage is better, his contact percentage is decent. Not special, but decent.

Dusty and AJ have significantly better Cntc%s and Hallady's is actually higher, which is frustrating. Towers' is higher as well.

But those guys are starters.

Accardo's is 75%, 5% lower. Downs' is 69%, 11% lower. Janssen's is 3% higher, as is Wolfe's.

He's at around half of his usual number of Batters Faced and is on track for maybe his best season as far as getting ahead of batters 0-2.

Frasor has a great fastball...but it can be too straight sometimes. His curveball or slider....whatever his out pitch is, is one of....if not the best pitch out of the BP along with Downs' curveball and Accardo's Splitter.

It's a curveball and he's got crappy control of it, which means that it gets hit pretty hard pretty often. Accardo's splitter is considerably superior and Downs tends to be better for the fact that he's a lefty AND a better pitcher.

They've pitched roughly the same number of innings and Downs has an ERA that's roughly half of what Frasor's is. Yes, some bad performances where he got shelled have boosted that, unquestionably, but he's still a mediocre pitcher who has a great heater and weak control. He's essentially a one-trick pony.

He looked like crap in May and that's partly why his ERA is so lofty at this time, true. Then he had a nice scoreless streak in June and it made his ERA better. And then, wouldn't you know it, he looked like the deformed child of Juan Guzman on a bad control night for three straight games against Minny, Oakland and Seattle, giving up 7 earned runs in 1.1 innings pitched over three games (one in which he didn't record a single out) (this was at the end of June).

He's looked decent in July thus far except for that 2-walk game. He's also been noticeably struggling with control all season long.

His control is his biggest flaw IMO. He needs to locate better....as does most of the pitchers in baseball. He's pitched 36 IP....has 36 K's...but 18 BB's......he needs a K/BB ratio of 3:1 to be successful IMO.....that's 12 BB's instead of 18 .

Hell yes, I couldn't agree with you more about that being his problem.

His problem is that scouts saw a 96 mph heater and said "Hey, he's a pitcher!" He's not a pitcher, he's a fireballer, there's a BIG difference. And his changeup is so middling that his fastball (nevermind the fact that it's straight as an arrow most times) is very easy to hit. That contact percentage is pretty weak for a reliever, which is one of the reasons we haven't seen much of him this past month. One among many, certainly, but after enough swings put bat to ball, you're going to get a hit.

A 4.23 ERA may be above league average but look at the ERAs of his bullpen compatriots: Accardo's is 2.72, Downs' is 2.41, Janssen's is 2.39, even Wolfe's is 2.35 and he's a rookie.

Jason Frasor has looked really awful, as a reliever, all season, not just because of certain stretches. Yes, he's mixed awful stretches with scoreless stretches but his overall ERA bespeaks an unreliable, inconsistent pitcher who has trouble with control and gets hit a lot because the batters are making contact with his stuff, which isn't that great. He doesn't have a lot of good movement on his pitches and he's a weak control pitcher... which means he's serving up BP a lot of nights when his stuff is off.

An ERA over 4 for a pitcher who posts about an inning a game is freaking ridiculous, especially compared against the rest of the commonly-seen relief corps the Jays are putting up.

What would the Jays' bullpen ERA be without Frasor? It's roughly top 5 last I checked NOW, without him, we'd have one of the two or three best bullpens in the league.

It could be worse guys....we could have a bullpen like the DRays.....now that's a heart attack waiting to happen.

Absolutely, there's no question about that. I'm not impugning the bullpen, I'm attacking Jason Frasor individually. He's blown every game in which I've seen him play and his seasonal stats are poor, his career stats unimpressive.

Ryan....9 I
Accardo.....8 I
League....7 I
Downs....Specialist
Frasor.....6 I-9 I....depends on how the game is going.
Tallet.....Lefty Long Man
Towers.....Long Man (He likes the BP....stay there.)

Except for Frasor, that is a really great bullpen rotation...

Rotation....

Halladay
Marcum
McGowan
Burnett
Janssen/Chacin

I'd prefer Janssen to stay in the pen and Chacin to vanish from the face of the Earth. We really do need a 5th starter pretty badly.

Chacin's another guy we could do without. Imagine Frasor but without the excellent velocity; Chacin's control is awful 80% of the time, acceptable 15% of the time and outstanding 5% of the time. He's another guy who has a Cntc% of 83% (Halladay is an anomaly of a pitcher for the Jays' staff, with success with such a high Cntc%, I guess because he's locating fastballs that guys are fouling off a lot instead of putting into play). He had a decent rookie year but his WHIP and ERA have been continuously unimpressive and his Cntc% has been consistently at or above 82%.

Trade Bait....Burnett, Chacin, Adams, Wolfe, Phillips, Zaun and Clayton.

I don't know if I want to be dangling Wolfe right now but I agree with most of the rest of that.

**Zaun hasn't impressed me at all. His bat blows and he throws like Annika Sorenstam, and Phillips throws like Lorie Kane....so that's just me though.

Funny, and true, but he does call a really good game behind the plate.

EDIT - An aside, Frasor is walking over 4.2 batters per 9 innings pitched this season. That's more than twice what Mark Buehrle is doing, for reference (Buehrle being the comparison for a really good control pitcher).

[RingItUp!]

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Funny, and true, but he does call a really good game behind the plate.

EDIT - An aside, Frasor is walking over 4.2 batters per 9 innings pitched this season. That's more than twice what Mark Buehrle is doing, for reference (Buehrle being the comparison for a really good control pitcher).

To summarize tsherkin:

Frasor can't locate his non-fastball pitches and his fastball, while fast, is ramrod straight. In other words, Frasor sucks.



On another note, I haven't seen Frasor pitch much recently. Gibbons might realize something that most of the other people in the thread also have: FRASOR ISN'T GOOD AT PITCHING IN THE MAJORS.

[tsherkin]

Haha, I didn't even notice that RingItUp! replied to my post...

Good stuff.