June 23: What’s Wrong with Wellemeyer?
Good day…
Only one topic for now:
ANOTHER BAD START BY TODD WELLEMEYER:
Things aren’t getting any better for Wellemeyer, who allowed an emaciated Mets lineup to beat him 6-4 at Citi Field on Monday night. There was no excuse for that. The Mets are down, hit hard by injuries that have taken Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran out of the lineup. Wellemeyer had to come out and keep them down, and instead he got jumped for two first-inning runs. He went 5.2 innings and allowed 10 hits and 5 ER.
And Wellemeyer’s ERA for the season jumped to 5.53. Only nine starting pitchers in MLB have a higher ERA. Moreover, Wellemeyer has allowed 15.22 baserunners per nine innings, and that’s the highest/worst rate of any MLB starting pitcher.
After Monday’s game, Wellemeyer mentioned that bad luck is part of the trouble, and that is true to some extent. The batting average against him on balls in play is .335. That’s higher than the norm.
But this is more than just bad luck. It’s bad pitching.
Let’s identify the problems, by deconstructiing Wellemeyer’s performance so far:
– Wellemeyer is getting the ball up, which means he isn’t getting enough ground balls. His GB rate of 48.6 percent is the lowest among Cardinals starters and glaringly low compared to the others. Joel Pineiro has a GB rate of 71.1 %, Brad Thompson is 68.9 %, Chris Carpenter is 64.7 % , Kyle Lohse is 60.6 %, and Adam Wainwright is 60.5 %. Wellemeyer has never been a groundball machine, but the rate continues to get worse.
– Wellemeyer isn’t finishing off the hitters. We saw it again Monday when Daniel Murphy got down 0-2 to Wellemeyer but extended the AB to push the count to 3-2. Then he homered. Wellemeyer has really buckled when he has runners on and there are two outs in an inning. Of the 55 runs he’s allowed this season, 27 of the RBIs have occured with two outs. With runners in scoring position and two outs, Wellemeyer has been rocked for a .378 BA, .472 OBP and .667 SLG. Ouch.
– Hitters are assaulting Wellemeyer’s fastball this season. I won’t bore you with the specifics, but I looked at the detailed charts and the pitch has become very hittable. A slight loss in velocity may have something to do with it, or a lack of movement on the pitch may have something to do with it, but RH and LH hitters are mashing his fastball when he doesn’t pound it low in the zone. He’s left a lot of fastballs over the middle, and he’s gotten hurt when he’s tried to go inside with the fastball. And he’s been punished when he tries to throw fastballs up. Wellemeyer just isn’t locating it. And when he misses with the fastball, he’s not throwing it with enough steam to get it by the hitters. The data shows that last season Wellemeyer was very effective at getting fastballs in on hitters and jamming them, and he had good success at getting the hitters to chase (and miss) his high heat. It ain’t happening in 2009. And again: I have to believe that
– Wellemeyer isn’t using his slider as often, and it was a good pitch for him last year.
– Lefthanded hitters are mauling Wellemeyer.
The splits are staggering:
2008: .256 / .318 / .443
2009: .349 / .421 / 622
That’s a profound difference. Why? The pitch data shows that Wellemeyer was able to get LH hitters to chase his offspeed stuff last year. He’d set ‘em up with the fastball and then tantalize them with alternate pitches. Last season LH batters hit .185 against Wellemeyer’s offspeed pitches. This year? They aren’t chasing as much. And when they do swing, they’re connecting for .410 batting average.
Unless Wellemeyer can repair some of these issues, it’s hard to believe that the Cardinals will stick with him in the rotation once Lohse returns. Not with Thompson’s ground-ball factory cranking out those quality sinkers.
Thanks for reading …
-Bernie
Wellmeyer is so bad, people at work stopped going to games where he is pitching, because they know it will be a lost. The Cards need to trade him or dump him
Fortunately, the Cardinals had the foresight in the off-season to sign some viable starting pitching, considering we would be relying heavily on Carpenter who is always a health risk. Oh wait. No, we didn’t.
Big Jim, I agree with you, my work has season tix and no one will go if Todd is pitching, is there really no one that we can bring up from AAA? What happened to Garcia?
Where is Boggs? Any of the minor leaguers can’t be any worse. Besides when other teams pitch unknown pitchers at them they seem to go into a fog.
After eating a little crow with a nice red wine last week, I won’t rag on Wellemeyer to hard. Duncan has a had a string of “one hit wonders” and maybe Wellemeyer is one of them. Plus he could find alot of work in a over used relief corp and let Thompson and Boggs step in. From the cheap seats it looks like he doesn’t come out firing on all cylinders and confused on what motion to use. Send him to the pen, and let him work it out, it is a long season.
I was the one eating the crow last week Bernie. (on Ludwick and Ankiel) Sorry for the misunderstanding.
The bottom line is Wellemeyer has lost some zip to that fastball. He has always had some control issues, but he could make up for that when he fell behind in the count with a nasty fastball with movement even though the batters knew it was coming. You can see the lack of confidence in his body language. He also seems to be throwing across his body more.
Stienjr11 - Garcia had Tommy John and won’t be back till Sept - best case seniro.
I think its time to send McClellan down to get his pitch count up and make him a starter. Cheapo Dewitt is going to do that next year anyway. Bring up Mortensen for a few spot starts. And put Wellemeyer in the pen.
or best case scenario (if I could spell)
We saw Boggs give up 7 runs in one inning to a so-so Albuquerque team (without Manny) last week. Not sure this is the answer. Thompson has surprised me this year.
I’d like to see Trey Hearne from Springfield brought up. He’s 7-1 this year with a ERA in the two’s. Last year, he spent part of the year in the Mexican League and went 5-1, also with an ERA in the two’s. The most impressive thing about his numbers to me are the amount of hits allowed versus innings pitched. Way fewer hits per inning. I don’t get too excited about Boggs because I think he’s just another 5th starter.
I say Todd for Jonathan Sanchez, from the Giants, he’s left handed, and sucks just like Todd. Maybe it could be a Lankford for Williams deal!
Bernie I always appreciate your writing skills and I realize you do have to fill a column but in this case there is a quite simple answer to what is wrong with Wellemeyer. He cannot pitch at this level. He either needs to be traded, cut or sent to Memphis.
All it would take to get Wellemeyer out of the rotation is for TLR to stop being so consistently stubborn about who’s gonna pitch & use Thompson. But can Tony stop being Tony? Doubtful.
Yeah, last nights game was tough to watch. The team had to be frustrated inning after inning because I sure was. I do not wish any bad thing on a good guy who is trying. I agree that Todd just does not have the command, velocity and there with the confidence in his game right now. Todd is making TLR’s decision making rather easy. Hopefully he can right himself soon.
Something has to happen and soon with Wellemeyer. If we all know that, how can management keep sending him out there? What is management thinking?? It is just like the Pujols thing… why are we wasting all that talent? get someone to help in for the next few years while he is in his prime and let’s try to win something!!!
Hey Bernie, do you EVER write anything critical when the Cards are playing at home and you actually have to enter the clubhouse? Actually, now that the Post passes blogs and “5 minutes” off as journalism, do you even leave the office?
hey restore ease up man, your criticism has no relevance to this article. bottom line is wellemeyer is garbage; no reason to criticize bernie for that.
Thompson probably stays in rotation when Lohse comes back. McClellan takes long reliever position. Wellemeyer, Duncan and Ankiel/Ludwick go to American league team. We get excellent outfielder with proven right-handed power and average. Sign long term deal with him. Then sign Albert to LONG term contract. We have the bullpen and infield solid. Two excellent starters and two lesser but gifted starters.
Can we just admit that this guy is a RELIEVER and NOT a starter. Once again, make relievers starters and save a buck!
I’m at Busch Stadium quite often, and downstairs in the clubhouse quite often. Don’t care if the players like me or not. Never have. Never will. If they like what I write, great. If they don’t, great.
(I find it amusing to have my courage questioned by someone who hides behind a made-up name on an Internet comments section. The hypocrisy is always good for a laugh, so thank you. If you ever decide to man up and use your real name when you criticize me, then we can have a good conversation. Can’t do that when you’re hiding in the bushes.)
Besides, I really didn’t really rip Wellemeyer … I just explained the reasons — supported by numbers and research — as to why he has struggled this season.
Thanks!
-B
Well B-Man I did some homework,.. to tell you the truth I am all together pleased with Wellemeyer and Pineiro as our 4-5th starters. The stats aren’t as bad as one would seem.
Wellemeyer took the ball to a 15-17 record last year in his starts and 8-7 when has started this year. Pineiro is 13-13 in 08 and 6-8 in 09. Overall I think in todays baseball world if you can get around .500 with 4-5th starters thats great and Pineiro has had some bad luck and could be 9-5 easy with a break or two. I guess the biggest difference in the two is that Pineiro works 6.2 innings per game average and Wellemeyer is around 5.2 and that is added stress on the pen along with his growing ERA. I think Wellemeyer is (ok) compared to other 5th starters out there and a skipped start may do him some good and you don’t lose to much tossing a rookie out there from time to time which could be a plus in the future.
You make a good point on his fastball which has become a batters dream as of late but I don’t think he is to far off from being effective or as much as you could expect from a 5th starter.