Fausto Carmona: Comparisons and Career Projections

Thursday Indians fans saw a much improved Fausto Carmona, as he bounced back with a win and 6.1 innings of solid pitching. He struck out 3, walked only 1, gave up 2 runs, and had his ground ball rate back up to a more "Carmona-ish" level. He wasn't perfect, but much better than a week ago. In honor of Carmona's return, here are some of his comparable players and how they fared over the years...

Actually, let's have a little more fun before we get into all the details. Without looking, what comps would you suggest for Carmona? If you need to, take a moment to check his stats at your favorite stat site. I promise I'll wait right here while I eat a plate of cheese nachos with baked beans on top (one of my favorite nacho combinations)...

Ok, ready? Who'd you come up with?...Seriously? You think Carmona compares well to Goose Gossage? Is this a joke?...Well, I guess you have a good point. Put a mustache like that on Carmona, and they would look pretty much like twins.

Ok, seriously, who'd you come up with? Here's who I found along with their minor league averages.

Greg Maddux and Brandon Webb. Pretty nice comps for Carmona. You can see that there's a bit of an age difference between Carmona and Webb, but in linear progression terms, Maddux, Carmona, and Webb all match up pretty well. Of the 3, Webb had the higher strike out rates and ground ball rates, but his control wasn't so good. Maddux comes in with the lowest ground ball rates, but he played a year ahead of Carmona and 4 years ahead of Webb, so the strike out rates and walk rate are very respectable. As for Carmona, his ground ball rate and control were very advanced even in the minors.

Now that we have some comparables for Carmona, let's see how each of them did (or is doing) in the majors. We'll start with K/9 and BB/9 rates.


Very solid progression trends for both pitchers. Just as with their minor league stats, Maddux had better control, while Webb relied on a better strikeout rate, but overall they were very similar. I added the little orange stars to indicate the years that each player won the N.L. Cy Young Award, and we'll get back to that in a second, but before we do let's check their ground ball rates.

Once again, both pitchers displayed very solid trends in their ground ball rates. I wrote an article a while back discussing the value of high ground ball rates so I won't spend too much time on them here, but you can see that in general ground ball rates don't see the heavy declines during the transition from AAA to the majors like we see with strike out and walk rates. They might fluctuate a bit, but a great ground ball rate can almost immediately be applied in the major leagues, and make a ground ball pitcher very valuable early in their career.

Anyways, let's move on. I mentioned the Cy Young Award years for each pitcher, so we'll take a moment to see what kind of production a ground ball pitcher has to reach in order to have a Cy Young type year.

So, if Carmona is going to be a Cy Young caliber pitcher, he'll need to come somewhere close to the numbers above (notice that I threw in Webb's stats from this year since it looks like he has a very good chance of winning the Cy Young this season). If we apply the same trends displayed by Webb and Maddux to Carmona's minor league numbers, then we can determine if and when Carmona might be able to compete for MLB's top pitching award (I also project Webb's stats along the same lines of Maddux to make things a little cleaner).


The first thing to point out about Carmona's stats is that the giant spike you see at the age of 24 are his actual stats from this year. It seems completely out of line with Webb and Maddux's numbers, but Carmona has only appeared in 12 games this year, and injuries have also been an issue, so I'm not really concerned about him or the inflated stats.

What I am interested in is the numbers projected for Carmona from the age of 25 up to 32 and possibly beyond. Between his walk rates and ground ball rates, Carmona should be a Cy Young caliber pitcher even with slightly lower strike out rates than Maddux and Webb. That doesn't mean he'll definitely win a Cy Young Award during those years, but he'll likely perform at a level equivalent to a ground ball inducing Cy Young Award winner. Once again, it's not a guarantee, but he has the potential to do so.
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Fausto Carmona in 2008: In Control of Losing control?

After a few months of rehabbing an injured hip, Fausto Carmona says he's ready to make a major league start, and reports indicate that he'll soon have his chance this upcoming weekend.

Before his injury, Carmona's walk rate had seen a huge jump to 15% up from a career high of 9.6% in 2006 and a career average of 7.5%. But his ground ball rates were hovering around 70%, helping to maintain a 3.10 ERA. From what I've read online, Carmona was working on using more pitches down in the zone, resulting in more pitches in the dirt, and consequently more walks. However, Carmona has displayed good control throughout his career, and his low ERA in 2008 suggests that somehow despite the walks he still had things under control. Perhaps he was willing to risk walking hitters with 1 or 2 outs, but once he had men on base, he reverted back to his proven pitch selection.

I'm not sure if the facts completely confirm my speculation about Carmona, but here's what I've found:

Of Carmona's 38 walks in '08, 21 came with no men on base as compared to 17 with men on base. Not really a significant difference.

Of his walks with men on base, 9 walks came with men in scoring position. In comparison, he had a 13.8% walk rate with men in scoring position against a 16.5% walk rate with no men in scoring position. Once again, not really a significant difference.

Of his 9 walks with men in scoring position, 6 came with 2 outs. That puts Carmona's 2 out with men in scoring position walk rate at 17%, and his walk rate with men in scoring position with 0 or 1 outs at 10%. Now we're beginning to see some significant differences.

With no outs and no men on, Carmona walked 12.7% of the batters he faced. With no men on and 1 or 2 outs, Carmona walked 20.6% of batters. Once again, there's some significance here.

Finally, here's how Carmona's walks broke down with men on.

Man on 1st: 13%
Man on 2nd : 20%
Man on 3rd: 0%
Man on 1st and 2nd: 14%
Man on 2nd and 3rd: 14%
Bases Loaded: 14%

So, what have we come up with? Obviously, Carmona is walking a lot more hitters than he has in the past, but he's being picky about the situations he issues those walks. When he has room to make mistakes, his walks rates are consistently near 20%, while in more volatile situations he's walking closer to 12-13% of hitters.

So, despite overall elevated walk rates, it looks like Carmona has a bit of method to go along with the madness. In 9 recent minor league innings, Carmona had 0 walks, so perhaps he's ready to regain his previous form. There is some speculation that Carmona's work load during 2007 could have induced some regression in his stats, and that sounds quite plausible and falls nicely in line with his results in early '08. But with time off to rehab his hip, we'll soon be able to see exactly how much of a role fatigue played in this season's walk surge and what kind of performances to expect for the second half.

Update: Carmona also induced 15 double plays this year in 58 innings, as opposed to 32 last year in 215 innings. Either he got really lucky, or he felt confident that even after walking batters, he could make up for it with a ground ball double play. If you had a 70% GB%, wouldn't you feel pretty good about your odds of getting a ground ball when you needed one? ...Read more

Jaime Garcia to Start Against Padres

Tony La Russa has announced that Jaime Garcia will start Sunday against the San Diego Padres, who are 12-22 against left handed pitchers.

The Cardinals have used Garcia as a reliever since his call-up, but feel that he is more valuable as a starter. While he has made some rough appearances at AAA in the past month, he turned 22 years old 6 days ago, and has shown that he has the talent to become an excellent starter. His best comparisons include Brandon Webb, Fausto Carmona, and Francisco Liriano, so it should be exciting to watch him against a team like the Padres. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict a stat line for the game...

6 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 5 K

We'll check back Sunday evening or Monday morning and see how close my prediction was. Fell free to add your own.

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