Everything You Need To Know About Gio Gonzalez Heading Into The Playoffs
The Nationals received some good news (relative to other options) yesterday when it was announced that Stephen Strasburg’s injury was a flexor mass strain and not something more serious that might immediately require Tommy John. Andrew Miller suffered the same injury as Strasburg back in 2015 and he missed just about one month of game action. Its impossible to know an exact time-table for Strasburg but it seems very likely that he will miss the rest of the regular and could easily miss a start or two in the playoffs. Its worth adding that it will also be pretty impossible to project whether Stras will be back to his dominant April-July self when he does return. That puts a much larger emphasis on guys like Gio Gonzalez who didn’t really factor into the playoff rotation equation before Strasburg went down.
Max Scherzer and Tanner Roark are each locked into the rotation come October and a healthy Strasburg would obviously by the 3rd piece of the crew but with Strasburg on the DL, Gio Gonzalez and the injured-but-rehabbing Joe Ross are the two clear options to start game 3 of an NLDS. I’ll look into Joe Ross later on in the month after he’s made a few starts in DC but for now, let’s take a deeper look into Gio Gonzalez.
Before we do that, I’ll give a preview of the types of blogs you’ll be seeing for the rest of the regular season. We are at that point where the Nats are all but guaranteed to make the post-season (and win the division), because of that, post-game recap-style blogs can get pretty repetitive or feel like filler so instead, I’ll be doing very quick recaps at the top of the blog and then try to go much more in-depth into one specific Nats player – I’ll try to cover all of the important members of the team before the post-season starts. I’ll also have some stuff on the NL Cy and MVP races as well. Anyways, back to Gio.
Gio Gonzalez is an interesting pitcher. He had (and sometimes still shows) the skills of a legitimate ace pitcher – he finished 3rd in the Cy Young race in 2012, his first year in DC but he’s also incredibly inconsistent and sometimes downright frustrating. Barring a miracle month of September, Gio’s ERA will rise for the 5th consecutive season and his strikeouts per 9 innings will dip for the 3rd time in 3 years. Perhaps the most frustrating part about Gonzalez’s slip in play is how phenomenal he was in April and early May. Through his first 8 outings of the season, Gonzalez and his 1.86 ERA made a few appearances on the leaderboards.
What caused Gonzalez’s sudden slip from sharp and crisp performance to the ugly 5.53 earned run average he has bared in his past 20 outings? Well, according to some metrics, absolutely nothing. xFIP, a pitching performance indicator that maintains a standard HR rate for all, and SiERA, another indicator, actually assert that Gonzalez has been BETTER over his past 20 than he was in his first 8. Its tough to accept this notion because anyone who saw him pitch in April and then again a couple days ago can pretty clearly tell that he was much better at the start of the season. These indicators can be wrong but first we need to figure out why they are wrong.
xFIP isn’t a great way to measure Gio’s success because he has ALWAYS been effective at keeping the ball in the yard. From the start of the 2010 season until the middle of May this year, only about 7.4% of Gonzalez’ fly balls left the yard – this is in contrast to the average of around 10.5%. Since then, however, Gonzalez has allowed 15 homers (or nearly double the 8 round-trippers that he allowed all of 2015). Homers are obviously a major culprit in Gonzalez’s fall from dominance but it still doesn’t make much sense how a guy who’s always limited the long-ball is now so susceptible to it.
Left: Opponents SLG/P rate in his first 8 starts of the year. Right Opponent SLG/P in most recent 20.
On first glance, one potential culprit is that Gio Gonzalez is over-throwing his pitches. By over-throwing his pitches, Gio is making his fastball flatter and easier to hit, leaving balls higher up in the zone, and losing effectiveness on his breaking pitches. What’s my case for Gio’s overthrowing? In April and early May, back when he was experiencing success, the average fastball velocity was 89.7 MPH and his curve was 76.3 MPH, now both of these rates are below career averages but whatever he was doing was working so fuck it, I guess. Something changed around mid-May and all of a sudden, Gio’s velocity jumped. Coinciding with the increased velocity was increased HR rates, increased ball %s, lower individual pitch values, higher line drive rates, and worse results. From mid-May on, Gio’s fastball has been 92.3 MPH and his curve has averaged more than 78 miles per hour – these are stark contrasts to the speeds Gio was tossing in April. Its worth pointing out that gaining velocity throughout the season is not a normal occurrence for Gonzalez and did not happen in 2014 or 2015. Due to his weaker stuff, hitters are now punishing Gonzalez whenever he throws a ball on the inner half of the plate.
Velocity Chart, 2014-2016
Over-throwing seems to check all of the boxes for potential reasons for Gio Gonzalez’ continued fall but if he can somehow revert back to his old throwing methods, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to think that he won’t become a valuable starting pitcher yet again. Gonzalez’ value in the bullpen as an effective leftie-throwing, innings-eating reliever would also be very enticing but for now, let’s try to make sure that he deals with his potential over-throwing problem.
Gio Gonzalez needs help re-reaching his potential but, with careful training and preparation, Gonzalez can get there. Let’s hope that we don’t need Gonzalez in the starting rotation come play-off time but if Strasburg is still injured, Gio will have to pitch and perform and, in order to achieve the best performance results, he needs to stop over-throwing the baseball.