A Few Thoughts on Gio Gonzalez

Former White Sox prospect Gio Gonzalez will face the Cubs tonight. He's mostly a fastball/curveball pitcher. He also throws a change-up and a sinker. His ground ball rate has improved over his past couple years of MLB experience, mostly due to increased use of the sinking two-seam fastball.

That said, you'd almost want to feed him left-handed batters. Why?

• He's not showing confidence in anything but his fastball against LHH; Gio will throw them curves only when he's even or ahead, shows them almost no change-ups and mixes in just half as many sinkers as RHH see
• RHH get the full kit, a plurality of fastballs, a few less curves than LHH see and then a decent amount of sinkers and change-ups
• That nice big curveball is his out pitch against both sides
• Gio leans on the fastball when behind on RHH, but not to the extreme of LHH
• He's gradually added sinkers in place of fastballs to RHH, less so to LHH

Also noteworthy are Gio's improved pop-up rate and declining HR/FB+LD rate. The latter isn't under his control (or so the theory goes), but it is nice to see more infield flies and fewer bleacher flies. If you're an A's fan, that is.

Finally, it should come as little surprise, based on his limited repertoire, that Gonzalez has a very small platoon split for his MLB career.