Jason Vargas Will be Followed by ... You Don't Want to Know

If the Cubs plan on winning—and/or seeing the Mariners' bullpen—this week, they better do something tonight against Jason Vargas. Vargas is a mediocre-turned-crafty left-hander.

Vargas is nothing like the surgeon Dr. Lee who will cut up the Cubs on Wednesday night. King Felix follows. Maybe David Aardsma will make an appearance to haunt one of his former clubs.

This has been a career year for Vargas, a young guy who has already bounced around a bit. Drafted but not signed out of high school, he spent time at three colleges and is now with his third big league team. As a matter of fact, you may remember him beating the Cubs when he was with the Mets. It was May 17, 2007 and before the eventual division winning Cubs got their act together.

What to expect from Vargas?

• At least 90 pitches and about six innings: Vargas has thrown between 89 and 108 pitches in each start, going at least five but never finishing eight frames


• One or two walks and maybe four strikeouts: Vargas has had an eight strike-out game, but is generally pitching to contact and doesn't issue many free passes


• Slow stuff: His fastest pitch on record, back to 2008, is 92 mph and he averages 88 with both his four- and two-seam fastballs


• Slower stuff: Vargas has a change-up that averages 80 mph, a 75 mph curveball [that is (a) pretty lame; and (b) rarely thrown] and an 84 mph slutter of some kind(s)


• Fly balls: Only a third of balls put in play against Vargas are on the ground and he throws strikes with all of his pitches—expect contact early and often when the North Siders are in the box tonight

Hope for Cubs right-handed batters to be aggressive on him early in the count. His most hittable pitches are the curveball and the sinker, and he's most likely to throw them to on first pitches to righties or when he's behind to righties. If he gets ahead he can be effective with the change-up, four-seam fastball and slutter.

Left-handed batters will see a pretty steady diet of four-seam fastballs. If he's not locating that pitch he may be vulnerable, even from the left side.

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.

Trevor Cahill's Magical Sinker

The Oakland A's come to Wrigley Field for a three-game inter-league set. Former middle reliever Carlos Zambrano gets the start against righty Trevor Cahill. Cahill is a 22-year old sophomore who has a total of 41 big league starts under his belt. His calling card is a ground ball inducing sinker, and it's been working like a charm.

Cahill is throwing a few more four-seam fastballs in 2010, so his two-seam sinker is no longer the majority offering. It's still accounted for 43% of his pitches so far. He tops out just at 95 mph, averaging 90 or 91 with the sinker and 92 with the heater.

Cahill goes off-speed at least three different ways. He has at least one change-up, a rarely thrown straight-change and his more typical tumbler, that moves a bit like some splitters. Whatever they are, he throws them around 80-82 mph. He clearly has two breaking pitches, an 83-84 mph slider and a upper-70s knuckle/spike curve.

On the whole, Cahill is a well above average ground ball pitcher. Most of the action the A's infielders see comes off of Cahill's sinker and change-up. Both offerings have posted mid-to-upper-50s ground ball rates in 2009 and 2010, contributing to his overall rate of 48%.

The key to Cahill's success in 2010 has been turning ground balls into outs. I know, that's supposedly not a skill, but, well, take this for what it is.

In 2009 opponents had a batting average of .191 on ground balls against Cahill. This was better than the MLB average (.236) and the A's team average (.253). So far in 2010, Cahill's grounders are yielding a batting average of just .093. The league is at .228 and the A's are vastly improved at .194 (2nd in the baseball).

Cahill's success has been a function of luck, skill and quality defense. How much of each is unclear, but he won't keep this up. Still, I'd expect him to be better than average until proven otherwise. Or until HITf/x comes out.