Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Kyle Nicholson, Pitcher at Large

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Kyle Nicholson, Pitcher at Large

It's April 13, and the most valuable pitcher in the nation has only three starts.

I don't talk about individual performances all that much. That's because you can read the stats for yourself, and if you try to go deeper than that you only really have two ways to go. You can do the player profile thing, but I don't know how any thinking adult can have seen Bull Durham and read, much less write, one of those things with a straight face. I mean, some of the human interest stuff is cool, like the kid that drove off an intruder with a croquet mallet or whatever it was this week, or the guy from Florida last year (or 2001, or whenever it was) that pulled the woman out of the burning oil tanker, but those stories obviously only stick with you in a vague sort of way (if you're Willy Fox's or Ashley Roque's mom, I don't want to hear from you; I'm making a point here). The kids, for the most part, don't know how they're doing what they're doing or can't explain it, and you don't want to hear them try. The other alternative is the deeply technical explanation of technique where I try to explain what they're doing, and I'll be the third to admit that I don't know enough to do that well.

On the other hand, I like strategic innovations (remember, I'm the guy who thinks you should have a three-man rotation with a knuckleballer in it. So, is Kyle Nicholson a lone oddball or the harbinger of a new way of managing a pitching staff? How hard would it be to duplicate the success A&M is having with him?

To get a more specific feel for what we're talking about, here's a game log for his appearances this year:

Date Opponent                  Inn IP    R   Exp

2/06 Texas Southern             3  2.0   0   1.2
2/09 Arizona State              5  2.2   1   3.0
2/11 Rice                       6  3.2   0   2.8
2/16 Texas-Pan American         7  2.0   0   0.9
2/20 Texas-Arlington            1  7.0   2   4.1
2/24 Jacksonville State         3  6.2   0   5.0
3/02 Oregon State               6  3.2   0   3.1
3/04 New Mexico                 9  0.2   0   0.5
3/11 Florida                    1  7.0   1   5.8
3/16 Kansas                     5  5.0   0   4.0
3/18 Kansas                     5  5.0   1   4.0
3/23 Oklahoma                   7  2.2   0   1.8
3/25 Oklahoma                   1  7.1   5   5.1
3/31 Nebraska                   7  3.0   0   2.1
4/01 Nebraska                   7  3.0   0   2.1
4/05 Texas Tech                 9  1.0   0   0.8

"Inn" is the inning in which he entered the game. "Exp" is the number of runs that that opponent would score in that number of innings under their average conditions.

Now, I think it's something of a happy accident that this is happening; nothing in Nicholson's past numbers suggested that he would have the ERA that he does this year, so I think it's just been one of those things. On the other hand, that doesn't mean that someone couldn't do what Rob Childress has been able to do, which is basically use his best pitcher exactly when he needs him.

The big argument for considering closers when selecting valuable players is that, despite the fact that they're not involved in very many innings, those innings are more important, a phenomenon usually referred to as leverage. Modern closer usage, though, wipes that out by only using the closer under very specific (and usually less-than-maximal leverage) conditions. Nicholson, on the other hand, has done everything from starting when needed to throwing long early relief outings to rescue a failing starter to closing, and that's made him more valuable than any other pitcher in the nation so far this year.

To be honest, there is no way to tell how easy this would be to reproduce, because there really are no precedents. Even at the Major League level, the closest you can get is pre-closer reliever usage from the '50's and '60's, but even those guys usually had more pre-defined roles to play. The one thing that we can say is that, in this case, it's working, so I'd say that it's probably worth stealing and refining.

There is one other issue, and that's the matter of fatigue and potential injury risk. Again, there just isn't enough data to know. Nicholson hasn't touched 100 pitches this year, but he threw over 60 twice in three days. If we don't know enough to make definite pronouncements about the limits on normal starters, we sure don't know enough here. It may be significant that his one relatively bad outing was starting on one day's rest, but it may just be coincidence. Again, this would take some study.

As with all my advice, this comes with the usual money-back warranty, but I do think it just might work, and I'd certainly try it if I had a guy that I thought could handle the schedule flexibility.

This means absolutely nothing, ignore it.

This is one generic layman's predictions for who gets in the tournament. I'm not going to bother picking a team from the one-bid conferences, since the conference tournament will just be a crapshoot, but if I only list one team from a conference, they'll get an at large bid if they don't get the automatic bid.

America East   Florida State         Minnesota             Southern California
A10            Clemson               Coastal Carolina      UCLA
CAA            North Carolina State  UC Irvine             Arizona
Horizon        North Carolina        UC Riverside          South Carolina
Ivy            Virginia              Cal State Fullerton   Kentucky
MAAC           Miami, Florida        Long Beach State      Vanderbilt
MAC            Wake Forest           East Carolina         Arkansas
MEAC           Stetson               Rice                  Mississippi State
Mid-Continent  Texas                 Southern Mississippi  Mississippi
Mountain West  Oklahoma State        Memphis               Auburn
NEC            Missouri              Tulane                Florida
OVC            Oklahoma              Wichita State         College of Charleston
Patriot        Texas A&M             Southern Illinois     Louisiana-Lafayette
Southland      Nebraska              Evansville            Troy
SWAC           Kansas State          Oregon State          Pepperdine
WAC            South Florida         Arizona State         San Diego

Rather than keep returning to the subject of pitch counts and pitcher usage in general too often for my main theme, I'm just going to run a standard feature down here where I point out potential problems; feel free to stop reading above this if the subject doesn't interest you. This will just be a quick listing of questionable starts that have caught my eye -- the general threshold for listing is 120 actual pitches or 130 estimated, although short rest will also get a pitcher listed if I catch it. Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger.

(*) Pitch count is estimated. As always, I welcome actual pitch count corrections.

Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Kyle Nicholson, Pitcher at Large

About the author, Boyd Nation