The elite pitchers in baseball don't emerge from the ground, fully formed stars in the manner of Greek mythology; they usually come from the group of good to very good pitchers. Somewhere out there, there's a merely good pitcher about to become a terrific one. The challenge is identifying just who that will be.
The odds of any particular pitcher taking a step forward are relatively small -- if it were easy, everybody would do it -- but here are my favorite candidates to break out and have a Cy Young-esque 2014 season.
Mat Latos, RHP | Cincinnati Reds
Still just 26 years old for the 2014 season, Latos has been one of the more dependable starters during in the majors, never missing serious time (127 starts in four full seasons), with his worst single-season ERA being just 3.48.
At 6-foot-6, Latos looks like a pitcher, and his stuff, a few fastball flavors, slider, curve, and change, all thrown with good command, tends to agree. Despite a record for durability, we have yet to see a full season of Latos being completely "on" as he continued to pitch through shoulder soreness (2011), an abdominal strain (2013), and suffered a rough start in 2012 while he adjusted to the pitcher-unfriendly confines of Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati.
He finished eighth in the NL in FIP (3.10) last season and appears ready to take the next step.
Jeff Samardzija, RHP | Chicago Cubs
Three years ago, Samardzija's name being on a list like this would be absolutely ludicrous. Lots of people -- myself included -- doubted the Cubs could ever turn Samardzija from a flamethrower with miserable command into a top-flight starter.
Even the Cubs appeared to question their chances at times, trying the Shark in a number of roles in his first three stints in the majors, which consisted of a 5.95 ERA and 50 walks in 81 2/3 innings for Chicago. He even struggled at times to get minor leaguers out, with a 4.17 ERA and five walks per game in Triple-A -- not exactly screaming "top-flight starter."
The wide receiver jokes about Samardzija are a thing of the past as he continues to show steady improvement. Sometimes the hardest thing for a prospect to do is lose those extra walks, but while he's no Bob Tewksbury, his 3.1 walks per nine in the past two seasons is quite respectable. Samardzija's second half featured a rather ugly 4.72 ERA, but a lot of that was fueled by a .324 BABIP as the Cubs' summer turned sour faster than an egg salad sandwich left sitting in your car.
Rick Porcello, RHP | Detroit Tigers
It would seem almost unfair for the Tigers to get the next Max Scherzer, but despite a mixed-record in the majors, Porcello retains some breakout potential.
He's still very young -- he just turned 25, is younger than Chris Archer and a few months older than Matt Harvey -- and his strikeout rate has shown continual improvement (from 4.7 his first two seasons to 7.2 last year) and his FIP has gone down every year he's been in the majors.
What has hidden Porcello's improvement is that he's a ground ball pitcher (third-highest ground ball percentage in baseball last year) on a team that had been playing a lot of Miguel Cabrera andPrince Fielder. An infield of Cabrera (at first), Ian Kinsler, Jose Iglesias, and Nick Castellanos is likely to provide better defensive support for Porcello in 2014.
Justin Masterson, RHP | Cleveland Indians
By ERA, Masterson's 2013 was not as strong as his career-best 2011, but there is one key difference: strikeout rate. From 2010 to 2012, his rate hovered at about 17 percent, but in 2013 it jumped up to 24.3 percent. Strikeout rates for pitchers tend to stabilize very quickly, much less prone to the lucky/unlucky runs that can sometimes plague other pitcher statistics, like BABIP and homers allowed.
A 30 percent boost in strikeout rate is nothing to laugh at -- it was Scherzer's jump from 8.0 K/9 to 11.1 K/9 in 2012 that set off my alarm -- and all that's missing for the grounder-heavy Masterson is a top-notch infield defense.
Homer Bailey, RHP | Cincinnati Reds
After years of underperforming, Bailey finally established himself as a Real Major Leaguer in 2012, but I still suspect that his upside is higher than the solid 111 ERA+ he has put up the past two seasons.
In 2013, Bailey was 11th in baseball in percentage of pitches that were swinging strikes. The top 10 includes both Cy Young Award winners and five others who received votes (Yu Darvish, Anibal Sanchez, Sale, Harvey, and Madison Bumgarner). Bailey throws hard, with the seventh-fastest fastball average in 2013 and the second-fastest slider, and given his ability to miss bats, his upside is higher than simply being a good No. 2 or 3 starter.
Ivan Nova, RHP | New York Yankees
Nova cut back on his fastball usage in 2012 and saw his ERA rocket above 5.00. He went back to his heater 60 percent of the time in 2013, and got his ERA down to 3.10 in 20 starts. His biggest problem may not be other batters so much as an infield with more holes than the plot of a Michael Bay movie.
Dan Szymborski at ESPN wrote the article
