Detroit Tigers: Alex Wilson will be a pretty bad starting pitcher
By Matt Snyder
Detroit Tigers righty Alex Wilson wants to try his hand at becoming a starting pitcher again. Don’t expect the move to stick.
This baseball offseason has been an unusually slow one, but baseball fans in the mitten state were prepared for much of the dullness because the Detroit Tigers weren’t looking to do much adding to the ball club anyway. What excitement we’ve had has come in the form of trading veteran players away. That’s all well and good, but then Alex Wilson goes and says he wants to try starting again and we have to talk about it and pretend It’s A Thing because there’s nothing else going on in the sport.
Wilson was a starting pitcher in the minor leagues when he was just starting out in the Boston Red Sox organization. He mostly had success in that role in the lower levels, but the Red Sox opted to convert him into a reliever in 2012, his first full season in AAA.
It’s just fine for Wilson to want to start again, and it’s probably fine for the Tigers to let him (assuming it doesn’t greatly increase his risk of injury), but let’s not pretend this is going to go any way but very badly.
Starting is much harder than relieving. Starters can’t throw every pitch full-tilt like relievers can. Starters have to face the same hitters multiple times per game. Starters can’t enter the game in platoon-friendly situations.
Studies typically show that pitchers give up about one additional run per nine innings when working as a starter versus working as a reliever with one of the biggest changes being a decline in strikeout rate. Wilson might benefit here in that he’s not particularly reliant on strikeouts, but he’s going to see the ball put in play against him even more often as a starter than he has as a reliever.
With such a thin margin for error to begin with, Wilson would have to pitch with near perfect command and heavily rely on his ability to prevent fly balls from going over the fence if he’s going to have any level of success. Even then an ERA in the upper fours would be the ceiling of his projection (and that’s being quite optimistic).
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Left-hander Blaine Hardy has also stated an interest in starting, but this idea would be even worse for a platoon lefty who would have to face a greater proportion of right-handed hitters as a starter.