{"id":7283,"date":"2013-07-29T07:02:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-29T11:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com.\/?p=7283"},"modified":"2013-07-29T07:02:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-29T11:02:39","slug":"storen-to-the-minors-did-he-deserve-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=7283","title":{"rendered":"Storen to the minors… did he deserve it?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Storen<\/a>

Storen will look to re-group in AAA.. Photo Andrew Harnik\/washingtontimes.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Talk about a fall from grace.\u00a0 Drew Storen<\/strong> went from being the closer for a 98 win team in Oct, 2012 to being optioned to the minors<\/a> after Friday 7\/26\/13’s doubleheader.<\/p>\n

On the face of it, it makes sense.\u00a0 This team is struggling, Ryan Mattheus<\/strong> is off the D\/L, and there were 8 relievers for 7 spots.\u00a0 Storen’s numbers in 2013<\/a> have been abhorrent: a 5.95 ERA and a 1.512 whip in 42 1\/3 innings.\u00a0 The team isn’t scoring any runs, so the last thing they need is a reliever who can’t hold a close lead right now.<\/p>\n

A look deeper into Storen’s numbers though reveals a very tough-luck case.\u00a0 Looking at his advanced stats from Fangraphs<\/a>, he’s got a .346 BABIP right now, 45-50 points above the league average and a good 60 points above his career average.\u00a0 He’s been very unlucky on balls in play.\u00a0 This contributes to the huge gap between his ERA (5.95) and his FIP (4.16), and especially his xFIP (3.59).\u00a0 This expected FIP by they way is significantly better than Rafael Soriano<\/strong>‘s current xFIP (4.26)<\/a>.\u00a0 The point?\u00a0 Storen has been unlucky so far this season and, were he given the chance to allow his appearances to regress to the expected mean, he likely would have pitched a ton better going forward.<\/p>\n

Side Note: \u00a0Luigi De Guzman<\/strong>\u00a0(aka\u00a0“Ouij”)\u00a0from Natstradamus did a fantastic bit of data mining, looking at Storen’s\u00a0detailed pitch f\/x data<\/a> to delve into the reasons for Storen’s downfall. \u00a0Definitely go over there and read that piece.<\/p>\n

Steve McCatty<\/strong> was quoted during Saturday’s broadcast as saying that he wanted Storen to work on his mechanics.\u00a0 Specifically, Storen used to vary his left leg motion between the straight legged approach and a conventional knee bend.\u00a0 This is confirmed by beat reporter James Wagner<\/strong>‘s story to the same<\/a>.\u00a0 Makes sense to me: the straight leg kick causes him to be slower to the plate, making it harder for him to hold runners. \u00a0The Nats as a team are already struggling to hold runners in general.\u00a0 Plus, I’ve privately wondered if the varying leg kick causes him to struggle to hold his mechanics.\u00a0 McCatty alluded to this, wondering if Storen’s control is affected.<\/p>\n

On a different note; I’ve said this before, but I cannot help but think that Storen’s mental state has been in question ever since the acquisition of\u00a0Soriano. \u00a0Buying Soriano on the FA market was essentially management telling Storen either a) we don’t trust you anymore after your game 5 meltdown, or b) we don’t think you’re good enough to be our closer any more. \u00a0It was an public and embarrassing demotion, and not every guy will take it in stride. \u00a0Tyler Clippard<\/strong> may have had an easier time with it since he was already an established 8th inning guy, and he was never really in line this season to be the closer. \u00a0These are the kind of man-management issues I think us casual fans forget about; just like you have problems in your office, so do players have problems in the clubhouse.<\/p>\n

So, tough break for Storen.\u00a0 Two straight awful appearances plus the blown save in 7\/20’s Los Angeles game conspired to get him sent to the minors.\u00a0 Lets hope he regroups, clears his head and is ready to come backup when the next spot in the bullpen opens up.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talk about a fall from grace.\u00a0 Drew Storen went from being the closer for a 98 win team in Oct, 2012 to being optioned to the minors after Friday 7\/26\/13’s doubleheader. On the face of it, it makes sense.\u00a0 This team is struggling, Ryan Mattheus is off the D\/L, and there were 8 relievers for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[52,1478,1625,1398,86,1020,128],"class_list":["post-7283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","tag-drew-storen","tag-james-wagner","tag-luigi-de-guzman","tag-rafael-soriano","tag-ryan-mattheus","tag-steve-mccatty","tag-tyler-clippard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7283"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7298,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7283\/revisions\/7298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}