Update And Thoughts On Hector Noesi

Okay, I know there hasn’t been a lot of action on the blog of late and that’s on me. I’ve been trying to get some content together so that next week while I’m in Rome you guys would still see updates by me. Unfortunately only one (possibly two) will turn out.  So… I regreat to inform you that there just won’t be much content next week.

It’s only a week though and when I return I’ll get some good stuff up that I have in the works. I hope you’ll enjoy half as much as I have doing the research. John Parent will be around if things get crazy and he’ll have breaking news and of course there is always Keith.

As for Hector Noesi, I wanted to do a write up on him because, I had really no idea who he was. Usually I catch the majority of starting pitching prospects on some level. Noesi just kind of floated on beyond my radar.

Initially what I intended to do was something basically what Dave Cameron did, only he did it like way good and now what else is there to talk about? He throws four pitches he commands them well, in that he throws them for strikes. But none of those pitches are anything above average.

I initially thought that Noesi would make a pretty good arm in the same vein as Shawn Kelley. A nice 7th inning guy, giving our bullpen some youth and depth after trading away and releasing two of our higher ceiling arms in Lueke and Cortes this off-season. (Wow, who saw that coming… weird.)

Then I took a step back and realized who I’d been banking on being our fifth starter this whole time,

Bleak

Blake Beavan. I’m not saying that he’s personally a bad guy, I’m sure he’s a very nice guy and I bet he knows a lot more than myself about the physical day-to-day experience of life in the Major Leagues. But here’s what he doesn’t know: how to miss bats.

He sure doesn’t put many on base due to walks but his arsenal is entirely hittable, not to mention he tends to work in the upper zone which means less ground balls and more pop flys. More pop flys means more home runs and giving up home runs is a bad thing.

Beavan ran an ERA that was near average, but both his FIP, xFIP and SIERA point to him being a slightly below league average pitcher. The cool thing about pitching in Seattle is that running out below average pitchers that pitch filler innings isn’t too much of a big deal. But when you are presented with better options, you take the better option. That’s Hector Noesi.

The only thing I don’t like about Noesi at this point is that due to where he is in the pitching depth he may slide into the 4th slot rather than being the 5th option. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but then again, it puts a bit of pressure on the back of our rotation as well as our bullpen when they do falter.

As is it should leave some weird grouping of James Paxton, Danny Hultzen, Erasmo Ramirez, Charlie Furbush and Blake Beavan for the final spot. I’ve talked to a few different individuals I know including one coming out of the wood works to mention that Perez has no shot at the rotation, he’s purely being seen as a bullpen arm.

This is going to put a little bit of pressure on Noesi to develop and while it’s not like pitching in New York, the young man already has some expectations being placed on him for this upcoming season.