The title of this post is sort of faceitous, but it's also sort of not. It's very easy to rag on specious proclamations that are issued solely on the basis of a player's effectiveness inside the first week or two of the season, and no rational person is going to argue that what Alexi Ogando has done in his first two major league starts qualifies him for top-of-the-rotation status or the prestige endowed by the 'ace' label ... but on the other hand, he's obliterating many of our preconceived notions about what he was destined to be during his time spent serving as a temporary starter, and, for the lack of a better descriptor, is pitching like an ace right now. If I sound confused, it's because I am.
A synopsis of the situation as it currently stands: In his first two major league starts (and only his fourth and fifth starts as a professional ballplayer, which is doubly mindblowing), Ogando has posted 13 innings of zero-run, four-hit baseball, with eight strikeouts stacked against just three walks yielded to the Mariners' and Tigers' lineups. Both starts have comprised abundant positive indications -- a healthy 93-95 mph four-seam fastball and a dirty, hard-breaking slider that has lost nothing in the transition from the bullpen to the rotation, augmented by very good command and a palpable killer instinct. Pitchers with such limited experience starting games in a professional setting aren't supposed to look this good even against non-elite lineups like Seattle's and Detroit's, but then again, the Rangers weren't supposed to start their season with nine wins in 10 games, so there's that.
When you're dealing with a pitcher with excellent stuff like that which Ogando is currently touting, there are a few different things that can cause the train to derail: (a) poor control, in the sense of not being able to throw strikes, period, (b) lacking command, in the sense of not being able to consistently pump in quality strikes, and (c) emotional fraility and/or a lack of confidence, which totally undermines the pitcher's ability to attack hitters in his preferred manner and instead forces change to his game plan. Anyone who has watched his first two starts closely enough realizes that (b) isn't remotely close to being a problem, and the pitch data actually confirms a bit of improvement in (a) from his first start to his second. There's a point I want to make on (c), but that can wait for a moment.
Ogando took the exact approach that virtually every pitcher strives for yesterday, in that he swung the count into his favor with a first-pitch strike 70 percent of the time (41 percent in his first start; major league average is 58 percent), then tended to drop back below the league-average strike percentage a little bit once he was ahead in the count and once he got to two strirkes, but also roared back on the few occasions he did fall behind by logging 11 strikes in 13 behind-in-the-count opportunities. Even more startling is the degree of success he found with the slider against Detroit -- 28 pitches, 22 strikes, and 10 outs against no hits. No batter swung and missed at his breaking stuff, but it's such a violent change of pace from the usual high-octane stuff that it still proved incredibly effective, and I'd almost be shocked if it didn't induce a steady stream of whiffs going forward.
So, what are the remaining issues? The lack of a truly viable change-up, for one, although Jason Parks acknowledges in his excellent TFR.com post on Ogando that while this is one aspect of the package that is somewhat deficient, it doesn't matter much so long as the fastball-slider combo remains effective multiple times through the lineup. Given that sliders generally have a pretty unfavorable platoon split, I do wonder if this is going to metastasize into an actual issue if Ogando can't find his groove with the change-up and left-handed hitters in particular begin to catch onto his bit, but the sheer quality of his fastball movement/command/velocity may be able to forestall any such problems ... for a while, at least. Conventional wisdom holds that starters need three usable pitches
The other two things weighing on my mind are his mechanics and his uncertain future; these sound rather interrelated and similar to one another, so allow me to disentangle the two. When I mention the uncertainty of his future, I'm talking more about the obvious question of whether this same package is going to show up on a consistent basis against the heavier hitters of the American League. I realize how unfair it would be to Ogando to expect 6-7 pristine frames out of him every time out against above-.500 teams like Boston and New York, and I know nobody is expecting that, but how will he adjust when more legitimate lineups figuratively put the screws to him? There's no questioning his makeup, but will he still be confident enough to remain in all-out attack mode when he's a couple of runs down in hostile territory and the opposition isn't so overmatched? Hopefully so, but not definitely so. Not yet, at least.
As far as his mechanics are concerned, Jason still harbors many of the same concerns he had about Ogando's max-effort, upper body-reliant mechanics in a starting role that he did over this past winter, but cautions that good mechanics do not equate to an assurance of health, or vice versa -- and he's right, of course. I'm reminded of Will Carroll raising the red flag on Francisco Rodriguez every spring back when he was still writing up his team health reports, and conveying the message that K-Rod's terrible mechanics meant that him breaking was not merely likely, but rather an inevitability. Granted, K-Rod was/is a reliever and we're talking about Ogando as a starter, but there is clearly a greater than zero chance that Ogando will not succumb to a mechanics-related breakdown this season, or next season, or ever. It's just that if Ogando does press his way into a longer-term starting role, we're going to have to build a pretty sizeable risk factor into his projection.
As far as this year is concerned, it's still far too early to render a prediction that you could feel reasonably comfortable with; yes, Ogando could reveal some cracks in the foundation in the coming weeks, Tommy Hunter could make a full recovery, and that could the end of that. Or Ogando could continue to look dominant, and Hunter could encounter a few steps backward in his rehabilitation, and the Rangers could stick by Ogando, or move him back out of the rotation and then move him back in several months later if it appears Texas is destined to reach the post-season and needs a higher-upside secret weapon in their playoff rotation than the known quantity that is Hunter. I don't have the answer, and sometimes we don't really want to see what the answer ends up being ... but this time, I think we all do, because this is a lot of fun.
Source: http://www.bbtia.com/home/2011/4/11/alexi-ogando-rangers-ace.html
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