Keith Foulke again

A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out that Keith Foulke had gotten his act together. I stand by everything I wrote there, but wow, was last night ugly*. And it's not a one-shot - since I told the world that he'd gotten fixed, he's gotten broken again.

Or has he?

He's unscored on in 15 of his last 19 appearances, including last night, a period covering almost 7 weeks, and over 20 innings. That melt-down last night increased his post-5/11 ERA to 4.4, but ERAs can be misleading, particularly for bullpen pitchers. He's having a down year, but it isn't a catastrophic season once you get past the first 5 weeks.

Keith Foulke

	G	W	L	Sv	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	% Scoreless	ERA	WHIP	K/9	BB/9	K/BB
thru 5/11	15	2	3	8	17	21	15	15	6	7	10	60%	7.94	1.65	5.29	3.71	1.43
Since 5/11	19	3	1	6	20.33	20	10	10	2	7	18	79%	4.43	1.33	7.97	3.1	2.57
Since 5/11 (before last night)	18	3	0	6	18.67	16	5	5	1	5	16	83%	2.41	1.13	7.71	2.41	3.2

Over that 18 games stretch he was pretty good. Not as good as last year, but certainly not bad. The strikeout rate is down, but not a lot. The walk rate is up, but not a lot. The ERA is up, but not a lot. The WHIP is up, but not a lot.

One of the big problems seems to be that when he's ineffective, he's really bad. Last year, he gave up 2 runs 5 times, and never more than that. This year, he's already had a 5-run outing and 2 4-run outings. Most of the time, he's fine, and effective. But when he's struggling, he's getting hammered. Last year, in his bad outings, he was generally able to muddle through. But this year, when he isn't just right, he's getting hammered. He gave up 8 home runs last year in 83 innings - he's now given up 8 in 37 1/3 this year, more than twice the rate.

His velocity was down last night. It had looked, for the past couple of weeks, like he'd gotten it back to where it needed to be, but not last night. So the question right now is, was last night a "fluke", or a regression to early season form? Were the last first 5 weeks the norm, or the last 5? If he doesn't demonstrate, and fairly quickly, that last night and the beginning of the season were the exception, he's going to force them to make some kind of a move...




Update:
The Baseball Crank's looking at Foulke, too...


* - Last night was awful, but he didn't get all of the help he could have, either. If Olerud's in the game, that 8th inning double is probably an out, which makes it 8-6 going in to the 9th. If Ramirez' throw is little to the SS side, or if Bellhorn holds it, Boone's fly ball ends the game. If Payton doesn't miss the cut-off man, they either hold the go-ahead run at first, which changes the approach to Sizemore, or end the inning at 2nd. And he threw at least 6 strikes to Casey Blake, and any of the four balls could (and 3 should) have been strike 3, which gets them to the bottom of the 9th tied. The double off the wall is an out in most parks, the Hafner home run is a foul ball in most parks. I don't want to be misunderstood here - Foulke was bad, no doubt about it. But there were a lot of circumstances that made the results even worse...