Sure, gas isn’t cheap these days, but at least you’re not filling up a commercial airliner every time your tank is running on fumes. Airfare from sunny California to Springfield, Mo. is going to cost you a bit over $700 – and that’s if you’re lucky.
And how about that 47-year-old junk calculator that has been passed down from generation to generation? I assume someone made the mistake of buying it at one point, but for you: priceless – literally.
Attention all aspiring Major League Baseball scouting directors:
Help out that dwindling bank account by reading miscellaneous numbers and random decimal places about that pitching prospect of your choice at home.
Monikers of success for pitchers have rapidly moved from the outdated W-L record to the ERA to the WHIP. At the rate these symbolic random letters are thrown together to create a sense of meaning, I’m approximately six to seven acronyms behind by taking the time to write them out.
Let me redeem myself: GOSO. You’re welcome.
And in classic roundabout baseball fashion, I’ll explain myself by first analyzing the game itself before using other assorted metaphors to prove that I’m actually going somewhere with this.
Baseball is a pretty simple. The object of the game is to score more runs than the other team. How do you score? Find your way onto the base paths, smack the ball around a little while, and then cross the plate. The end.
So by definition, a good pitcher keeps people off the bases. Let’s take this a bit further. If they can’t drive the ball into the outfield, the chances of knocking runners in drastically decreases – we like ground balls. Better yet, if they don’t hit the ball at all, they’re definitely not producing runs. If they can’t score they can’t win.
That’s GOSO, folks. The combined percentage of batters sent down via the groundball or strikeout (GOSO) shows which pitchers are the most likely to experience success on the hill.
Want proof?
Phil Hughes, Yovani Gallardo, and Adam Miller are three of the best pitching prospects in all of baseball – there’s no question. They also held three of the four best GOSO percentages in the minor leagues last season. An average pitcher had a GOSO at the 48% plateau. Hughes (58%), Gallardo (54%), and Miller (53%) exceeded the percentage with relative ease – they’re good.
Enter Jaime Garcia.
Who? While he’s not an absolute unknown, Double-A Springfield’s ace is not exactly a household name just yet – but Jaime Garcia should be. The lefty tied Phil Hughes – yes that Phil Hughes – for the highest GOSO in all of baseball last season.
This is by no means an end-all be-all statistic – come on, we’re talking about baseball here – but it is a number that yields results. While I’d love the chance to go see Garcia throw in person, I don’t need to spend $700 to fly to Missouri to tell you he’s good.
If they can’t smack the ball all around the yard, they can’t reach base. If they can’t reach base, they can’t score. That’s all there is to it.
So is Jaime Garcia the next Phil Hughes? We don’t know yet, but the 20-year-old's method of success all but mirrors that of some of the brightest young arms in baseball. Ready for a new way to evaluate pitching? GOSO has already arrived on a big league calculator near you.
Adam Loberstein is driving the Jaime Garcia bandwagon. You can hop aboard by emailing him a adamloberstein@gmail.com.