yorman bazardo

bazardo is not particularly interesting. he has a nice name, and he has a nice track record, but beyond that, there isn't much of note.

bazardo is only on my radar because of the fact that the Seattle Mariners general manager, Bill Bavasi, designated the 22 year old righthander for assignment just prior to the opening of spring training because there was no room on the mariner's 40 man roster. he was traded to detroit for a minor league outfielder before passing through waivers, and was added to the tigers' 40 man roster immedietly thereafter.

Raw stats:

year  age  level  ORG    IP   H     K   BB   HR
2005  21    AA  FLA/SEA 142  146   99   47   16
2006  22    AA    SEA   138  144   80   45   10
2007  23    AAA   DET    26   29   16    9    0

as i said, he's nothing special. but he's young, and we can work with it. lets look a little deeper at the possible effects of switching organizations 3 times in 3 years:


OPS with Men on Base vs Bases Empty by organization in the last 3 seasons:

ORG    Men on    bases empty
FLA    .792        .704
SEA    .678        .761
DET    .856        .651

the sample size with detroit renders their numbers almost insignificant, but even looking only at the florida and seattle numbers, it is apparent that bazardo's profile has changed over the last 2+ seasons. with florida, bazardo pitched well out of the windup, but was moderately below league average from the stretch. that trend reversed itself with seattle, but the park bazardo pitched out of leaned significantly towards favoring pitchers.


OPS vs. left and right handed batters by organization in the last 3 seasons:

ORG   vs. LHB    vs. RHB
FLA    .760       .731
SEA    .727       .780
DET    .735       .758

again, bazardo's profile has fluctuated between organizations. so, basically he's a 23 year old pitcher trying to figure out what works at the upper levels of the minors. the fact that he has had as many as 4 pitching coaches in the last 2+ seasons is probobly not a good thing, but could serve him well down the road.

so, what can he do to get better:

i'm not going to attempt to be another voice in his ear (you know, if he's the type to read newly launched blogs by philadelphia area college students). i think he should be allowed to pitch however he feels comfortable with minimal input from his pitching coach or catcher except when prompted. bazardo should be allowed to find his own style, because he's probobly heard enough suggestions from various pitching coaches in his professional career that he should already have a good idea of what he wants to do. it's his career, and he's still young enough that he will get plenty of chances to prove his worth, so long as his head is squarely on his shoulders.

as for anything more concrete, the data is too random for me to offer up a legitimate suggestion. i'll just have to see how he does with a more meaningful sample size in toledo.