Nick analyzes Brandon Woodruff for his daily Pitcher Video Breakdown.
Where do you rank Brandon Woodruff among the best starters in the majors? Watch Nick explain Woodruff’s success in today’s Pitcher Video Breakdown:
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Founder of Pitcher List. Creator of CSW, The List, and SP Roundup. Worked with MSG, FanGraphs, CBS Sports, and Washington Post. Former college pitcher, travel coach, pitching coach, and Brandeis alum. Wants every pitcher to be dope.
No, he is not. You have to be durable and consistent to be one of the best in baseball. Otherwise, you are James Paxton. Once upon a time there was a trendy argument that Paxton was an ace despite the innings. At this point we can see pretty clearly that he neverbelonged in the discussion. I figure that a guy like Woodruff has about as much in common with Josh Hader as he does Max Scherzer. I think is health and and reliability were something that other pitchers were going to willingly forfiet, they could probably K a few more guys and improve their ratios… but that is why he isn’t. The best pitchers in the game know how to pitch – they don’t just have good stuff. The good new is that Woodruff can be that guy someday, but as of now I don’t take him seriously as a starting pitcher. Doing it year-in-year-out is a lot different than doing it once or over part of a season. Its completely different. These kind of guys come and go. In this era we do fawn over those fluky little runs that we all know are not sustainable – you know Statcast and stuff. His health/approach is what will determine if he is a flash in the pan or not. History is full of guys that had a great year or two. It is hard to quantify what they did, but I suspect that it is generally rooted in luck or just a lack of sustainability. It is criminal that we are not talking about Max Scherzer as one of the best pitchers of all-time – that doesn’t make good clickbait though. Every word about some new generation of talent that will likely never materialize takes away from his legacy. Kershaw is also one of the all-time greats. This article is about whether we can pretend that Woodruff belongs in the same sentence as those two for one year. To which I would reply, who cares? Pitchers like Woodruff are in the middle of a starting pitcher and a reliever. No, I didn’t watch the video lol. I don’t watch breakdown videos… although if there is one to watch, then your would be a good choice. I think video breakdowns are just scummy. Some turkey is simply pointing out the success of a player and pretending that they have something to do with it… with the only real intention of promoting themselves. I suspect that this kind of “expertise” appeals to the Twitter fan, which I am not. A good video has a good transcript. A good transcript is an article. Most videos are just the lazy way to write an article, but they are good for the illiterate.