When the Yankees first acquired Chad Gaudin, it was obvious to me that it was a part of their public service program to help eliminate horrible facial hair in Major League Baseball. He was, at the time, one of the worst offenders as he sported a goatee that really looked like it belonged on a billy goat.
Exhibit A: GROSS
Besides having to shave that thing off his face, he got some okay results for the team. They released him because they only had one space in the bullpen free coming out of Spring Training, and he cost too much for what he offered. He wound up back in Oakland where he produced some not okay results.
| IP | H | R | HR | BB | SO | ERA | FIP | xFIP | tRA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yankees | 42 | 41 | 16 | 7 | 20 | 34 | 3.43 | 5.29 | 4.68 | 5.66 |
| Athletics | 17.1 | 27 | 18 | 5 | 5 | 20 | 8.83 | 5.94 | 3.92 | 6.05 |
Everything except ERA tells us that there wasn’t a gigantic difference in the way Gaudin pitched for the two teams. With the Yankees he outperformed his peripherals and with the Athletics he underperformed them. Either way those peripherals are not that impressive.
There’s more to it than just this than just “Wow, Gaudin isn’t that good”. He strikes out a good number of batters and his walk-rate while not great is not terrible. His biggest weakness is that he has got tremendous platoon splits during his career. He is decent enough against righties, but lefties kill him.
Here are his splits from this year:
| Split | G | PA | R | H | HR | BB | SO | SO/BB | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | BAbip |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vs RHB | 12 | 53 | 15 | 17 | 4 | 2 | 14 | 7.00 | .370 | .412 | .696 | 1.107 | .448 |
| vs LHB | 10 | 33 | 4 | 10 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 2.00 | .345 | .424 | .552 | .976 | .409 |
Not what you expect to see from Gaudin considering his career splits:
| Split | G | PA | R | H | HR | BB | SO | SO/BB | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | BAbip |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vs RHB | 225 | 1443 | 199 | 323 | 44 | 118 | 339 | 2.87 | .253 | .322 | .420 | .741 | .307 |
| vs LHB | 202 | 1298 | 125 | 325 | 24 | 170 | 146 | 0.86 | .294 | .390 | .436 | .826 | .319 |
Over the course of a full season I’d expect Gaudin to gravitate more towards his norms, since that’s what players tend to do if nothing else is wrong with them. Relief pitchers are volatile little creatures and their bad spots can be extremely ugly, as anyone who watched the Yankees bullpen pitch for the first few weeks of May witnessed.
As a depth move for a beaten down bullpen, Gaudin makes a lot of sense if he is deployed properly (against as many RHB heavy parts of lineups as possible) and he also hopefully boots Boone Logan into limbo for a while. I approve of anything that gets me a temporary reprieve from watching Boone Logan pitch.
I had to run for cover when I saw he was about to face a lefty swinger. I made the right choice.