Late on the Manny wagon
Last year, the Milwaukee Brewers sent Dave Bush down to AAA after stinking up Milwaukee with terrible pitching performances through the first few months of the season. At this point last year, Bush was 2-5 with a 5.49 ERA and it got worse in his next start, hovering his ERA near 6 before catching fire over the last few months of the entire season and helped to propel the Brewers to their first playoff birth since 1982. Many people feel Manny Parra should follow that same route, taking a couple of weeks off of major league pitching to build his confidence back up against perennial minor leaguers. Tim Dillard or Seth Mcclung would be the likely candidates to take his spot while he uses a couple of starts to regroup.
When Doug Melvin was asked about repeating that course of action, he shrugged it off as if it wasn’t an option. “First of all, you have to have a better alternative,” said Melvin. “I’m not sure we did the right thing with Dave Bush last year.” Sounds like Parra’s going to continue to be able to pitch in the bigs.
Most people have attributed Parra’s inflated ERA to his lack of control. That’s mostly accurate, as his walk rates have skyrocketed so far this year, but I’m not sure he’s going to keep up his poor performance for the rest of the year. His walk totals have led to a much higher WHIP, but he’s gotten pretty unlucky so far with balls that are put in play and he’s giving up fly balls at a rate much higher than his career stats would imply. As the old addage goes: always trust the career stats over the cherry-picked ones from half a season.
His strikeouts have dipped a little bit as well but that’s nothing concerning as the dropoff is too insignificant at this point to be a cause for concern. His .359 BABIP should fall a little bit and his abnormally low left-on-base percentage has helped inflate his ERA. Even by the way he’s throwing strikeouts and walks up right now he should be a better pitcher than what he’s been, so there’s no way he keeps up his terrible pitching pace. My guess is that he’ll regress towards his career numbers, much like what Dave Bush did last year. This would be an argument to keep him in the rotation, then, as if he continually lowers his ERA then that means he’s going to be a much better pitcher than he has been.
After taking a quick look at his stats I’m not convinced he’s nearly as bad as his 6.75 ERA would imply and he’s due to regrress back towards the norm by the end of the year. All he needs to do is remember how to control his pitches a little better again and he’ll be back to normal. Give him some more time to prove himself. No need to send him down to AAA — give him a couple more starts to help him find himself.
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