Joe Blanton’s Early Woes as Phillies’ Fifth Starter: Weighing in on “Heavy B”

For Joe Blanton, life is pretty good. He makes a great salary and has four of the best active pitchers in the game lockering next to him, surely offering priceless advice to help enhance his craft. He’s trimmer, too—somewhat a shell of his former self, at least physically.

Then, you realize that Blanton, who has everything else going right, can’t hold a seven-run lead against the Mets in his first outing or keep the the Nationals from smacking the ball all over their empty ballpark during his last start.

And it isn’t just bad luck or timely hits: opposing batters are hitting .378 against him. In both outings, all started OK, but the deeper it got into the game, the more the opposition’s score changed.

Blanton blamed his mechanics, but pitching coach Rich Dubee wasn’t so sure that was the issue. In any case, unimpressive would be an understatement.

Many fans and analysts, along with handfuls of bloggers, are quick to point out that the heavy version of Joe Blanton, or “Heavy B,” might have had the stamina to get through the sixth or seventh inning of contests, instead of being yanked earlier in games with a ballooning ERA.

Now, he’s shed some weight, and his struggles thus far in 2011 are proof? Nope, ladies and gents, this is not the case.

Let me ‘Hardy Boys’ this mystery for you: Blanton is just plain bad in April.

Let’s look at Blanton’s career splits, where April is highlighted below. With a little math, you’ll see he averages just 6.15 innings/game in April, which drops to just 5.97 inn/game in May, and both of these come with a 1.44 WHIP, easily worse than any other month of adequate sample size.

In the summer, however, Joe seems to find his rhythm: he posts a serviceable ERA, very good WHIP, and pretty low BAA in June.

July seems to show a slight trend of statistical relapse, easily attributed to the All-Star break, and then Blanton historically has his best month in August, matching June’s average productivity in WHIP and BAA while improving ERA to an extremely effective 2.77. Also telling is his average innings per start, which rise to 6.43 over summer’s three-month span.

These numbers typify the string of quality starts Joe will put together in August, going six or seven innings giving up two runs. It’s what the people want as fans, but it’s fleeting.

By September, though you wouldn’t know it from his win-loss record, it seems you can expect Blanton to regress once again and his season to come full circle.

In 2005, Blanton had numbers that could have had him confused with an ace or second starter of some of the league’s bottom-dwellers.

It was a glimspe into nothing, it seems, and just as his mid-rotation abilities and potential led to a nice payday, his numerous mediocre performances leave many wanting more out out of the right-hander.

All that you as a Phillies fan need to know, and expect, is that if healthy, Joe will contribute nicely in the heat of Summer for this team as our fifth starter.

Whether he’s capable of putting together a good start in September or October shouldn’t matter, because if all goes according to plan, Blanton will be relegated to Powerade duties when the postseason rolls around.

 

*This article was originally published at 7thandPattison.com

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