Yet, he's pitched well. Really well. Through 26 innings, his ERA is at 2.36, backed by solid peripherals. In fact, the defensive-independent pitching stats all like him --
| FIP | 3.01 |
| xFIP | 3.34 |
| SIERA | 3.55 |
If there's one significant warning sign for regression, though, it's this: Vogelsong's struck out 24 of the 109 batters he's faced (roughly 22%). His swinging-strike rate is at 7.5%. There's a pretty strong correlation between swinging-strike % and K%, and Vogelsong's K rate is quite higher than we'd expect based on his swinging-strike rate. ZiPS projects Vogelsong to post a K/9 of 7.59 over the rest of the season, but I'd even be inclined to take the under on that projection.
The main issue for Vogelsong going forward, however, is maintaining a low walk rate. He's struggled with that throughout his career.
And on May 3, we saw that problem manifest itself, when he only managed to throw 43 of 83 pitches for strikes:
I want to believe in Vogelsong. But I've seen 26 innings of him, and that just doesn't negate the other 300 innings he's pitched in his career. Or the 100 innings he threw in AAA last year, where he walked 5.9 batters per nine innings.
The stuff's there, or at least it has been so far. The only question is whether he'll be able to consistently throw strikes. Forgive me for being skeptical, but I'm far from ready to hand him a permanent rotation spot yet -- or to expect him to continue to pitch this well. It will be a while before I am.
That said, he's done an excellent job filling in for Barry Zito. And even if he looks bad in his next couple of starts, he'll have far exceeded expectations. That alone is something to appreciate.
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