Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The Kevin Mulvey Era Begins

Lets be real, we raped the Twins in the Johan Santana trade. How we got the best pitcher in baseball without giving up a proven MLB star (Jose Reyes) or even our top prospect (Fernando Martinez) was an amazing job by Omar Minaya.

So far on the Twins end the players haven't exactly panned out yet. As of now they have a gold glove caliber CF in Carlos Gomez, who unfortunately, hasn't been able to put it all together yet; just about a .655 OPS (ouch) with the Twins. A project in Deolis Guerra who at the time was considered to be a big time prospect with huge upside, but as of now reports have been that his velocity has been down, and he's been getting hit hard, looks like a bust but again he's still only what? 20?. And finally we have the soon to be worlds best #5 starter Kevin Mulvey who has just been called up by the Twins.

Mulvey has done what Mulvey has always done, and that's put up solid stats. Over his season and a half with the Twins Mulvey has increased his k/9 rate which further leads me to believe he can sustain his career in the majors. In 2007 with the Mets he had just a 4.50 k/9, mostly relying on the groundball, but he's raised that rate to 7.36 (2008) 7.09 (2009), a very solid number for a pitcher who isn't considered a strikeout pitcher.

Basically, he's your prototypical #4/5 starter; 4 solid pitches, gives up a lot of hits, doesn't walk many, and keeps you in the game. Nothing wrong with having a guy like that on your staff making the league minimum.

Mulvey was always a favorite of mine (actually my favorite prospect for whatever reason) and I'll be following him closely during his MLB career.

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