Makes his first ever big league start tonight for the Blue Jays.
Some things you may want to know.
Some scouts say he may be the best of the Blue Jays kiddie four (Mills, Romero, Cecil)
Marc Rzepczynski throws left, went from A to AAA ball in less then three seasons.
Overall 21-11 career record in the minors, sparkling 2.76 ERA, good 1.25 ratio.
Strikes out more than one per inning.
Called up to Triple-A, he's struck out 16 and walked four in 11 1/3 innings, with a ridiculous 1.44 FIP. He's clearly just about ready for the big leagues.
Here are the incredible numbers.
He's only allowed five homers in 254 2/3 minor league innings.
That's one homer per 51 innings.
And it's no fluke.
Rzepcyznksi's career minor league groundball percentage is 64.4 percent. To put in perspective how incredible that is, consider that this year's leader (for qualified pitchers) in GB% is Joel Pineiro, at 61.9 percent.
Among all pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched, seven have GB% figures higher than 64.4 percent: three sidearmers (Brad Ziegler, Cla Meredith, Peter Moylan), two sinker-only, ground ball-oriented, low-strikeout guys (Alberto Arias, Brian Bass), one fluke (Jeremy Affeldt), and one excellent pitcher (Chad Qualls).
Other than Qualls, all of these pitchers use strategies that basically are designed to produce nothing but grounders. Rzepczynski, on the other hand, gets a ton of strikeouts as well as the grounders.
Rzepczynski has managed to post a strikeout rate and a ground ball rate higher than any starter in the majors. Of course, he's doing it against Double-A and Triple-A competition, but this sort of dominance in those two categories at any level hasn't been seen since Felix Hernandez's first big league season.
Even more incredibly, Rzepczynski gets a good number of pop-ups (7.4 percent career) and 71.8 percent of balls hit off of the lefthander are grounders or pop-ups.
This leads to a very low line-drive rate (12.7 percent career) which suppresses batters' ability to hit for average, and a very low flyball rate (20.2 percent career), which suppresses their ability to hit for power.
Since he strikes out a little over a batter an inning, the only way you can score off the lefty is hope you can get a walk and two ground-ball singles before he can get a strikeout and two groundouts. The odds of that are very low, which leads to the FIPs in the 2.50 range.
Rzepczynski's nearly unprecedented dominance of batted-ball numbers and strikeout numbers obviously doesn't match his lack of fanfare.
If you've never heard of him before, you probably think I'm about to open up the "actually, he throws an 81 mph fastball" line on you. You might think this is another Mark DiFelice/Danny Ray Herrera/R.J. Swindle story.
But it's not. Rzepczynski isn't exactly Tim Lincecum when it comes to stuff, but he's no slouch. He throws an 88-92 mph fastball with good sink , a plus slider, an average-plus changeup, and an average curveball.
While that may not sound overly impressive, consider Brandon Webb, who, with a 58.3 GB% and 7.26 K/9 for his career, is a decent comparison for Rzepczynski. Webb throws an 88-mph sinker, an plus curve, and an average change.
Rzepczynski actually throws a little bit harder, his changeup's a little better, and he has a second breaking ball. He's also left-handed, whereas Webb's a righty, and lefties tend to throw softer than righties: an 88-92 mph lefty fastball is like a 90-94 mph righty fastball.
Given Rzepczynski's incredible groundball and strikeout rates, his good control, and his average-plus stuff, he may be Brandon Webb 2.0. Webb's won a Cy Young and has a 3.50 career FIP, and Rzepczynski could do better than that.
Some things you may want to know.
Some scouts say he may be the best of the Blue Jays kiddie four (Mills, Romero, Cecil)
Marc Rzepczynski throws left, went from A to AAA ball in less then three seasons.
Overall 21-11 career record in the minors, sparkling 2.76 ERA, good 1.25 ratio.
Strikes out more than one per inning.
Called up to Triple-A, he's struck out 16 and walked four in 11 1/3 innings, with a ridiculous 1.44 FIP. He's clearly just about ready for the big leagues.
Here are the incredible numbers.
He's only allowed five homers in 254 2/3 minor league innings.
That's one homer per 51 innings.
And it's no fluke.
Rzepcyznksi's career minor league groundball percentage is 64.4 percent. To put in perspective how incredible that is, consider that this year's leader (for qualified pitchers) in GB% is Joel Pineiro, at 61.9 percent.
Among all pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched, seven have GB% figures higher than 64.4 percent: three sidearmers (Brad Ziegler, Cla Meredith, Peter Moylan), two sinker-only, ground ball-oriented, low-strikeout guys (Alberto Arias, Brian Bass), one fluke (Jeremy Affeldt), and one excellent pitcher (Chad Qualls).
Other than Qualls, all of these pitchers use strategies that basically are designed to produce nothing but grounders. Rzepczynski, on the other hand, gets a ton of strikeouts as well as the grounders.
Rzepczynski has managed to post a strikeout rate and a ground ball rate higher than any starter in the majors. Of course, he's doing it against Double-A and Triple-A competition, but this sort of dominance in those two categories at any level hasn't been seen since Felix Hernandez's first big league season.
Even more incredibly, Rzepczynski gets a good number of pop-ups (7.4 percent career) and 71.8 percent of balls hit off of the lefthander are grounders or pop-ups.
This leads to a very low line-drive rate (12.7 percent career) which suppresses batters' ability to hit for average, and a very low flyball rate (20.2 percent career), which suppresses their ability to hit for power.
Since he strikes out a little over a batter an inning, the only way you can score off the lefty is hope you can get a walk and two ground-ball singles before he can get a strikeout and two groundouts. The odds of that are very low, which leads to the FIPs in the 2.50 range.
Rzepczynski's nearly unprecedented dominance of batted-ball numbers and strikeout numbers obviously doesn't match his lack of fanfare.
If you've never heard of him before, you probably think I'm about to open up the "actually, he throws an 81 mph fastball" line on you. You might think this is another Mark DiFelice/Danny Ray Herrera/R.J. Swindle story.
But it's not. Rzepczynski isn't exactly Tim Lincecum when it comes to stuff, but he's no slouch. He throws an 88-92 mph fastball with good sink , a plus slider, an average-plus changeup, and an average curveball.
While that may not sound overly impressive, consider Brandon Webb, who, with a 58.3 GB% and 7.26 K/9 for his career, is a decent comparison for Rzepczynski. Webb throws an 88-mph sinker, an plus curve, and an average change.
Rzepczynski actually throws a little bit harder, his changeup's a little better, and he has a second breaking ball. He's also left-handed, whereas Webb's a righty, and lefties tend to throw softer than righties: an 88-92 mph lefty fastball is like a 90-94 mph righty fastball.
Given Rzepczynski's incredible groundball and strikeout rates, his good control, and his average-plus stuff, he may be Brandon Webb 2.0. Webb's won a Cy Young and has a 3.50 career FIP, and Rzepczynski could do better than that.
