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Forum nameOkay Sports
Topic subjectI don't want Scott Diamond to suck anymore
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=8&topic_id=2155715&mesg_id=2207593
2207593, I don't want Scott Diamond to suck anymore
Posted by Walleye, Mon Jul-08-13 12:01 PM
Not because I'm particularly attached to his success, but because it's boring. My long and glorious experience as an internet know-it-all has really made me cherish the very rare occasions where I'm wrong, and in 2012 I was super wrong about Scott Diamond.

When he was acquired, it was through a trade for hard throwing and truthfully rather stupid looking relief prospect Billy Bullock. Diamond was initially selected from Atlanta via Rule 5, but the Twins shipped them Bullock for the right to keep Diamond and demote him to Rochester.

It seemed almost like the Twins had drifted into self-parody, picking the soft-tossing lefty starter and punting on Bullock's high-90s gas. But then Diamond's 2012 gave the Twins 170-something innings of, shockingly, good component stats. It really didn't look like a Joe Mays lucky season where balls in play just found gloves. Instead, Diamond induced a ton of grounders to go along with his tiny walk rate. Strikeouts rule, obviously, but 54% grounders and no walks will play.

Meanwhile, Bullock never found the plate with his fastball like he could while still in the Twins organization, and his walk rate peaked at higher than TEN per nine innings last year. Throw in a 50-game suspension for "drug of abuse" and now Bullock is looking for work somewhere. The Twins looked... pretty smart on this.

So we'll stop thinking about him. Diamond has already accumulated more MLB value than Bullock is likely to create, so whatever on the trade. But he has returned to the pitcher we worried he was going to be. His strikeout rate has, miraculously, gone down. He's walking more guys - still not very many but this isn't a sharp line. Fewer grounders and more balls leaving the park means disaster. xFIP still doesn't hate him, but the nicest thing you can now say about him is that he kind of throws like Cliff Lee.

In any case, it's boring. I don't want to be bored. Be better, Scott Diamond.

The cool thing is that Brian Dozier looks pretty good, so not all of our underwhelming rookie appearances in 2011-2012 are going poorly.