The Curious Case of Odrisamer Despaigne
You can spell San Diego Padres using the letters from Odrisamer Despainge’s name.
Monday June 23rd 2014, the San Diego Padres headed to AT&T Park to open another series against their NL West rivals, the San Francisco Giants. It’s a series that’s now more likely going to be remembered for Tim Lincecum’s second career no-hitter, but for me it led to one of this season’s best discoveries.
At the start of any day I’ll idly flip through that night’s match-ups, particularly the pitching match-ups, looking to see what might be worth watching. On this particular day my beloved Marlins were sending Nathan Eovaldi to the mound and other highlights (on paper) included Jeff Samardzija v. Alfredo Simon, Chris Sale pitching against the Orioles and Felix Hernandez coming up against the Red Sox- yet my attention was drawn to the bottom match-up on the page: the Giants were sending Matt Cain to the mound to face a Padres call-up named Odrisamer Despaigne. I’d never heard of Despaigne before, but as a lover of baseball players with extremely ridiculous names I was instantly intrigued- especially when the guys at The Cespedes Family BBQ (if you don’t follow them @CespedesBBQ on Twitter then you’re missing out) pointed out you can actually spell ‘San Diego Padres’ using the letters in his name.
Therefore, I decided sleep be damned (oh the joys of West Coast start times in the UK) I was going to watch this guy, and it’s safe to say his performance lived up to his name. In 7 innings he gave up only 4 Hits, no walks and no Earned Runs to take the Win, but what most impressed me was that he managed this while recording only one Strikeout (Hunter Pence in the first inning) and not throwing much above 91mph. He recorded 11 Groundouts compared to 3 Flyouts and stranded both Runners who made it to scoring position. So, 6 days later I tuned in again, Despaigne was pitching against the D-Backs, and again he impressed: 6.2 IP, 5 Hits, 1 ER, 4 BB and again he only recorded 2 strikeouts in picking up the win. His next start came against the Giants again, and I expected him to struggle, surely they’ll have been able to work out how to hit him based on the last meeting? Nope. 6.0 IP, 2 Hits, 1 ER, 4 BB, 2 Ks in a no decision. His fourth game came against the Dodgers, and he was matched up against Clayton Kershaw. Did he crumble under the pressure of facing off with the best pitcher in baseball? Hardly. He threw 7 innings, giving up 2 runs on 7 Hits with 7 Strikeouts showing exceptional breaking stuff. Sure, he took the loss, but there was no shame in it as Kershaw pitched 9 innings of 3 Hit ball.
Then, last night, I tuned into the Padres-Mets game after Despaigne had just finished his 4th inning, and hadn’t allowed a hit. The he didn’t give one up in the 5th, or the 6th. In the 7th he ran into trouble, hitting Lucas Duda and then walking the bases loaded, but he escaped it by forcing Ruben Tejada to groundout. In the 8th he struck out the first two hitters he saw: he was 4 outs away from the first no hitter in Padres history. A guy I’d basically discovered on account of his funny name, I was weirdly emotionally invested in the whole experience as he stood on the brink of history. Sadly, it was not to be, David Murphy doubled on a line drive to Center field before David Wright rubbed salt into the wound by recording a hit to score Murphy. Despaigne was pulled with a line of 7.2 IP, 2 Hits, 1 ER, 3 BBs, 5Ks and didn’t factor in the decision as the Padres walked-off to win 2-1, but it represented his 5th consecutive Quality Start since debuting on an otherwise unremarkable Monday night in San Francisco.
In the month that has followed his debut I’ve tried to learn a little about Despaigne, who was pretty much a total unknown prior to this remarkable run. A Cuban defector, Despaigne made his debut aged 20 in 2007, for Industriales of the Cuban Serie Nacional, and pitched out of the bullpen, recording 10 saves with a 3.78 ERA in 34 games. The following year he moved into the starting rotation and pitched as a starter through 2013 going 61-43 with a 3.55 ERA and 684 strikeouts in 213 games for his Cuban career. In 2013 he defected during a tournament in Europe and established residence in Spain. The Padres signed him in May of this year with a $1m signing bonus.
After impressing at Double-A San Antonio (1.77 ERA in 2 starts with 12 Ks) he was promoted to Triple-A El Paso, but nothing there indicated that he’d be successful as a Major League pitcher as he went 1-3 with a 7.61 ERA in 5 starts with a 2.070 WHIP. His pitching repertoire is very interesting though. As highlighted above he doesn’t have a dominant fastball, it tops out 93mph, but he also only throws it 4.6% of the time (per Baseball Savant’s PITCHf/x search data) while also mixing in a change-up, curveball, slider, cutter and a sinker which he utilises 31.5% of the time. His variable velocity with the curveball is astonishing, throwing it as high as 80mph and as slowly as 62.3mph and he has used it 39.5% of the time in 2 strike counts- though he has used basically all of his pitches to get strikeouts. He also makes use of multiple arm slots, which means the ball is coming at hitter from variable trajectories, creating further confusion when trying to pick a pitch.
The K numbers themselves are amusing. He’s currently only striking out 4.5 batters per 9 innings, but given he struck out 11 per 9 innings at AAA, I think that once he becomes more acclimatised to Major League hitters we’ll see more performances akin to his 7 K performance against the Dodgers. He has always been somewhat wild pitcher, finishing 6th in the league in walks and 4th in hit batsmen during the 2009-10 Cuban season and he has walked 2.9 hitters per 9 innings so far in his Major League career. It is possible that as he becomes more accustomed to pitching in the USA that he begins to walk less guys, but he has so far seemed pretty adept at working around any problems.
So there you have it, Odrisamer Despaigne, one of the most enjoyable surprises in baseball this year. It will remain to be seen if he can continue to put up such gaudy numbers (a FIP 0f 3.67 and a .190 BABIP suggest a regression is coming) but if he does (and probably even if he doesn’t) I’ll be there watching, because he represents one of the nice things in baseball- someone no one expected to perform come good (plus, he’s actually made me want to watch Padres games, something I didn’t think possible at the start of the year!) As long as this Indian Summer lasts I’ll be there, reveling in his victories, as I have been since his very first start.
Sources:
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/mlb/cuban-righty-odrisamer-despaigne-signs-with-padres?ymd=20140502&content_id=74068604&vkey=news_mlb (NB: Absolutely hilarious comments section)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Odrisamer_Despaigne
Stats from Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and http://baseballsavant.com/index.php (Which is AMAZING, check it out and follow @darenw if you enjoy pointless baseball stats)
Anton Joe
Brendan Taylor