Wild Things have a mound of problems
The Wild Things have one huge concern at the all-star break in the Frontier League season and it’s crystal clear: The pitching has not been good.
Washington entered the break ranked 13th in the 16-team league with an alarming 5.92 ERA. The worst single-season team ERA in the Wild Things’ history is 5.63, set back in 2009.
Everything was good on the pitching front in the season’s opening week, when the Wild Things bolted out of the gate to win six of their first seven games. Since then, the pitching has been a disaster in all areas.
Since the 6-1 start, the Wild Things’ starters have an ERA of 6.68. Their nine quality starts – at least six innings pitched and no more than three earned runs allowed – is tied for the fewest in the league with Empire State, the team that plays 96 road games.
The bullpen hasn’t been any better. Washington has 13 blown saves, which is the most in the league. No other team has more than nine blown saves. The relievers’ ERA since that 6-1 start is 6.29.
Pitching problems were the potential pothole from the beginning. Manager Tom Vaeth, who guided Washington to division titles in each of his first two seasons on the job, made a decision in the offseason to invest a significant portion of the payroll in hitters and go with younger, less expensive and less experienced pitchers.
The strategy was nothing new. Many Frontier League teams had been using that roster blueprint for decades. The hitters, after all, play every day while pitchers do not. A hitter can impact more games in a season than a pitcher.
The Wild Things had plenty of quality hitters returning but were left with some significant holes in their pitching staff following last season, when they won the West Division’s regular-season title. Former major leaguer pitchers Rob Whalen and Isaac Matson, along with Zack Erwin, who had Class AAA experience, did not return. They were replaced by younger pitchers.
When a Frontier League team opts to go with rookie arms, it’s a risky proposition. And the Wild Things’ problem is they missed on almost all those young arms they took a chance with. They have used 16 pitchers classified as rookies. Eight of those have been released, traded or put on the inactive list after proving ineffective.
Finding capable pitchers, Vaeth says, has never been more difficult. Major League Baseball has pushed its draft back from mid-June to early July, so any college senior who thinks he has a chance to be drafted wants to wait until after the draft before signing with a Frontier League team. Another problem that has made the pool of available pitchers shallow is the NCAA granted an extra year of eligibility to players for the missed COVID-19 year of 2020. If a fourth-year college senior pitcher doesn’t get drafted, then he has the option to return to school for a fifth year and continue to hope he impresses the major league scouts.
Vaeth says he talks daily to pitchers about joining the Wild Things. Most have wanted to wait until after the draft, which ended Wednesday, before considering independent baseball. He said he’s even had pitchers say they prefer training and making pitching videos that can be sent to major league clubs instead of signing a pro contract with an independent team.
“All I can do is keep making 20 phone calls a day,” Vaeth said, “and hope that one of the kids says he wants to pitch. All I hear is ‘No, no, no.’ In the meantime, I keep hoping somebody says. ‘Give me the ball.'”
The Wild Things have a 22-29 record. It’s not their worst record at the all-star break – they were 18-29 in 2013 – but they are 11 games out of first place and eight games out of the final playoff spot. That’s a lot of ground to make up in seven weeks.
The good news is the first two series after the all-star break are against Florence and Trois-Rivieres, two teams that have ERAs worse than Washington.