The Cost of Uniqueness

Josh Tomlin was born in Tyler Texas in October of 1984. He was drafted twice: first by the San Diego Padres in the 11th round of the 2005 draft and one year later by the Cleveland Indians in the 19th round. Tomlin made his way through Cleveland’s system primarily as a starter but with relief work mixed in, a flexible hybrid role that we would continue to assume following his ultimate promotion to the Major Leagues.

On July 27th, 2010, Tomlin made his MLB debut with the Indians and earned his first career victory, pitching 7 innings of one-run ball against the New York Yankees. By Opening Day of 2019, Tomlin, now a new member of the Atlanta Braves, had accrued over eight full years of service time in MLB according to Baseball Reference.  

Despite playing in relative anonymity by MLB terms, Tomlin has put together a substantial resume and quality MLB career by almost all standards. He was a productive, yet overlooked pitcher for a productive, yet overlooked, Cleveland Indians team for the vast majority of his career. Pitching as part of an extremely strong rotation, Tomlin found himself on the outside looking in when playoff rosters got compiled, which helped obscure him from the larger spotlight still.

Despite this relative obscurity, Josh Tomlin has 62 MLB wins to his name. He has pitched nearly 1,000 innings at the game’s highest level over 199 appearances (primarily starts). His career 1.22 WHIP suggests that he’s been adept at limiting batter success along the way too. 

Tomlin might be easy enough to overlook with a career 4.77 ERA and playing most of his career to date for a small-market team with formidable, brand-name, peers like Corey Kluber and Trevor Bauer, but one aspect of his game makes him unique for his generation.  

To illustrate this uniqueness, a scatterplot has been attached; guess which point represents Josh Tomlin.

The scatterplot above, as it indicates, juxtaposes walk rates and home run rates for pitchers, with the linear orange representing a 1:1 ratio between those two rate statistics. As one might now expect, the sole point south of that orange line represents the career of none other than Josh Tomlin. 

The population examined here is fairly robust: it includes all pitchers who have thrown 500 or more innings in MLB since 2000. For the record, when selecting the data for that plot, lower IP thresholds were examined and Tomlin’s solitary status held up, but the plot only got unnecessarily noisier with additional data points.

So therein lies Josh Tomlin’s uniqueness: he has carved out a productive career with contending teams while being the only player with staying power to give up more home runs than free passes. If a complete game shutout with fewer than 100 pitches is called “a Maddux”, one could argue that a start with more homers allowed than walks might be considered a Tomlin.

Indeed, those occurrences are growing.

The rise is home run totals league-wide has been covered and covered.  It has here, among those places. Unsurprisingly, as home runs proliferate, a manager’s tolerance of their coming against his pitching staff must grow, although grudgingly, accordingly. 

The first plot featured samples with 500+ innings, this next one will include only 2019 data for those players with 40+ innings pitched to date. The smaller sample begets noisier data as you will see.

Here, there are several players south of the orange line, thus having Tomlin-esque starts to their seasons. Eight to be exact (if you count a 1:1 ratio). Here they are in a table.

These eight pitchers are of all different backgrounds, but are far from anonymous. The only player here who hasn’t signed a MLB deal after having made it to free agency, no small accomplishment, is effective Rays “reliever starter” Yonny Chirinos. In other words, this isn’t a group without considerable experience.

That said, their Tomlin-like ratios come with a wide range of success to this point. For a player like Grienke, pitching in homer-prone Phoenix, this is likely an acceptable ratio for the Diamondbacks from their 35 year-old Ace. Hyun-Jin Ryu is having a maddux-esque year unto himself given both these minuscule HR and BB rates. Chirinos does his job eating innings and keeps batters off the bases (< 0.95 WHIP) for when home runs do occur. For the rest though, these home run rates are various levels of dire.  

As aforementioned, Josh Tomlin has made himself successful living with his home run prone arsenal. But there is a reason he’s alone on the other side of that orange line. In the past three full seasons, just Tomlin alone in 2016 recorded more home runs allowed than walks with qualifying innings pitched.  

Will one or more of these players end 2019 with more home runs allowed than walks? It is entirely possible. Given the changing climate for long balls, Josh Tomlin might not stay unique, at least on a seasonal basis, for long.