The Cardinals had AA Springfield starting pitcher Brian Broderick taken in the Rule V draft by the Washington Nationals and he was promptly converted to relief in order to attempt to keep him on the roster for the whole season. However, Broderick was released back to the Cardinals last week for a nominal sum and placed in the ailing Memphis bullpen. Broderick was sent back to the Cardinals after posting a 6.57 ERA in 11 relief appearances. However, his numbers were not nearly that bad and were more in line with his career averages. Let’s take a quick look after the jump.
First and foremost, Broderick’s FIP was 3.51, which is much more in line with his career minor league numbers. He was bitten by a slightly bad BABIP at .333, which is high considering his groundball tendencies. According to Fangraphs, Broderick allowed 60% of his batted balls on the ground and a slightly lower than average 15.6% line drives.
In the small sample size in the majors, Broderick roughly halved his strikeout rate and doubled his walk rate, which certainly contributed to his release. He is not going to fool a lot of guys in the majors, but needs to work on his walk rate and trust his groundball rate.
I’m not here to argue that Broderick was good with the Nationals. He certainly struggled, but his numbers are not as bad as they look on the surface. He should certainly be a valuable asset to the Memphis bullpen now that he is switched to relief fulltime.
Also, here’s what AZ had to say about Broderick when he was initially lost to the Nats:
Broderick performed well in 2010 splitting his time between Palm Beach and Springfield. He pitched with well above average command of a sinking fastball generating lots of groundballs and limiting his walks. At 6’6″, Broderick can make full use of his height to drive the ball down in the zone.
Much like the trade that sent David Carpenter to the Astros in 2010, the Cardinals have lost a farm system player who represented depth rather than a critical piece to the big league puzzle.
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Broderick also gave up 6 of his 9 ER in his first 2.1 innings. After that his ERA was less than 3.00. Broderick has never been a big strike out pitcher. He struck out a reasonable (and uncharacteristic) number in Spring training. don’t know if he can find that K pitch again though.