Jeremy Hellickson and Similar Major League Debuts

As a prelude, I should mention that this article is pretty much irrelevant and the analysis given has little to no predictive value. Even so, it's a fun and interesting exercise, and at least should remind us about the importance of scouting and the problem of small sample sizes. That being said, in honor of Jeremy Hellickson making his second career start today, I figured it would be interesting to see what pitchers have had similar debuts to their pitching career.

I took a couple different approaches to the Play Index on Baseball Reference, with varying degrees of relation to Hellickson's start. In all cases, I had the similar starts ranked by Game Score, which is fairly arbitrary but gives a decent idea of how successful a start was. First, I looked for all those who at least matched the basic numbers Hellickson put up (7 IP, 3 H, 6 Ks, 2 BBs). 

There's a wide range of talent here, including our very own Wade Davis! Notably, Hall of Famer Juan Marichal makes the list, though to be fair his debut completely outclasses Hellickson's. A list like this is also a testament to the volatility of pitching, as Steve Woodard went on to have a completely pedestrian career, while Carl Pavano had a debut much more like Jeremy's, and has had a solid career. Also, Mo Stanford? Ricky Bones? Dan Smith?

Seeing such nobodies next to the Narwhal may dishearten you at first glance, but, rather, it should remind us why scouting is so important. After all, any pitcher can get lucky and put up some good numbers for a night or two. The scouts can help us decipher where the real talent is, and the glowing reports on Hellickson make me confident that he is much closer to following in Carl Pavano's footsteps than in Dan Smith's. One night does not a career make, and many obstacles lie along the Narwhal's path to stardom, but there's no reason to not get excited about what Hellickson is capable of.

Also, for another look, I ran the Play Index just using the inputs of FIP (K, BB, and HR), to try to gain a little bit of sabermetric credibility, while looking for debuts equal to Hellickson's.        

I don't know about everyone else, but I'd certainly be happy if Jeremy Hellickson became as good of a pitcher as John Danks. Of course, many great pitchers have had awful major league debuts, and many awful pitchers have had great debuts. In the end, it's just one game and just one game is a terrible way to evaluate any pitcher (see, Shields, James, 8/8/10). What we can take from Hellickson's first start is that he seems to match what the scouts and minor league numbers have been telling us, which is a very encouraging sign. Hopefully, he will become a dominating force in the Rays rotation for a long time to come. 

*stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference