Eric Surkamp, LHP. DOB: 7/16/1987. 6'5", 215 lbs. B-L, T-L.
DNP
I moved Eric Surkamp up a notch from my original list here but I probably still have him too low. I have always been a bit standoffish with Surkamp despite his stellar K ratios in the minors because he just seemed like a low ceiling guy who was feasting on the inexperienced to me. He got a late look in the majors in 2011 and I found his curveball, which had been touted to be his best pitch, to be underwhelming.
Then, I got to see him pitch in person in spring training 2012 facing the Seattle Mariners with Felix Hernandez on the mound. I came away very impressed. Granted, there are probably some AAA teams that hit better than the 2012 Mariners, but Surkamp had good command of a fastball that seemed to sit right at 90 MPH and was able to keep hitters off balance with a very good breaking ball and best of all a MLB caliber changeup.
Then, Surkamp injured his elbow and underwent TJ surgery before throwing a regular season pitch. If he comes back fully healthy from that, he could easily move back to the top of the depth chart for a mid-season callup should the need arise. On the other hand, the 1 year layoff has allowed guys like Mike Kickham and Chris Heston to catch up on the experience side to the point where even if he is back to 100%, he might not be the clear choice anymore.
He's a tough one to rank. While we see a lot of success stories post-TJ, the landscape is still littered with pitchers who never make it back all the way. I'm fairly comfortable ranking him this low until he proves he is healthy and has his command back.
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I saw a Q&A style article written by Chris Haft recently where he was asked if he thought that anyone in the farm system may surprise during spring training and he said "Keep an eye on left-handers Eric Surkamp and Dan Runzler, who will try to prove that they're physically whole or at least close to it."
ReplyDeleteI thought that Surkamp didn't have surgery until mid season or later last year. i figured he wouldn't be at spring training this year, or at least not participating in any games while he was there. Any clue when he should be back to playing?
That is also my recollection. I think it's a stretch to think we'll see Surkamp pitching competitively much before short season ball starts.
DeleteAny possibility that he might gain velocity post-surgery?
ReplyDeleteThere seem to be a few pitchers who gain velocity after TJ surgery, but I would say just as many lose velocity and never get it all back. Some stay about the same too, as ogc pointed out down below.
DeleteI like Surkamp too, and I agree, can go either way, but with his health issues, he has to be low, and still if he turns out to be healthy and back, he could jump back to where he was ranked before.
ReplyDeleteI would note that the PQS for Surkamp showed that he had a quality first start, but then was blown away after that. I felt then that it was due more to fatigue due to length of season (not being used to pitching that many innings) than the league catching up with him. Your assessment from the following spring seems to confirm my feeling.
His stellar K ratios is his drawing point for me too. If he returns anywhere near that, I think he jumps ahead of Heston and Kickham, they were not as strong with the K's as Surkamp was, if I remember the numbers right. But I recall from somewhere that players need anywhere from 12-24 months after surgery to fully recover. Is that accurate? And to BLSL, I've heard of some gaining, but many lose, though it seems that the majority returns to normal for them. But it is no slam dunk, from what I understand.
the thing that scared me was the inability to miss bats at mlb level
DeleteIn fairness it was a miniscule sample size.
Deletekline sent back to augusta...no biggie...teaching is teaching, no matter what level
ReplyDeletedecker still mia, although im expecting him to be roving again...still great prep for a major league gig...just like scout is great prep for a front office gig
bacci
ps...got some good news yesterday...looks like im getting a new gig in feb....would be better news if i actually had a place to live
The new gig is good news. Hopefully the rest will fall into place. I think we all live a lot closer to the edge than we like to believe. It's scary how fast financial disaster can strike in this great country of ours.
DeleteSo... Looks like the Giants dodged a pretty big PR headache with passing up re-signing efforts on one Melkolimo Cabrera eh? And that A-rod contract looks like an absolute fiasco. The risk for Fielder and Pujols is similar, massive backloaded deals when performance might drop off big time. Looks like Barry's record might be safe for a bit.
ReplyDeleteSurkamp didn't have TJ surgery until around the 2nd week of August, he will not be pitching much competitively in 2013.
2 weeks til pitchers and catchers!
For a bit?? That record might never be broken again. Look at all the guys in the past years who have hit 500 or 600 homeruns, most of them were steroid users. Pujols who was supposed to come close to it has already started to break down.
DeleteThat reinforces my point about bad timing for Surkamp's TJ surgery. Not only did it come just as he was starting to contend for a MLB role, but then he essentially loses 2 whole seasons. By the time he's fully recovered, the thundering herd will have passed him by.
DeleteAnon,
DeleteI wouldn't jump to conclusions about PED use and HR records. A recent study showed that HR/Batted Ball has actually increased over the last several years. The decline in HR's can be almost 100% attributed to higher K rates. I can see how PED's might give you more distance on a batted ball, but I don't see how they help much in making contact. I think the science of pitching is progressing faster than the science of hitting right now. Pitchers just have more weapons: cutters, split changes, guys like Vogie who can show you 3 different types of fastballs and that's just for starters.
Also, Eric Walker has very convincing studies on the offensive era and on steroids and PEDS and his conclusion is that the balls were juiced, not the players, and that PEDs for the most part were not useful in any way in producing improved performances, he cited a lot of medical studies, also studies of balls pre and during showing the composition of the balls, and I'm convinced by that preponderance of evidence that it was the MLB, wanting to revive baseball after that horrible strike that really killed interest in baseball (I know it did for me), juiced the ball to juice attendance, and it worked.
Deletehttp://highboskage.com/juiced-ball.shtml
http://steroids-and-baseball.com/
I get your points, but how would you guys explain why players keep trying to take these drugs if they dont help?
DeleteBelieve me, Anon. There are literally millions of people who spend billions of dollars per year on therapies of unproven efficacy. Not only that, but there are thousands of healthcare professionals who prescribe and recommend therapies that do not work every day. Evidence based medicine is still very much in its infancy and is widely ignored by both healthcare professionals and healthcare practitioners.
DeleteYou mix 9 figure paydays with not a lot of well known studies, with the placebo effects, with known users succeeding (maybe they already had the talent but just needed the confidence boost a shot gives, like Dumbo and the feather), with not known users failing but not talking about it, with poverty (for many of the International free agents), and with a culture where cheating isn't cheating if you aren't caught (spitball, corked bats, etc.), plus with a union hell-bent on reducing all penalties to as little as possible, and you get players who keep on trying.
DeleteYou can be sure that a prospect won't use if he loses one calendar year due to a suspension. That could blow their big chance. And even for a vet, a year could cost them their job, plus they probably lose a prime year of their limited life as a major leaguer. The Players' Association should know this but they keep on pushing for lower penalties, keep on trying to get their players off on technicalities.
And we have a grade A examples of how steroids does not really work, here in the Bay Area. The best example is the Canseco twins, Jose and Ozzie. Twins! Not just twins, but Identical Twins! If Jose used, you know Ozzie used. Yet Jose had a great career in baseball while Ozzie wasn't more than any other failed baseball prospect. If steroids could do all the magic I've read that it does, why didn't Ozzie match Jose? Even with him starting as a pitcher first, once Jose reached greatness, Ozzie could have pulled a Babe Ruth, started hitting the big home runs, taking the same steroids as his brother. He never even hit one home run in the majors!
I would also point out the Giambi brothers. Not quite twins, but similar enough genetics, again, one great career, the other, not so much. And I cannot image that Jeremy didn't follow what his big brother did. Though at least Jeremy actually was a pretty good ballplayer for a while, unlike Ozzie.
If steroids helps the eyes, help the contact, help the impact, in other words, is a magic pill to relevance, then how does one explain the above? I can buy that steroids might help one human being over another, we are just different like that, respond in different ways. But the Canseco identical twins?
I read on Wikipedia that there are a number of differences in even identical twins, but if you assume PEDS does all these great stuff, that means that the one key developmental difference between Jose and Ozzie in the womb that affects their ability to use steroids to become great in baseball happens to be the one that was different for Ozzie? That's odds like the ones I see quoted in TV shows about DNA testing, I would think.
I could accept that maybe one has a Jose Canseco career and the other has a Jason Giambi career. But all or nothing?
Well, you may have a point, but remember, there are a lot of other brother tandems with big differences in performance that likely had nothing to do with PED's. The Ripken brothers come to mind as just one example. Then there is the Conigliaros from back in the day. Many other examples.
DeleteAs for the Canseco twins. It's a very interesting case study but an N of 1.
I am no dr, but I think the main thing that PEDs would add is stamina. When I play softball, the bat feels heavier in the 8th inning than it did in the first. Could PEDs change that? I would imaging that a players swing is faster in game 15 than it is in game 155 of the season. Wouldn't PEDs affect that? If Bonds is a HOFer without the "stuff", than his ceiling is not going to be affected, but the amount of time he spends at his ceiling would absolutely be affected.
DeleteCorrect?
This reminds one of Melky last season and how the team came together after losing his bat to get that forever flying flag.
DeletePerhaps that intangible lesson for us all to learn here is that even losing a bat (after Pence's arrival}, much less adding another bat, if the chemistry is right, wonderful things can happen.
CSS- I honestly don't know. The one thing we do know is that anabolic steroids can add muscle mass. I'm really not aware of any other uses for them. It does seem intuitive that more muscle mass= more strength and I'm not going to say it isn't. I do know that muscle mass and muscle strength are two different variables that are not necessarily parallel. You can add considerable strength to muscles without significant increases in mass through resistance exercises.
DeleteI am also quite sure that PED's do little or nothing to enhance vision, eye-hand coordination and timing that are essential to hitting a baseball.
BLSL: I completely agree with your point here. Team chemistry is an under-appreciated factor in the sabermetric age.
CSS, amphetamines definitely added stamina and I think that was a bigger blot on baseball historical records than steroids has been. That PED was finally made illegal, along with steroids a few years ago, but it has been publicly outed since at least Bouton's "Ball Four" book, and particularly when it was noted at a cocaine trial that Willie Mays was handing out red juice to players.
DeleteCanseco may be an N of 1, but I think I'm covered either way.
Genetically, if they are the same, then it would stand to logic that they should react the same to the same drugs. They obviously had very much different careers, and Ozzie didn't even have any career in the majors in his 30's, when Jose was famous and Ozzie should be have using it a lot.
But even if that is not so, if steroids was the magic beans that the mass public thinks it is, then why didn't it work for Ozzie then?
Either way, steroids end up not an easy way to baseball excellence, and not the enabler of the great offensive numbers of the era. If there was any efficacy to the drugs, it should have worked either way for Ozzie, either genetically or not, he should have a similar enough body type that if steroids really did improve anything, he should have been able to replicate something similar to Jose's body of MLB career. He barely got a cup of coffee in the majors.
CSS, amphetamines definitely added stamina and I think that was a bigger blot on baseball historical records than steroids has been. That PED was finally made illegal, along with steroids a few years ago, but it has been publicly outed since at least Bouton's "Ball Four" book, and particularly when it was noted at a cocaine trial that Willie Mays was handing out red juice to players.
ReplyDeleteCanseco may be an N of 1, but I think I'm covered either way.
Genetically, if they are the same, then it would stand to logic that they should react the same to the same drugs. They obviously had very much different careers, and Ozzie didn't even have any career in the majors in his 30's, when Jose was famous and Ozzie should be have using it a lot.
But even if that is not so, if steroids was the magic beans that the mass public thinks it is, then why didn't it work for Ozzie then?
Either way, steroids end up not an easy way to baseball excellence, and not the enabler of the great offensive numbers of the era. If there was any efficacy to the drugs, it should have worked either way for Ozzie, either genetically or not, he should have a similar enough body type that if steroids really did improve anything, he should have been able to replicate something similar to Jose's body of MLB career. He barely got a cup of coffee in the majors.
Ooops, thought I had hit reply to the thread above, sorry.
Delete