Last year, the Braves, desperate for pitching help, after three of their starters had been placed on the disabled list, called up 23 year old Jo-Jo Reyes to fill in while their pitchers recovered. It proved to be a long season for Reyes, he finished 2008 going 3-11 with a 5.81 ERA and 1.65 WHIP, but was he really that bad?
The Good: Before his call-up, Reyes as pitching very well in AAA, posting a 8.8 K/9 and 2.4 K/BB rate which was good for a 2.31 ERA. In the majors, Reyes coupled a 6.2 K/9 rate with a very good 48% groundball rate. He's only 23.
The Bad: Reyes' K/BB rate over his major league stint was just 1.5, that means that he was striking out less batters, and walking more.
The Ugly: His 1.43 HR/9 rate; this coupled with his poor 1.5 K/BB means he was making a lot of mistakes with his pitches.
Though his 2008 was very rough, Reyes has a promising minor league track record, his career minor league rates are 8.8 K/9 2.6 K/BB and .33 HR/9. This means that Reyes will probably revert to these tendencies in the future, and that his ugly HR/9 rate in the majors last year will likely fall to an acceptable level.
Reyes was also plagued by a 68.4 LOB% and a .325 BABIP (for clarifications on these stats check out the statistics primer) which means he was incredibly unlucky. In the future, his luck should improve and these numbers should revert around the league average (72% LOB, .300 BABIP).
Ultimately, there were a bunch of factors that plagued Jo-Jo Reyes' 2008 season, but it looks like most of them were just the results of a small sample size. His underlying skills are very good and his luck should improve next year. Look for Reyes to be much better in 2009.
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