Performance Evaluation: Luke Hochevar

Over the past few weeks I’ve heard a few media members in Kansas City start to perpetuate a myth in regards to Luke Hochevar.  While I don’t know whether this idea came from the Royals organization or from their own mind it is one that is easily dispelled.

The Myth:  Luke is either great or horribly bad with virtually no in between.  If you eliminate his 8 worst starts he has a 3.75 ERA.

The first half of that argument is simply untrue and the Royals, fans and media members need to quit perpetuating this idea into their heads, fans heads and children’s heads because after all we can’t lose the children, they are our future.  Take a quick look at Hoch’s numbers with the simplest breakdown since the start of 2008:

28 Starts of Sub 3.00 ERA
57 Starts of 6.00 ERA or higher
42 Starts of in between

So basically Royals fans, coaching staff and reporters have been fortunate enough to see Hoch stink it up more than he’s done anything else while in Royal blue.  Yet those 28 starts, a couple handfuls of which have been extremely impressive are enough to give Ned and others the impression that this is the year for Hoch.  At some point scouting and faith need to be tossed out the door for actual real life results.  We’ve all heard the stories of the great playground hooper that just needed a shot at the NBA or the great guitarist that just couldn’t get signed well I guess Hochevar is the opposite of those guys, he keeps getting shot after shot despite proving he’s terrible more than he is anything else.

I didn’t see the Royals give Brian Bannister that same opportunity so why Hoch?  After all Bannister had 34 high quality starts among his 108 career Royals starts but you don’t hear Ned banging the drum for him.  Likely it was the fact that Bannister threw in the upper 80′s as opposed to the low to mid 90′s like Hoch but the results are what should matter and the results are in for Hoch.

This is a major problem with this organization, they want to rely on scouting at the major league level as opposed to evaluating players on true results and projections.  If you want to fall in Hoch’s camp go right ahead, just don’t complain when the results don’t fall your way after all you’ve been given every reason to not make that judgement.

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