The season could not have started worse for Franklyn Kilome who got lit up for three consecutive starts to begin the year. The Phillies then skipped his turn in an effort to get him back on track. If you were not accounting for that terrible start, his season line of 2-7 with a 4.75 ERA while walking 5.1 per 9 is not encouraging to you. However, this is one of those moments where we need to think through what data is actually valid. If we were judging Kilome’s season as a means of determining value, then looking at the full season sample size would make sense. But because we know that something happened after that third start we can use that as our new starting point.
With today’s great performance this is Kilome’s line over the 13 starts since his spot was skipped:
69 Innings 2.87 ERA 61 Hits 3 Home Runs 32 Walks 75 Strikeouts
That is a pretty good line, and one we would be happy to see Kilome sporting for the season. It is not without fault, that is 4.2 walks per 9 innings which is not a red flag, but also not particularly encouraging. The strikeouts per 9 of 9.8 is well above Kilome’s career high of 6.6 last year, which does offset the rise in walks some. It is also encouraging to see him continue the trend of not giving up home runs.
So what happened to Kilome? He is 6’6″ with long arms and it is much easier for guys of that size to lose their delivery and struggle to repeat their mechanics. Kilome still loses his delivery at times still now and his future success will depend on him repeating his delivery. Kilome still has a fastball in the mid 90s that he gets good plane and sink on. He shows a plus curveball that can get a bit hard and slidery at times. He is still working on a changeup that will sometimes still be a bit firm.
A couple of weeks ago I would have said that Kilome’s season was a disappointment and that it is all part of the growing process. However, Kilome has really built on his season and his last starts have been a combined 16.2 innings with 13 hits, 3 earned runs, 8 walks, and 25 strikeouts. If he can finish out the year like this, 2016 will have been a big success for Franklyn and he will have a lot of momentum going into 2017.
when you say slurvy, is that detrimental, or something that can be worked with?
It depends on the motion of the slurvy pitch. For example Kluber’s slider gets some curveball motion and Nola’s curveball gets some slider motion. If the pitch has sharp movement that works and can be devastating. The problem is when what you get is curveball loop with slider horizontalness and you have slow long breaking pitch breaking into the bats of left handed batters. In this case I worry about him losing the sharp curveball because he is putting too much slider to it. I think at some point Kilome may actually reintroduce his slider.
thanks