What's Wrong With Guillermo Mota?

. . . apart from sucking, I mean.

I'm not going to talk about yesterday's horrorshow, especially not after having been present at Shea for Sunday's clusterfuck. Nor will I talk about tonight's latest embarassment. But what I can do is talk a little bit more about is Guillermo Mota. What's wrong with this guy? Jeez, I'm like a fat kid with a candy bar with this thing, I just won't let it go.

I'm going to ignore the fact that Mota got suspended for 'roids, first of all because I'm not sure that they can make a middle reliever go from "terrible," to "awesome," and back again. So, living in a magical fairy land where the fact that Mota is no longer taking steroids is discounted as a reason why he might not be pitching well, what have I got? Yes, Mota has been terrible in 2007, but how? Why is he so bad?

Below you'll find a chart of Mota's peripherals (K/9, HR rate, etc.) expressed as a percentage plus or minus league average. I've expressed the graph so that the "good," result is always up, i.e. Mota's career HR rate is about 10% lower than league average, so he's 10% "better." Obviously, higher K rates and K/BB ratios are better, while lower Walk and HR rates are desireable

Well there's your problem. Too many home runs. Mota is doing a better job of striking guys out, and a much better job of not walking them. He's just giving up too many home runs.

I don't know where to go with this, though. Anecdotally, it's seemed like Mota's gotten into a lot of 3-ball counts, where he's had to come in with a fastball. The problem with Mota's 96 mph gas, of course, is that it's as straight as a string, and if a halfway decent hitter is expecting it, that fastball can go a long way. In a way, I don't think he's walking enough batters. They can't hit a home run if they're walking to first; I think the term is "effectively wild."

And that's the second reason why I'm not sure "not being on 'roids," is the reason Mota is having a bad year. His velocity is good, and his strikeout rate is still good. I checked as many of his past HR/F rates as they've got over at the Hardball Times, and it doesn't seem like he's giving up an unusually high (for Mota) percentage of homers. In a year in which he's walked fewer people than he has in the past, his real problem is control; it's just that the results end up being home runs, instead of walks.

But really, I don't know. To quote Leo Mazzone, on Mark Wohlers: "If I knew what the fuck went wrong, I would have fixed it."