Gio Gonzalez pitches as a starter for the Oakland Athletics. Gonzalez is trying to stay in the majors with one leg of the pitching tripod intact. He strikes out batters at a very high rate, 9.7 per nine innings. Unfortunately he also walks batters at a high rate, 5.5 per nine innings and gives up home runs at the pace of 46.6 per 200 innings. With those two latter figures, it’s not surprising he sports a 6.24 ERA over two seasons.

If the walks and home runs weren’t bad enough, Gonzalez’s high strike out rate does not translate into a low batting average allowed. Over his two seasons in the majors, Gonzalez allowed a .276 BA. That’s quite high for his strikeout rate, and it’s reflected in his FIP of 5.13. While some of that may be the Athletics defense, I’m guessing his wildness forces him into the strike zone with more plate than he’d care to catch.

For some reason, he’s much better against right-handed batters than lefties. I’ve seen this with soft-tossing left handed pitchers often, but Gonzalez has a decent fastball.

Gonzalez is more than capable of overpowering hitters. He somehow needs to do that without giving them something to hit when he gets wild. The Athletics should consider using him strictly as a reliever. Note at the first link above that his batting stats against are much better out of the bullpen. In a one inning relief appearance, there’s less that can go wrong. With his reverse platoon difference, he can face both RHB and LHB. Right now, the A’s are looking at him as a starter. If he doesn’t get the fifth starter’s role, we’ll get an idea of his future by either the A’s sending him to the pen or back down to AAA to work on his control.