Tommy "Country Style Breakfast" Hunter

When I think of a "Country Style Breakfast", I think of a mountain of food.  A plate standing tall with eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits and gravy, and hash.  The thought of that being a typical breakfast perhaps says something about our shared nostalgia for the simple bucolic country life that resides in our nation's heritage.  Of course, that heritage is largely false and quite inflated in comparison to the reality of the typical farmer who was teetering on the edge of malnourishment, but that truth simply is not that useful of a story when trying to communicate the greatness of this country.

Similarly, when one might think of a shut down closer, they probably think of a pitcher who comes into the ninth and sends several guys down in order.  Tommy Hunter is almost that guy, but he really is not.  Before injuries prevented him from pitching and with a resurgent Zach Britton likely preventing a return back to a closer role, Hunter performed admirably well for the Orioles.  However, the reality of his play was enjoyable, but heart attack inducing...which is also similar to a diet consisting solely of Country Style Breakfasts.  Hunter had a habit of pitching quite poorly with the bases empty, but turning it up a notch when a runner was on base.

Jordan Ellenberg explored this in a post over at his blog Quomodocumque.  He is the money table from that article with OPS of Runners in Scoring Position in bold and Total Overall OPS residing to the right of that number.

Rk	I	Player	Split	G	OPS	OPStot	Diff
1		Tommy Hunter	RISP	133	.683	.777	-.094
2		Pedro Feliciano	RISP	268	.604	.696	-.092
3		Hideki Irabu	RISP	106	.707	.797	-.090
4		Julio Santana	RISP	169	.730	.820	-.090
5		Steve Parris	RISP	136	.740	.829	-.089
6		J.A. Happ	RISP	131	.669	.756	-.087
7		Doug Rau	RISP	209	.612	.698	-.086
8		John Grabow	RISP	294	.665	.751	-.086
9		Bob Sebra	RISP	86	.689	.775	-.086
10		Victor Zambrano	RISP	165	.679	.764	-.085
11		Jordan Zimmermann	RISP	118	.615	.695	-.080
12		Scott Proctor	RISP	194	.704	.782	-.078
13		Scott Baker	RISP	159	.661	.737	-.076
14		Cecilio Guante	RISP	267	.612	.685	-.073
15		Frank Francisco	RISP	239	.624	.697	-.073
16		Dennis Bennett	RISP	163	.659	.732	-.073
17		Kevin Slowey	RISP	125	.726	.798	-.072
18		Buzz Capra	RISP	127	.644	.712	-.068
19		Erik Bedard	RISP	222	.632	.699	-.067
20		Scott Linebrink	RISP	338	.662	.729	-.067
21		John Frascatore	RISP	203	.714	.781	-.067

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 5/23/2014.

 

The list looks interesting, but I was wondering whether or not Hunter was being hurt here by his time as a starter.  One of the talking points has been that part of Hunter's bullpen emergence has been due to him no longer having to rely on a windup that had been problematic.  To test this out, I looked at 2013 and 2014 to see how things stacked up with him being a strict reliever.  The data set included pitchers from that time period who had fewer than five starts and more than 45 outs with men on base.

 

Here is the top 40:

 

Rk	Player	G	OPS	OPStot	Ops-total
1	Junichi Tazawa	51	0.402	0.719	-0.317
2	Joe Thatcher	54	0.404	0.720	-0.316
3	Alex Sanabia	10	0.632	0.935	-0.303
4	Kevin Slowey	31	0.534	0.819	-0.285
5	Heath Bell	50	0.538	0.816	-0.278
6	Wesley Wright	49	0.471	0.729	-0.258
7	David Hale	13	0.315	0.563	-0.248
8	Jarred Cosart	20	0.412	0.657	-0.245
9	Freddy Garcia	14	0.544	0.782	-0.238
10	Seth Maness	53	0.525	0.754	-0.229
11	Ross Wolf	19	0.57	0.797	-0.227
12	Kenley Jansen	52	0.336	0.560	-0.224
13	Tommy Hanson	15	0.595	0.813	-0.218
14	Stephen Fife	13	0.619	0.835	-0.216
15	Sam LeCure	43	0.405	0.620	-0.215
16	Donovan Hand	24	0.574	0.785	-0.211
17	Tony Cingrani	28	0.464	0.675	-0.211
18	Alex Wood	32	0.479	0.688	-0.209
19	Ernesto Frieri	48	0.493	0.701	-0.208
20	Joe Kelly	34	0.483	0.682	-0.199
21	Brandon Morrow	16	0.672	0.871	-0.199
22	Vidal Nuno	12	0.583	0.772	-0.189
23	Huston Street	32	0.461	0.644	-0.183
24	Taylor Jordan	14	0.572	0.753	-0.181
25	Alfredo Simon	50	0.462	0.629	-0.167
26	Franklin Morales	21	0.668	0.835	-0.167
27	Tony Watson	44	0.405	0.571	-0.166
28	Joaquin Benoit	43	0.394	0.558	-0.164
29	Darren O'Day	40	0.454	0.618	-0.164
30	Edward Mujica	46	0.572	0.728	-0.156
31	Brian Matusz	43	0.506	0.661	-0.155
32	Carter Capps	37	0.677	0.829	-0.152
33	Tommy Hunter	45	0.539	0.688	-0.149
34	Greg Holland	36	0.355	0.500	-0.145
35	Jim Henderson	38	0.539	0.679	-0.140
36	David Hernandez	30	0.564	0.702	-0.138
37	Aroldis Chapman	30	0.414	0.550	-0.136
38	J.C. Gutierrez	39	0.548	0.681	-0.133
39	Paul Clemens	35	0.729	0.858	-0.129
40	Alfredo Figaro	26	0.634	0.762	-0.128

 

 Hunter comes in on this table at number 33.  Above him you find several closers as well as brand new Norfolk Tides pitcher, Heath Bell.  In other words, it appears quite a few pitchers are clamping down when they find themselves in rough situations.