Pat Neshek: The Next Big Thing

Pat Neshek has a secret. 

It's not that people don't know about the Minnesota Twins' reliever. On the contrary, he even has his own website, where he discusses how much he loves playing pro baseball and which autographs he has recently gotten.

Now, plenty of column space has been devoted to Neshek's blog, and how he's the ideal ballplayer-friendly and open with fans, extremely effective as a pitcher.  Neshek's name has also made the media rounds because of his unusual motion and sidearm delivery. 

But still there's that secret: 

Pat Neshek has better numbers at a younger age than any submarining relief pitcher in baseball history. 

Neshek is 26 years old and has a 2.30 ERA with a .809 WHIP, a 6-2 record, and a 1:6.5 walk-to-strikeout ratio. That puts him in pretty elite company.

To get a clearer idea of just how good those stats are, let's compare Neshek to one of my all-time favorite pitchers, Dan Quisenberry.

At age 26, Quisenberry was a rookie with a 3.15 ERA and a 1.22 WHIP. He was 3-2 with 5 saves and a roughly 1:2 BB/K ratio. For the record, Quiz also went on to become one of the premier closers of his day, and ended his career with a 2.76 ERA and 244 saves.

Dennis Eckersley was another elite pitcher known for his quirky delivery.  It's a tougher comparison between the Eck and Neshek, because Eckersley started games for the first decade of his career.  At age 26, Eckersley was a struggling starter with a 4.28 ERA and a 1:3 BB/K ratio. He finally made the switch to the bullpen at age 32, when he posted a 3.03 ERA with 33 saves and a 1:6.6 BB/K ratio.  Eckersley would go on to earn 544 saves over the next 11 years, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2004.

It doesn't matter which sidearm or submarine pitcher you name—Pat's stats compare favorably to anyone's.  He has a better BB/K ratio than Chad Bradford did at age 26, and a much better WHIP.  Neshek has better numbers than Ted Abernathy, Kent Tekulve, Byung-Hyun Kim, and Mike Myers, and his performance is nearly identical to that of Mark Eichhorn at a similar age. 

The more research you do, the more you have to believe there's something special about Pat Neshek.

If the numbers suggest anything, it's that Neshek has the skills to become one of the best relief pitchers of his era. He doesn't walk batters, and he gets a lot of strikeouts.  He keeps runners off the basepaths. Most importantly, he's been effective at every level of professional baseball.

The ability to get professional hitters out on a consistent basis is a special gift. In five minor league seasons, Pat had 82 saves and a 22-14 record. He also had a 1:4.5 BB/K ratio, with a 2.17 ERA and 1.03 WHIP.  That kind of dominance isn't an accident—it's an important predictor of big league success. 

For a long time, major league scouts and coaches had it wrong.  In the years before Billy Beane helped pioneer the sabermetric revolution, scouts would use a radar gun to decide who was a prospect and who wasn't.  Under Beane and Co.'s more rational rubric, velocity is less important than deception.  A pitcher who consistently fools batters—and who gets outs because it's valued over a fireballer with control problems.  It seems like a no-brainer, but the fight between old-school subjectivity and new-school objectivity is still raging today.

Whoever wins, you can bet Pat Neshek won't be a Minnesota secret for long.

Marty Andrade is a frequent contributor to the Bleacher Report and hosts a live weekly podcast available at blogtalkradio/andrade.