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Walks were Randy Williams' undoing. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
When Randy Williams made his White Sox debut July 29, it was the first time he had pitched in the majors since Oct. 1, 2005. In those nearly four years between MLB appearances Williams bounced around the minors, struggling to pitch well enough to earn a promotion back to the bigs.
He finally got that promotion in late July after throwing the ball well in Charlotte (36.2 IP, 40/11 K/BB). However, his return to the majors wasn't extremely successful.
Key stats
G: 25
IP: 17.2
W: 0
L: 1
ERA: 4.58
ERA+: 102
FIP: 4.63
BB: 12
BB/9: 6.11
SO: 22
K/9: 11.21
K/BB: 1.83
HR/9: 1.02
WHIP: 1.42
OPS: .688
GB/FB: 1.43
BABIP: .283
WAR: 0.1
Had Williams been able to throw strikes with more consistency, his numbers would have been great. HIs K/9 is out-of-this-world good, but those six walks per nine innings were out-of-this-world bad.
However, a lot of that was due to Williams' lefty/right splits. Williams held lefties to a .549 OPS with a 14/4 K/BB, but allowed righties to have a .868 OPS with a 8/8 K/BB.
So maybe Williams has some value to the Sox in 2010 as a left-handed one-out guy (LOOGY, in baseball lingo). He's not somebody the Sox can count on to fill Matt Thornton's shoes assuming Bobby Jenks gets traded, but maybe he's somebody who could admirably fill the second lefty role in the bullpen.
Well, as Lee Corso would say, "not so fast, my friend." Most of Williams' success this year came in low-leverage situations, as he held batters in those spots to a .549 OPS in 39 at-bats. But in 24 medium (.864 OPS) and high-leverage (.872 OPS) situations, Williams struggled.
Granted, this is all based on a very small sample size. Maybe if Williams only pitched against lefties and fixed his control issues, he'd have more success in higher leverage situations.
But Williams has had chance after chance to fix those control issues, and his 4.00 BB/9 in the minor leagues shows that he really hasn't done that. He's never pitched more than 26.1 MLB innings in a season, and at 34, there's no reason to think he'll magically stop walking batters at such a high rate any time soon.
That being said, it wouldn't be the worst thing to invite him back to spring training this year and keep him in the minors as an emergency relief option in case of an injury. If the Sox think they can count on him to be an integral part of their major league bullpen next year, though, they'll get burned.
Also, a final note: Thanks to Jim at Sox Machine, every time Randy Williams came into a game, this is what I (and everybody who reads his blog) thought of:
RAAAAAAAAAAAANDY!
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