Scouting Report Josh Outman

This 26 year-old lefty missed all of the 2010 season recovering from Tommy John Surgery in June 30, 2009, which is a little a little long (15+ months versus 12 months typically). He was originally in the Phillies farm system, but was traded to the A's in the Joe Blanton deal. He's appeared in 25 games in his major league career (21 starts), and is 7-4, with a 3.62 ERA and 1.28 WHIP.

Outman is a 4-pitch pitcher, who averaged 94 mph before surgery, but is now 92 mph. He also has a plus slider (81 mph), an average change-up (79 mph, 18% of his pitches), and a slow curve (75.5 mph). His two best pitches are his fastball and slider. He's only getting swings and misses on 6.6% of his pitches (9.4% before TJ surgery), and his K/9 rate is a tiny 3.77, and his walk rate is 3.45; not a good combo. He's a fly-ball pitcher, but has benefited from allowing only 1 home run in his 28+ innings, or else his ERA may not look as good (3.14; his xFIP is 4.86).

Couple interesting things to note from his small sample size this season:
1) He has yet to walk a left-handed hitter (28 batters)
2) He throws 1st pitch fastball 63% of the time
3)He rarely throws his slider when he's behind in the count, and saves it for 0-2 and 1-2 counts
4) He's only thrown 100 pitches once in his 5 starts this season