Kiley McDaniel on Casey Meisner

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski on August 7, 2015 at 10:00 PM

Not exactly timely at this point, but Kiley McDaniel has this summary of Casey Meisner, the minor-league pitcher the A's got back for Tyler Clippard. The short version, though the article is free so you may as well click yourself and watch the video that McDaniel posted along with the text, is that Meisner has mid-rotation upside and room to fill out physically that gives some hope that he could reach that upside. This seems like a pretty good bet for two months of a sub-elite reliever.

From 2009 to present, among relievers with at least 300 innings pitched over that span, Clippard ranks 29th in FIP (FanGraphs version), sandwiched between Francisco Rodriguez and LaTroy Hawkins. Hence "sub-elite." FIP probably undersells him because over that span he's allowed just a .229 BABIP despite nearly 500 innings pitched, but his RA doesn't add up to elite either. Not that he's not excellent -- the very fact that he has nearly 500 innings of relief over the last six-plus years attests to that -- but there's a clear gulf between him and the actually elite relievers like Koji Uehara, Kenley Jansen, and Greg Holland, to say nothing of Craig Kimbrel.