Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
| G | IP | K% | BB% | ERA | FIP | xFIP | WAR | |
| MiLB (AAA) | 29 | 121.1 | 19.4% | 8.0% | 5.79 | 5.47 | n/a | n/a |
| MLB | 1 | 4.2 | 5.3% | 15.8% | 1.93 | 4.63 | 5.96 | 0.0 |
What Happened In 2014: Threw one good-enough spot start before becoming yet another victim of Albuquerque.
Come on, it’s Christmas, were you expecting a review of a meaningful player?
Red Patterson was called upon for a spot start in the nightcap of the April doubleheader in Minnesota. Before the game, Chad gave the scouting report:
From what I saw of him last year and in Spring Training this year, Patterson will go after hitters with a four-seam fastball, two-seamer, slider, and change. Patterson’s four-seam fastball ranges between 90-91 with some late life, and his 86-88 mph two-seam will run a bit, which helps explain his solid groundball rate (~%50). The slider is his knockout pitch, even if it probably isn’t one at the MLB level. Patterson will throw the slider anywhere from 80-84, and at times it can flash plus with two-plane break. However, too often he’ll fail to get on top and it’ll either flatten out or it’ll lose RPMs and become a slurve. The change will be used to help Patterson against lefties, and it ranges from 80-82 with some run. Finally, he’s added a cutter this year, which was 85-87 the few times I saw him throw it. At least I think that was a cutter.
That all sounds pretty mediocre. And, as you can see from that stat line above, Patterson did… okay against the poor Twins lineup. He made it into the fifth, walking three and striking out one while only allowing one run. For a spot start in pretty poor weather conditions, that’s good enough. The Dodgers ended up winning the game (this was the game where Yasiel Puig was called out on a non-existent “turn to first”) and swept the series against the Twins.
Patterson toiled in Albuquerque for the rest of the season but was never really able to repeat his success from 2013. His strikeout rate dropped significantly and he allowed more homers as well. The Dodgers moved Patterson to relief late in the year to try to find something, but when the Dodgers needed a quad-A type late in the season they called up Carlos Frias instead. Patterson was eventually designated for assignment to make room for Scott Elbert late in the season.
2015 status: Patterson was outrighted to AAA at the end of the season and remains in the organization. He’ll likely be a part of Oklahoma City’s rotation next year, unless the move to relief continues long-term.
