Certainly the guy has some skills, but he also has some flaws that can be extremely dangerous for a starting pitcher, or any pitcher for that matter. That walk rate is certainly disturbing, but he has consistently given up a hit or less per inning and his WHIP since coming to STL has been below 1.30.

I have heard a lot of negativity toward Todd on this blog and I have shared that view for the most part, but I also think there is some optimism in these numbers as well. Can he make the leap and be a good SP? I don't know, I would like for him to start for one full season before I can ever come to that conclusion, but I don't think his failure is a certainty by any means.

I would be interested to hear what the rest of the community has to say about Todd.

When did he get that nickname?

As for your question, I think it will take at least this entire season. He's a little old to be learning new tricks, but that's not to say that he can't. I think what we're seeing is Wellemeyer finally being able to replicate his AAA performance in the big leagues.

I looked at his minor league stats yesterday during his start and saw some interesting stuff. Before he hit AAA, he was pretty dominating in terms of K/BB and K/9. But once he got to that level of opposing hitter, his walk rates doubled, to the point that his K/BB shrank to less than 2:1, and have stayed pretty much the same since. Then once he hit the major leagues, he got absolutely pounded, especially as a reliever. That pounding has colored a lot of people's expectations, including mine, from the start. I have felt that he didn't deserve a place on our roster from day one, though he has given me reason to reserve my judgement of late.

It's highly doubtful that he'll ever become the guy he was in AA. But he was reasonably effective in AAA with his stuff, even against more patient hitters. If he shows a season of getting back to that level of ability, I think it's believable.

until around May 20th.

50-ish games (generally) tells you what you need to know about a team.

Although it is a good question. I do know this - he has performed solid enough that we should not take his next bad start (which will happen at some point) and use it to confirm that our long held suspicions were correct all along.

The lack of ability to go deep in games seems to be a very valid concern. His ability to get big league hitters out seems to have become less of one, at least to me.

Interesting decisions for the rotation loom around the corner.

The answer to "how many games of a sample do you need to know, for sure that a player is legitimate?" is "enough to get them into the Hall." Players have fluke moments. They have fluke career years. They have Mark Wohlers style meltdowns. They sometimes just settle down to become league average.

Or sometimes, they keep their performance up indefinitely. If a player performs well for a while, you can certainly trust them more. And you can trust them even more if they maintain their production even longer. You can look for other evidence as to whether or not they are trustworthy: did wellemeyer hit his spots last night? How did his stuff look? Were the Astros just hacking stupidly? Did they pound the cover off of the ball right into Cardinals outfielders mitts? All of this answers questions regarding how reliable a predictor of future performance the Colonel's (or any other players') past performance will turn out to be.

But the only real answer to this question is most of their career. Beyond that, it's just trust, tempered with knowledge of past performance.

'cuz otherwise we are stuck with the Anthony Reyes we have seen so far.

I have been a Welle fan since last year and I am happy to see him succeed. I would rather see a questionable pitcher with a live arm, than a questionable pitcher with an 88mph fastball and no out pitch. Not picking on anyone in particular there, but that seems to have been the desired profile of the Cards for a while. Give me a guy who can miss some bats and get away with a mistake once in a while

It's unfortunate that N>30 or N>20 is often advocated as a significant sample. I guess it's not a bad number to use as a rule of thumb in absence of other information.

So one quesion I would ask is, what level of accuracy in the prediction would one desire to achieve? i.e. the more accurate the inference, the greater the sample size is needed. Another question is, "how much variability is in the data?" i.e. greater variation = greater data required. Third question, is "a single sample (event)" a start or an inning? Even if the innings are from starts as opposed to relieve, sometimes it might be better to use a per game unit.

The short of it is that the sample size question is really quite complicated and most of the time, real world data does not make life easy as things are always changing in a player's career, e.g. one is declining, improving, being injured, playing for a different team, different competition, ballparks change, etc...

What I like about VEB, is that people present data and make an argument for their interpretation, inference, etc... And no one knows for sure what the right answer is, or even if the sample size is adequate. But the educated speculations is what makes it fun.

So hopefully the Colonel will stay away from Colonel Sanders, and keep up the good stats that you have pointed out. The link to the P-D article on "Colonel" was hilarious.

what are you looking for in terms of "legit?" I watched Jason Marquis consistently give the Cards one good half of a season per year. Did that make him "legit," decent, or a failure? Braden Looper gave several good performances last year, though his daytime struggles were well documented.

With Mr. Wellemeyer, I would like to see him give the Cards an average of 6 innings per outting. It hasn't seemed that he has had trouble getting outs for the Cards, but his ability to do it without throwing 20+ pitches per inning has been in doubt. He was extremely efficient last night.

IMO, he needs to do this consistently for at least 10 starts. That doesn't mean he needs to do it without a bad outting, but I'd like to see him bounce back when he does (No Kipper like prolonged streaks). This may seem like a low number, but frankly I don't think the Cards will leave him in a starting role longer than that.

closer to 60 starts, probably.

One year of being a starting pitcher full time is around 30 starts. People can have fluke years. But they usually don't have two fluke years in a row.

With Pineiro and then Mulder being on the verge of returning at some point within the next 30 days, we may never know what Wellemeyer would have needed to accomplish over the long haul. Any combination of former starters making a healthy return or The Colonel having a bad outing or two could end it.

Maybe he gets packaged in a trade or goes back to a struggling bullpen? Whatever happens, its gonna be real interesting watching them shuffle the roster (and the DL) as Johnson, Kinney, Carpenter and Springer all eventually return and Clement earns a shot.

With the depth that the cardinals project to have why not just let him pitch until he starts to blow it? Its not like they have 4 years 60 mil on it. Its a good opportunity to let everyone heal completely and not come back for one game and back to the DL.