The Genius of Dave Duncan

Dave Duncan has gained a mysterious reputation over the years.  His story is what folklore is made of.  If you listen to how the baseball people tell it, he’s a healer, a genius, he breathes life into arms.  Simply put, he’s the best pitching coach in the league.  Send a struggling pitcher to Duncan who hasn’t been able to find his fastball in ten years, and by the end of the season he’ll be a Cy Young candidate.  Find a pitcher whose doctor says his arm is dead, Duncan will have him sitting on the lowest ERA of his career. 

There’s no doubting Duncan’s ability in aiding pitchers.  Chris Carpenter was nothing until he found Duncan.  He enabled Jeff Weaver to cash in on early talent that seemed to have evaporated until he landed in Saint Louis.  But, the question is, are these guys the norm or the exception?

Year after year the Cardinals front office goes out and trolls for hurlers that have the intangibles, but for whatever reason success has eluded them.  After working with Duncan for a few months everything clicks, and they go on to enjoy great success. 

Or so we are led to believe. 

Has this man really made that much of a difference in all of these careers?  Can he really resurrect dead arms or pull all the unrealized potential out of someone’s arm?  Is he really that much better than everyone else?

I decided to look into it.  I had too.  For years I’ve considered this man the most brilliant pitching coach of this generation, yet I had no factual evidence to support the claim.  Sure,  I could cite a few examples, give a few facts, but, like most others, I just assumed he was the best because- well that’s what you’re supposed to think.

Duncan made his bones in Oakland, where he led their staff to the best ERA in the Majors from 1988-1990, and his impact was immediately felt in Saint Louis after joining the club, along with Tony LaRussa, in 1996.  His first project was Todd Stottlemyre.

Stottlemyre had shown some promise early on in his career with Toronto, posting a 3.88 ERA in his first full season, but he was rather mediocre until Cardinals traded for him in 1996, at which point he had a career 4.41 ERA. 

Duncan must have seen something in him in his single season with Oakland in 1995, although I’m not sure what.  He had struggled for the better part of 5 years, and appeared to be another run-of-the-mill hurler that never quite put it together.

The trade paid off instantly, in his first season Stottleyre went on to post a 3.87 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, along with 194 punch outs, and a 14-11 record.  He also finished sixth in hits per nine innings (7.7), ninth in strikeouts per nine (7.82), third in complete games with five, second in shutouts with two, and finished eighth overall in strikeouts.

Over the next season and a half it was more of the same.  In 1996 he went 12-9 with a 3.88 ERA, 1.21 WHIP (a career best), and 160 strikeouts.  Prior to being dealt to Texas at the deadline the following season, Stottlemyre was 9-9 with a 3.51 ERA, after being dealt it inflated to 4.33.  He struggled over the next two seasons with Arizona, until he fell out of the league in 2002 with a 7.52 ERA.

Darren Oliver, another down-on-his-luck pitcher who showed promise early in his career, came over to Saint Louis from Texas in the Stottlemyre trade.  Through his season and a half with Duncan he posted a 4.26 ERA, which isn’t remarkable, but over the next five years following his departure from Saint Louis he posted ERA’s of:  7.42, 6.02, 4.66, 5.04, and 5.94.  He finally had some success during the 2006 season working out of the bullpen for the New York Mets, and then with the Angels, where he currently has a 4.35 ERA.

Possibly the most important pitcher that Duncan ever worked with was Kent Bottenfield.  Not just because he was remarkable, but because it gave Duncan and LaRussa the blueprint on how to convert relief pitchers into starters, a tactic that they are currently employing quite successfully. 

Bottenfield came to Saint Louis in 1998, and originally worked out of the bullpen.  In his previous stops he had enjoyed some success, his best season coming in 1996 with the Cubs when he put up a 2.63 ERA over 61.7 innings of relief.  Working predominately out of the bullpen during the first half of the ’98 season Bottenfield posted a 2-5 record to go along with a 5.13 ERA.  He slid into the rotation during the second half of the season and posted a 3.76 ERA.

The following season he went 18-7, posted a 3.97 ERA, struck out a career best 124 batters, and made his the only All-Star appearance of his career.  He was traded along with Adam Kennedy to the Angels for Jim Edmonds during the offseason and washed out of the league two seasons later after posting ERA’s of 5.40 and 6.40.

In 2000 Duncan was handed Darryl Kile, and was asked to turn back the hands of time.  In 1997 Kile had finished fifth in Cy Young voting after going 19-7, with a 2.57 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, and 205 strikeouts, while with Houston.  He left for Colorado and posted ERA’s of 5.20 and 6.61 over the next two seasons before joining the Cardinals.

He immediately got his swagger back after spending the spring with Duncan.  In his first season with Duncan, at the age of 31, he finished fifth in Cy Young voting after going 20-9 with a 3.91 ERA, 192 SO, and a 1.17 WHIP.  The next season he lowered his ERA to 3.09, struck out 179 batters, and posted a 1.28 WHIP.  Kile’s life was tragically cut short the following year.

 The next guy the Cardinals pulled from the garbage heap was Woody Williams.  Williams showed up in 2001 as a 35-year-old reclamation project.  Through his first nine seasons he was up-and-down, never stunning, yet always efficient.  When he joined the Cardinals from San Diego at the deadline he was 8-8 with a 4.97 ERA.  Over the last two months he went 7-1 with a 2.28 ERA.  The next season he went 9-4 with a 2.53 ERA in limited action.  In 2004 he went 18-9 with a 3.87 ERA and was named to his only All-Star team.  His last season with the Cardinals was in 2005, where at the age of 37 he posted a 11-8 record with a 4.18 ERA. 

He struggled the following season with San Diego, putting up a 4.85 ERA, but in 2006, he proved to be one of the few, post-Duncan, to improve, posting a 3.65 ERA.

2004 was a huge season for the Cardinals. They picked up Jeff Suppan, Jason Marquis, and Chris Carpenter, three pitchers no one wanted.  The same three pitchers the Cardinals rode to two World Series in three years.  In three seasons with the Cardinals, Suppan posted ERA’s of 4.16, 3.57 and 4.12, the three best marks of his career.  Marquis, also with the Cardinals for three years, posted ERA’s of 3.71, 4.13, and 6.02.  The latter two being the best marks of his career.  He has found success with Chicago, where he posted a 4.60 ERA last season, and currently sits at 3.47.

This brings us to the crowning achievement of Duncan’s career, Chris Carpenter.    There was really no reason for anyone to believe that Carpenter had the ability to be the best pitcher in the National League, or any league for that matter, when he joined the Cardinals in 2004.  He had missed all of the 2003 season with shoulder injuries, and Toronto had given up on him.  Although, after hooking up with Duncan he immediately flourished.  In 2004 he went 15-5 with 152 strikeouts and a 3.46 ERA.  The next season, at 30, he won the Cy Young with a 21-5 record, 2.83 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, and 213 strike outs.  The next season he finished third with a 15-8 record, 3.09 ERA (second best in the league), 1.06 WHIP, and 184 strikeouts.  His 2007 season was cut short due to injuries.

Duncan’s current roster could prove to be his best work yet.  He has a group of journeymen and has-beens sitting on the second best ERA in the league.  There’s Kyle Lohse who has never posted an ERA under 4.45, currently sitting on a 2.36, the ninth best mark in the league.  Then you have Todd Wellenmyer.  The same Wellenmyer that wasn’t good enough to stick in the Royals bullpen last year after giving 18 earned runs in 15 innings, who then posted a 3.11 ERA over his first 63 innings as a starter with the Cardinals, and has become an integral part of the Cardinals early success. 

There are guys that are more heralded than Duncan, even though they shouldn’t be, but that’s alright.  I’ll leave it with a quote from a National League Scout.

“He’s the best out there right now,” offered one National League scout about Duncan. “He makes guys better than anyone has a right to expect. Anyone who doesn’t recognize the value of that isn’t paying attention.”