Revisiting Josh Banks

Anonymous wants to know if I've changed my mind on Josh Banks.

With Banks' performance against NY, has your opinion of him changed? Do you see him being the No. 5 for San Diego for the rest of the season, or are these three starts a fluke? I think he could be a fine spot-starter at home or against weak-hitting teams.

To recap, this is what I said about Banks in last Sunday's FAAB log.

Banks had a spectacular outing against the Giants this week, but is a junk baller who will have his good days and his horrid days. The former Blue Jays farmhand does have very good control, and Petco should suppress some of the damage. He gets the Mets this week, which doesn't look like such a good match-up.

I'm not exactly going to change my mind on Banks, but I am going to retract some of what I said.

At one point, Josh Banks was a Top 50 John Sickels pitching prospect. Back in 2005. This is what Sickels had to say in his unparalleled Baseball Prospect Book:

Banks has a 90-93 MPH fastball, a curve, a slider, and a change. He throws strikes with all four, and looks like a very solid all-around guy to me. He doesn't throw quite hard enough to be a number one starter, but he should be a very efficient inning-eater.

The problem with Banks was that he seemed to struggle more and more as he moved up the ladder. Sickels said that Banks' problem was that he was too much of a control artist and that he wasn't fine enough in the strike zone, leading to a lot of hittable pitches. Once he got to AAA, his K/IP dropped to a perilous level, and the HR/IP spiked as well. Banks dropped from a B pitcher in Sickels' book to a C pitcher: a borderline prospect who might make it and might not.

That leaves us where we are today. Banks has strung together two nice outings, first against the Giants, which leaves many yawning, but then more impressively against the Mets. Reports on his velocity vary. Some say he's throwing at 90-91 with the ability to dial it up to 92-93, while others have reported that these are the readings on the "fast" gun, and that Banks is really throwing at 88-89. This shouldn't matter that much, but if he's as hittable as he was in the minors, this will pose a problem once the league gets to look at him.

I'd agree with anonymous that Banks could be a decent spot starter who might be worth looking at for match-ups or, at the very least, stashing on reserve. And, from that standpoint, my opinion has changed. But I still think there could be some bad days for Banks, especially when he's away from the very friendly confines of Petco.