The Porcello Effect

From the dawn of time, natural events have been dumbfounding the human race. Scientists are still kicking themselves trying to understand everything about gravity. It’s hard to understand how such a weak force has such a strong power over us, allowing the sun to wrap us around it like a ball on a string. Nicholas Cage won an oscar but is also the worst actor of all time. Dark energy makes up 70% of the universe but we still have absolutely no idea what it is. But, nothing is more misunderstood than the career of former New York Mets starting pitcher; Rick Porcello.

I’ve been studying the Porcello effect for years. I have observed certain trends over Rick Porcello’s 11 years in baseball that back up my claim. If you’ve been paying attention to the American League of the MLB, then maybe you’ve seen it too. Back in 2009, the young junkballer finally got his moment in the sun starting 31 games for the Detroit Tigers. He had a pretty decent year going 14-9 with a 3.96 era and finishing 3rd in AL rookie of the year voting. This is where the Rick Porcello effect began to take shape. By definition, the Rick Porcello effect implies that a player or team cannot be good two seasons in a row. The season after his miraculous 3rd place ROY campaign he came out and threw fewer strikeouts, his era dropped almost a full 1.0 and he finished the season with a losing record. The year after, he came back with a better era, a solid 14-9 record, and 20 more strikeouts than the previous year. The Porcello effect continued year after year. He would go up and then back down stupefying sports scientists the world over.

The Porcello effect took a crazy turn in 2015 when he was traded to the Red Sox. He was just coming off of a positive portion of the Porcello effect- 2π on the sin curve for you mathematicians out there. His first year on the Red Sox was a flop as predicted by the Porcello effect, but it was more of a flop than expected. Yes, he finished the season with the most strikeouts in his career to date, but his era fell from 3.43 to 4.92 and he took the most losses he’d ever taken with 15. Okay, every trend has outliers. I should just expect him to go back to average, pretty good Rick Porcello in 2016.

Wow was I wrong. 2015 was not an outlier. The amplitude of the Porcello effect was getting exponentially greater. He took the momentum of the worst year of his career, bounced it up the sin curve, and broke the ceiling winning the Cy Young award with a 22-4 record, a 3.15 era, and a whopping 189 strikeouts. I was amazed. The Porcello effect was getting out of hand and I had no idea why. I just felt bad for him. Obviously, winning the Cy Young is cool and all, but the Porcello effect was about to decimate the poor guy. He came out in 2017 and led the league in losses, hits allowed and homers allowed. I felt so bad for the guy, but I needed to figure this out. There was something fishy going on with the Porcello effect.

That’s when it hit me. It doesn’t just affect Rick Porcello. The Porcello effect was a force like gravity or dark energy that affects the entire league. Think about the years Porcello spent on the Tigers. The Porcello effect was there but it was weak. That’s because another team was taking the bulk of the force. Throughout 2010-2015 the Giants saw the most insane span in major league history, winning the world series in the even years and missing the playoffs in the odd years. How did that happen? The Porcello effect. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say 75% of it was hitting the Giants while only 25% stuck with Porcello. That’s why it wasn’t fluctuating as much.

In 2015 when it left San Francisco, that 75% had to go somewhere. Now think about the Red Sox seasons from 2015-2019:

2015: 5th place in the East, Porcello pitches horrendously.

2016: They soar to 1st in the east and Porcello wins the Cy Young

2017: They don’t get better, but don’t get worse. Porcello’s awful season may have kept them from winning it all

2018: Porcello is back in form and the Sox win the World Series

2019: Porcello finishes with his worst ever era and the Sox miss the postseason

When the Porcello effect left San Francisco, it needed somewhere to go. It already had a decent amount of equity in Porcello so it just followed him to Boston. With 100% of the Porcello effect, the Red Sox were able to win their second world series in 10 years. With Porcello now moving onto New York, who knows where the effect will move to next? One day it will be obvious, but until then it’s just fun to watch this incredible force act on this beautiful game. I look forward to seeing where it heads next.