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Year		Comment
2010		If you're a lefty specialist who can't consistently get lefties, chances are your name is Jack Taschner.
2009		The arrival of Hinshaw made Taschner the second lefty in the Giants pen. That didn’t go so well. From May 8 through the end of the season, nearly half of Taschner’s inherited runners came around to score, he blew four saves in the first three weeks of August, and his second half ERA swelled to 8.24 as opponents hit .380/.429/.598 against him. A high opponents’ batting average on balls in play can be blamed for some of that, but not all. With the arrival of Jeremy Affeldt, Taschner may be out of a job.
2008		An odd BABIP split hides the fact that Taschner has been pretty effective against hitters on both sides of the plate over his career, striking out 20.1 percent of righties and 19.4 percent of lefties. That BABIP quirk-lefties hit .377 off of him on balls in play last year-cost him a set-up job. Taschner doesn't need to be limited to LOOGY status, but lefty relievers who throw complete or multiple innings are another species of pitcher that has been forced into extinction.
2007		Taschner opened 2006 with the Giants, but when he retired just seven of the first 21 batters he faced, he was sent to the Valley. Things were better after that; Taschner posted a 3.65 ERA in Fresno, and then a 4.20 after his August recall. Better isn`t the same as good; Taschner failed to pitch as well as he had in 2005, when he finally proved himself healthy after years of injuries. If you can endure our making one more remark about high fly-ball rates, check out Taschner`s. Right-handed hitters batted .400/.456/.760 with four home runs in 50 at-bats against him; between his inability to keep the ball down and the natural advantage that righties have over lefties, Taschner turned every righty who faced him into Jimmie Foxx on a hot streak. On the--pardon the expression--other hand, Taschner limited fellow lefties to .275/.318/.275. Though this would tend to paint Taschner as a future LOOGY, this is all small-sample stuff. He had a reverse split in another small major league sample in 2005, and another at Fresno in 2006. Crafting a role for him is going to be difficult.
2006		Taschner was a 2nd rounder in 1999 whose development was curtailed by shoulder surgery in `99, a nerve procedure in `01, and Tommy John surgery in `02. Taschner`s fastball is finally back up to 95 mph, and it looks like his hard-breaking slider is good enough to strike out major leaguers. Health should be a sure thing as he`s pretty much run out of things that can go wrong--with his arm, anyway.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, Jack Taschner threw 2,311 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2007 and 2010, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2010, he relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (90mph), Sinker (90mph) and Slider (82mph), also mixing in a Change (82mph).