They are similar pitchers — good raw stuff but wobbly command and control. And of course, Tejeda is having a good September just like Davies last year.

As a starter, Tejeda has cut his walk rate from 6.2 BB/9 to 4.1 BB/9. This big of difference, however, may not last because his percentage of balls dropped only modestly from 38% as a reliever to 36% as a starter.

The very good news is that he has maintained his swinging strike rate — 13.6% as a reliever to 13.4% as a starter. Similarly, his strikeout rate dipped only slightly from 11.8 K/9 to 9.7 K/9. Overall, his K/BB rate has improved from 1.9 as a reliever to 2.4 as a starter.

These are all very good developments, but given the very small sample size (only 22 IP as a starter) and his history of command and control problems, we are still a long way off from saying that Tejeda has “cured” his problems.

Also similar to Davies last year, Tejeda is running an unsustainably low HR/FB rate of 1.4% — like BABIP generally regressing to around .300, HR/FB generally regresses to around 10-11%. As for BABIP, Tejeda also is unlikely to keep up a .260 BABIP, even with an excellent LD% of 15.8% (which should slide closer to 20% over time).

His pitch type values also show another good development. While Tejeda’s fastball and change have generally been good pitches for him over the years, his slider has gone from below average in previous years to pretty good this year. With a solid change, it should help him with platoon issues.

Overall, I think it is OK to be cautiously optimistic about him as a starter. If he can keep missing bats at a high rate and maintain a K/BB right around 2.0 K/BB, Tejeda can be a solid (but flawed) starter. But like Davies, Tejeda’s short-term success as a starter may be a sample size issue. Or it may be genuine improvement, even if he is not as good as he has been over these starts. At this point, we do not have enough information to really know.

The important thing is that the organization does not need to know the answer this September — with the state of the Royals, the team can pencil him into the rotation without committing to him long-term. And as others have previously noted, if he flames out as a starter, he can just slide back into the pen.