Nationals Arm Race

I’m a day late on this, having been on travel, so I’ve already missed Texas’ game 1 victory in the ALCS.  So be it; it does slightly change my prediction in that series though, my having assumed that Verlander was winning that game for Detroit.

Here’s some quick looks at the possible pitching matchups for the two league championship series, with an attempt to try to guess which team has the upper hand of starting pitching.  As we saw in the divisional series, where I got two series perfectly correct (Det in 5, Mil in 5) but got two very much wrong (Tampa in 4, Philly in 3), clearly I overvalued the power of the starters for both Tampa and especially Philadelphia to overcome St. Louis.  And as we saw in game 5 of the Philly series, even having the best pitcher in the league giving up 1 run through 8 innings can sometimes not be enough.

Here’s the probable pitching matchups for each LCS.  St. Louis’s rotation is a complete crap shoot, so this may be for naught.  But Milwaukee’s is pretty set in stone and should give us a good idea of what to expect.

AL First:

Thoughts:

• Texas ace CJ Wilson really underperformed in the Division Series, getting pounded for Tampa’s only win.  I’ll bet that if the Rangers can get a win in a Verlander-started game, this becomes a quick series.
• Likewise, two of the Detroit starters really didn’t perform well either in the DS (Fister and Porcello).  Texas’ offense may put a hurting on them.
• Prediction: Texas in 7.

Here’s the NL, with some guesswork for the St. Louis rotation

Thoughts

• I see three games where clearly the pitching match-up favors Milwaukee.  Greinke‘s two starts and Gallardo‘s start against St. Louis’ weakest starter.
• That being said, the other four seem to marginally favor St. Louis.  I don’t see how you can assume Carpenter is losing a post season start after how he shut down the Phillies.
• I think Milwaukee is going go get to Jackson at some point, especially playing at home and with their big hitters.
• Prediction: Milwaukee in 6

Texas-Milwaukee isn’t exactly a marquee WS matchup, but it sure would appease one long-suffering fan base.

After a pretty unbelievable 6 minutes last night, where the Red Sox snatched defeat from the hands of victory and then the Rays had a walk-off win to an amazing comeback (not to mention the Braves losing a heart-breaker to finish off their own September collapse earlier in the nigth), we have a completely different playoff picture than most people predicted just last week.  Lets take a look and put up some predictions.

First off, 3/8ths of these teams were in such scramble mode just to make the playoffs, they havn’t really even declared probable pitchers yet.  But i’ll put in some guesses.

By Series Thoughts:

• Detroit-New York: Detroit took the Season series 4-3 and is on a roll.  New York basically has no idea who is going to pitch the 3rd game (Garcia?  Colon?  Burnett?) or the 5th game, and the 4th game would be Sabathia on 3 days rest.  Detroit is essentially a 1 1/2 pitcher rotation right now, with Verlander unbeatable and Fister just as good.  Game 3 is the toss-up; which 4+ ERA starter will cave first?  Prediction: Detroit in 5.  Supplemental prediction: New York over-reacts and gives CJ Wilson $180M in the off season after having zero pitchers left in game 3.
• Tampa Bay-Texas: Texas took the season series 5-4, but Tampa is obviously hot entering the post-season.  Tampa’s pitching staff was shredded just to get into the playoffs, leaving them at a disadvantage.  They burned their ace Price last night (and he got hammered), meaning they likely can’t use him til game 3.  Meanwhile, arguably their 5th best starter (Neimann) looks likely to get two starts because of the scheduling.   Unless the team puts uber-prospect Matt Moore on the roster and puts him into the rotation.  Despite all that, the Rangers themselves have a conundrum in that the matchups don’t really favor them, at all.   I don’t think the Rangers can beat Shields in game2, and may struggle to beat Price with their #5 starter Colby Lewis going in game 3.  The pivotal game is game 2: can Texas hold serve at home?  Prediction: Tampa in 4.
• Arizona-Milwaukee: Arizona took the season series 4-3.  This is a strange series; if Arizona’s pitching is for real, this could be a great series.  If not?  It could be a quick sweep for Milwaukee.  Arizona needs to win both of their Ace Ian Kennedy’s starts to have any shot, but both will be on the road.  The pivotal game could be game 4, with the veteran Randy Wolf going against the surprising elder rookie Josh Collmeter.  Prediction: Milwaukee in 5.
• St. Louis-Philadelphia: the one team Philly didn’t want to see in the post-season; St. Louis took the season series 6-3.  However, Chris Carpenter was burned just to get into the post season, meaning they likely won’t see him until game 4.  By which point Philly may very well have swept this series.  St. Louis’ pitching isn’t that great this year, with all their starters posting good ERAs but not really dominant lines.  Philadelphia really struggled down the stretch; we’ll find out soon enough if its because they were tired or just complacent by having locked up the #1 seed so early.  I’m guessing their 4-game winning streak to end the season (including the dagger-like 3-game set in Atlanta to cost them the WC) means they’re geared up.  Prediction: Philadelphia in 3

If this plays out, we’re looking at Milwaukee-Philadelphia and Tampa-Detroit for ALCS.  Not as compelling as MLB wants, but some good story lines none the less.  Could be a Philly-Tampa 2008 rematch world series.  We’ll revisit predictions after the divisional rounds are complete.

Who in the world would have thought the Wild Cards would come down to the final day?  Just a few weeks ago columnists were lamenting the lack of any pennant races when all 8 playoff spots looked locked up.

Now we have FOUR do-or-die baseball games tonight.  All going on at roughly the same time (three 7:10 and one 8:10 start).  Get your MLB network channel listed (its 213 on Directv) because it will probably do drop ins all night ala the Red Zone channel.

Anyone want to offer predictions on these four games?  Here’s your probables tonight per si.com and mlb.com (since si.com doesn’t list all the games).

• Boston at Baltimore: Lester vs Simon.  Boston gets its ace, and its one remaining halfway decent starter, with the season on the line.  But he’s *really* struggling down the stretch and has gotten more or less hammered in his last three starts.  And will be going on 3 days rest.  Simon is only marginally better in September and had a mediocre season.  Prediction: Boston in another 8-7 drama-filled slugfest.
• New York Yankees at Tampa Bay: TBA vs Price.  The Yankees are probably starting a Sept 1 call up, prepping their rotation for the playoffs, while Tampa gets its ace.  Prediction: easy win for Tampa.
• St Louis at Houston: Carpenter vs Myers.  Another “ace versus ace” in name only; Carpenter is clearly the superior pitcher here.  However Myers is finishing very strong.  St Louis unloaded on Houston pitching last night for 13 runs an 17 hits, but tonight’s game will be low-scoring.  Prediction: Cardinals get to the Houston bullpen and win a low-scoring one on Carpenter’s complete game.
• Philadelphia at Atlanta: Blanton vs Hudson.  Philly starts Blanton, who is not even in the rotation any longer, in what will be a bullpen, get guys some work, setting things up for the playoffs.  Meanwhile Atlanta sends out its Ace.  Advantage Atlanta.  If the Braves get 3 runs early, Hudson gets the win (he’s something like 146-1 in his career with a 3run lead or more).  Prediction: Atlanta in an easy victory.

So, i’m predicting two ties and all four teams in the WC chase to win.  Probably won’t happen this way, but so be it.  If all this happens, here’s what would probably go down for 1-game playoffs:

• Boston would travel to Tampa Bay: Either Wakefield or Lackey would go on 3 days rest versus (likely) Neimann for Tampa.  I say likely since Neimann only went a couple innings in his last start.  Tampa could also go with Matt Moore, who only had 15 kis in his first 9 1/3 innings pitched in the majors.  Advantage clearly to Tampa Bay here; Boston can barely put together a playoff rotation right now, let alone guarantee a couple more wins this week.
• Atlanta would travel to St. Louis: It would probably be Brandon Beachy vs Kyle Lohse.  Young strikeout guy versus crafty veteran.  I’d say advantage goes to St. Louis.  If St. Louis makes the playoffs watchout; they beat the Philles 6 out of 9 in the season series, have the pitching and have the managerial advantages to go far.

No matter who takes either wild card, they’re all at major disadvantages heading into the playoffs.  All four have burned their aces this week just to get to the final game and thus are only guaranteed one start in a playoff series from their best guy.  Meanwhile the division winners they’d likely face are all setting up their playoff rotations well.  Something to take into consideration for those that want to predict a wild-card divisional series winner.

I’m pretty excited for tonight actually.  How about you guys?

Clay Buchholz provided the best Wins/salary in the majors last year. Photo baseballrumormill.com

A few weeks back si’s Tom Verducci posted an article discussing the value of starters over closers.  One of the points that he made in the article related to the general fact that Ace Starters are more likely to be with the same team that developed them than being free agent acquisitions in the modern game.  In Verducci’s article, he analyzed the 20 best pitchers by ERA from last season and found that 13 of them are still with their original organization.  Furthermore, 10 of them were first round draft picks.

Modern baseball teams are being built more and more through the draft.  Last year’s World Series champions San Francisco featured 4 home grown starters, each of whom would slot in as the best or 2nd best pitcher on most every other rotation in the league.  Tampa Bay rode a slew of home-grown (and cheap!) starters to the 2nd best record in Baseball over the past 3 years.  And now we clearly see Mike Rizzo trying to build up his starting pitcher cache in the minors through mid-season trades and a focus on pitching in the past couple drafts.

I thought I’d take this point a bit further, as it relates to a topic that I have found more and more fascinating.  The New York Yankees and their $200M payroll struggled to find starting pitching in the off season and are now essentially conducting tryouts in spring training for the #4 and #5 starter spots in their rotation.  How did they find themselves in this predicament?  The answer is thus; it has been years since they developed a home-grown Ace starter.  Their best pitcher (CC Sabathia) was a (very) expensive Free Agent, their 2nd best a home grown rookie (Phil Hughes) and their third best (AJ Burnett) another pricey free agent.  Arguably it has been since either Chien-Ming Wang or possibly Andy Pettitte that the Yankees have developed a starter worthy of mention.  Now, the Yankees have certainly bought themselves a whole lot of offense that will mask their weaknesses in the rotation, but the fact remains that they could easily miss the playoffs in 2011 despite their payroll if the first three members of their rotation do not pitch well.

Lets look at the “Aces” in baseball, and take a look at their acquisition methods and their contract status.  Here, “Home Grown” means the team that developed the pitcher, not necessarily the team that drafted him.  When prospects get traded, I credit the acquiring team for developing and delivering the player to the majors.

• Home Grown: Johnson, Hamels, Wainwright, Jimenez, Lincecum, Cain, Lester, Buchholz, Price, Verlander, Liriano, Felix Hernandez, Jered Weaver.
• Free Agent Acquisition: Halladay, Lee, Carpenter, Sabathia.
• Trade Acquisition: Oswalt, Santana, Greinke.

Of these 20 “Aces,” 13 are still with their developing organization.  Four Free Agent acquisitions for big money, and three traded Aces that cost their teams plenty (though in retrospect the Johan Santana trade isn’t looking that bad for the Mets).

Another side-point was Verducci’s findings that 10 of the top 20 pitchers by ERA last year were first rounders.  I find that piece of information really amazing, given the notorious “crapshoot” mentality of baseball Drafts.  Here’s a quick followup analysis of the Initial Acquisition method of my 20 “Aces” and determining draft or international free agent. Here, we’ll put “supplemental first rounders) into the “1st round” category.

• Draft: 1st Rounder: Hamels, Halladay, Carpenter, Wainwright, Greinke, Lincecum, Cain, Buchholz, Price, Sabathia, Verlander, Jered Weaver.
• Draft: top 5 rounds: Johnson (4th), Lee (4th), Lester (2nd).
• Draft: 6th round or later: Oswalt (23rd).
• International Free Agents: Santana, Jimenez, Liriano, Felix Hernandez.

So by my analysis, 12 of the best 20 pitchers in the game were first round picks.  Only Oswalt looks like a complete diamond in the rough find.  For all the talk about how the draft is a crap shoot (hey, Albert Pujols was a 13th round pick), it really seems apparent that these first rounders paid off handsomely.

Here’s one more look; of the 13 “home grown” aces, lets look at their current contract status.  All data per Cot’s fantastic salary database site.

• Johnson: 4 years/$39M (2010-13)
• Hamels: 3 years/$20.5M (2009-11), but he has a 4th arbitration year in 2012.
• Wainwright: 4 years/$15M (2008-11), plus 2012, 2013 club options (this contract is in complete peril though, since the club can terminate at the end of 2011 when Wainwright is on the DL.  That essentially kills $21M guaranteed to Wainwright in 2012 and 2013.  Tough, tough break for the player).
• Jimenez: 4 years/$10M (2009-12), plus 2013-14 club options (the club options are very reasonable for an Ace)
• Lincecum: 2 years/$23M (2010-11), but these are just his first two arbitration years.  Two more to go to take him through 2013.
• Cain: 3 years/$27.25M (2010-12)
• Lester: 5 years/$30M (2009-13), plus 2014 club option
• Buchholz: 1yr/$480K (est): Still on a pre-arbitration contract, possibly the best value in baseball right now.  Controlled through 2014 by the Red Sox.
• Price: 6 years/$8.5M (2007-12).  Wait, actually THIS may be the best deal in baseball, since Buchholz will probably garner a massive first-year arbitration award in 2012 just as Price’s 6 year deal ends.  However, Price can void the contract and file for arbitration as soon as he becomes eligible, presumably for the 2012 season.
• Verlander: 5 years/$80M (2010-14)
• Liriano: 1 year/$4.3M (2011).  Still in his arbitration years, under club control through 2012.
• Felix Hernandez: 5 years/$78M (2010-14)
• Jered Weaver: 1 year/$7.37M (2011).  He lost his arbitration hearing this year after going “only” 13-12 but leading the league in strikeouts and coming in 5th in Cy Young voting.  Under club control through 2012.

And, adding in the non-home grown players for a complete picture of the future Ace starter FA market:

• Halladay: 3 years/$60M (2011-13), plus 2014 option
• Lee: 5 years/$120M (2011-15), plus 2016 option
• Carpenter: 5 years/$63.5M (2007-11), plus 2012 club option
• Sabathia: 7 years/$161M (2009-15) but he can opt out after the 2011 season
• Oswalt: 5 years/$73M (2007-11), plus 2012 club option
• Santana: 6 years/$137.5M (2008-13), plus 2014 club option
• Greinke: 4 years/$38M (2009-12)

So, here’s a quick summary of when these Aces may hit the FA market:

• After 2011: Wainwright (but he’ll be post-TJ surgery), Sabathia (probably)
• After 2012: Cain, Liriano, Weaver, Oswalt, Carpenter, Greinke, Hamels
• After 2013: Johnson, Lincecum, Santana (probably)
• 2014 or Beyond : Jimenez, Lester, Buchholz, Price, Verlander, Hernandez, Halladay, Lee

Notice how teams are locking up these Ace pitchers for the long haul.  We’re likely to have perhaps just an injury reclamation project in Adam Wainwright and opt-out 100% certain to return to the Yankees Sabathia as the sole major  free agent candidates this coming off season.  I’ve read differing opinions on whether or not Sabathia opts out of his contract (he’d be abandoning $92M of guaranteed pay over 4 years) but I’d be surprised (shocked actually) if he did NOT opt out, especially if he has a third consecutive year of similar production to his first two for the Yankees.  You would have to think he could easily merit a contract north of Cliff Lee’s $24M/year for 7 additional years.  7yrs/$170M or so.

Lastly, lets look at the 8 playoff teams from last  year and investigate how many of their starters were home grown:

• Giants: 4 of 5 homegrown (Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Bumgarner).  1 FA in Zito
• Rangers: 3 of 5 home grown (Wilson, Hunter, Feldman), 1 trade acquisition (Lee), and one FA (Lewis)
• Yankees: 1 home grown (Hughes) and 4 Free Agents (Sabathia, Burnett, Pettitte, Vazquez)
• Phillies: 1 home grown (Hamels), 3 traded acquisitions (Halladay, Oswalt, Blanton) one FA (Moyer).
• Rays: 4 home grown (Sheilds, Neiman, Price, Davis) one trade acquisition (Garza)
• Twins: 3 home grown (Baker, Blackburn, Slowey) one FA (Pavano) and one trade acquisition (Liriano).
• Braves: 3 home grown (Hanson, Jurrgens, Medlen/Minor), one FA (Lowe), one trade acquisition (Hudson)
• Reds: 3 home grown (Leake, Bailey/Wood, Cueto), two trade acquisitions (Arroyo and Harang).

Six of the Eight playoff team used rotations that were mostly home grown.  Most of the trade acquisitions here were trading of prospects (either the acquiring team using prospects to acquire a proven Vet, as with Hudson, or the acquiring team acquiring and developing the player, as with Garza).

What is the lesson, after all this analysis?  Draft well, develop well, and then lock down your Aces for the long haul.  That is the pathway to success.  There are some exceptions of course (the Phillies have acquired 2 Aces by leveraging their very good farm system depth, and still have enough lower-level depth to rank among the best farm systems in baseball.  And the Yankees of course have bought themselves a good portion of their team).  But looking at the playoff teams last year, most of them were draft-heavy on starters.

Coincidentally; the Nats 2011 rotation by way of comparison?  2 drafted (Lannan, Zimmermann), 2 FAs (Livan and Marquis) and one trade acquisition candidate (Gorzelanny).  This would look far better of course if we were using two key drafted/developed players (Strasburg, Detwiler or even Maya).

Here’s hoping that the Nats’ higher-end starting pitcher draft picks (Strasburg, Zimmermann Solis, Cole, and Detwiler) become the core of our rotation for years to come.

This is an image I hope we don’t see again.

In an article that seemingly came out of nowhere, Si.com columnist Tom Verducci posted this missive on 3/8/11 with ominous warnings to Nationals fans everywhere.  He believes that Stephen Strasburg has a fatal flaw in his mechanics related to the timing of his stride forward off the rubber versus his release point that may continue to plague the pitcher even after his post Tommy John surgery recovery.

I say this article comes out of nowhere since I would have expected to see this posted back in August 2010, when every other pundit posted their own theories as to why “the best pitching prospect ever” suddenly blew out his elbow.  I reviewed some of those explanations at the time but thought (and still do think) that his injury was less about his release point and more about pitch selection.  I think that Strasburg (and more importantly his catchers) fell in love with his change-up after discovering what a devastating pitch it was (imagine facing a 91-mph screw ball that moves a foot into the right handed hitter).  Suddenly he was throwing a ton of circle changes and placing unexpected, here-to-fore unseen stress directly on his elbow ligament.  When a hurler goes from pitching one day a week in a protected environment where he can get by throwing mostly fastballs to overpower college hitters to suddenly throwing only about 58% fastballs (per Verducci’s research) at the Major league level every 5 days, sudden injury onset can occur.

Verducci touches on the preponderance of off-speed pitches Strasburg was throwing in the article but focuses on the “late cocking” of the arm as the primary culprit of the injury.  He then lists a number of pitchers who exhibit this same late arm cocking with (conveniently) a ghastly list of arm and shoulder injuries that followed.

Here’s my problem with this type of cherry picking of arm injuries; as Mike Rizzo pointed out in the article, you can probably find a similar subset of pitchers who exhibit the same late-cocking of the arm who have NEVER had an arm injury.  Rob Neyer posted a similar opinion in a Verducci-followup piece.  Similarly, those who subscribe to the “Inverted W” pitching mechanical flaw fail to point out that, while there are plenty of examples of pitchers who show the inverted W behavior (most notably in most examples is Mark Prior but Strasburg exhibits the same mechanics as well), there are also plenty of pitchers who do the same motion but who never have had a serious injury.  People always forget to mention this fact and their articles always come off with the message that “if you exhibit this, you are doomed.”

John Smoltz was listed as a pitcher who had this fatal mechanical flaw (he also has inverted W syndrome) and listed as an “example” of what can happen.  Yes Smoltz blew out his elbow in his early 30s and missed an entire major league season.  But he also pitched until he was 42, made over 700 major league starts, won 213 games and saved another 154 while he was in the closer role theoretically “protecting” his arm.  If Strasburg gives the Washington franchise those kinds of numbers between now and the year 2030 (when he too will be 42 years of age) I will never quibble.

For me, shoulder injuries are the injuries that you really worry about.  Look at Chien-Ming Wang right now; he’s throwing in the low 80s 2+ years on from shoulder surgery.  The Nats have taken fliers on several other post-shoulder injury starters over the past few years (Brian Lawrence, Ryan Drese, John Patterson) with limited success.  However, pitchers seem to be able to recover from Tommy John surgeries with much better regularity.  I realize our own Shawn Hill had the TJ surgery and never really came back, but the list of successful pitchers who have had the TJ surgery is long.  3 of the top 5 NL Cy Young candidates last year (Josh Johnson, Tim Hudson and now Adam Wainwright) have had the TJ surgery, as did 2009 NL cy Young winner Chris Carpenter.  Our own Jordan Zimmermann seems to be nicely recovering, although it is far too soon to conclude that his surgery was a success.

I sometimes wonder what modern medicine could have done with Sandy Koufax, who abruptly retired at age 30 after a Cy Young winning season where he made 41 starts and went 27-9.  His retirement reason was listed as “arthritis in his pitching elbow” and he had symptoms that included massive hemorrhaging in his arm; was this a condition that would be easily solved today?

For Strasburg, as with pretty much any baseball pitcher, in many ways every pitch could be your last.  Modern medicine can fix all kinds of injuries and modern technology can pin point the wheres and whys of why some guys may last and some guys may be flashes in the pan.  But in the end, some guys physiologically are more durable than others, some guys can throw a ball through a brick wall for 25 years (see Ryan, Nolan) and others break down after just a few professional games.  Lets just hope for the best once Strasburg comes back.

In a short series (if you went to a 3-man rotation in the playoffs, as lots of teams do), who scares you the most?

Candidates:

• Philadelphia: Halladay, Hamels and Oswalt
• Boston: Lester, Beckett, Buchholz.  tough.  If they were all performing that is.  Beckett seems off this year.
• NY Yankees: Sabathia, Burnett and Hughes; this was supposed to be Vazquez but once again the best rotation that money can buy, didn’t.
• St Louis: Carpenter, Wainwright and Garcia.  Wow.
• San Francisco: Lincecum, Cain and Zito/Sanchez/Bumgarner; again, that’s tough.
• Tampa Bay: Price, Garza, Shields (with Sonnanstine/Hellickson thrown in there).  Scary tough, which is why they’re beating out the Red Sox right now.

For my money, it has to be Philly slightly followed by St. Louis.  How is that team gonna get beat this off season?  Of course, they have to MAKE the playoffs for it to matter.  Ironic that the 3 best rotations in the AL are all in the east.  Chicago’s is decent but more veteran laden.  Texas’ starts with Lee and ends with a guy who was playing in Japan this time last year (Colby Lewis).  I don’t think Minnesota’s guys are scaring anyone.  How scary is it that Toronto has two guys with one-hitters this year (Marcum, Morrow) but is buried in FOURTH place in the AL east.  That’s a tough division.