Nationals Arm Race

In my Divisional series prediction post, I predicted the following:

• Washington-San Francisco: predict a Washington 3-1 series win.  Actual: SF wins 3-1.
• St. Louis-Los Angeles Dodgers: predicted a LA sweep or 3-1 series win.  Actual: StL wins 3-1.
• Detroit-Baltimore: predicted a Detroit sweep or a 3-1 win.  Actual: Baltimore sweeps 3-0.
• Kansas City-Los Angeles Angels: predicted a LA victory in 5.  Actual: Kansas City sweeps 3-0.

In my League Championship Series prediction post, I predicted the following:

• San Francisco- St. Louis: predicted St. Louis in 7.  Actual: San Francisco walks off 4-1.
• Baltimore-Kansas City: predicted Baltimore in 6: Actual, Kansas City sweeps 4-0.

So.  Six post season series down, and i’m 0-6 in predicting things.  Mostly off badly too.  What now?  Of course!  Predict the World Series!  Here’s the post-season schedule and the likely matchups:

• Game 1: SF@KC Tue Oct 21: Madison Bumgarner v James Shields
• Game 2: SF@KC Wed Oct 22: Jake Peavy v Yordano Ventura
• Game 3: KC@SF Fri Oct 24: Jason Vargas v Tim Hudson
• Game 4: KC@SF Sat Oct 25: Jeremy Guthrie v Ryan Vogelsong
• Game 5: KC@SF Sun Oct 26: Shields-Bumgarner (if necessary)
• Game 6: SF@KC Tue Oct 28: Peavy-Ventura (if necessary)
• Game 7: SF@KC Wed Oct 29: Hudson-Vargas (if necessary)

How do things look?

Bumgarner has now thrown 31 post season innings so far in 2014.  He’s given up 19 hits, 5 walks, and just 5 earned runs in that time (3 last night, 2 more against the Nats).  Shields, despite his moniker of “big game,”  has not been solid this post season, giving up 10 runs in 16 innings.  Ventura has one good outing and one mediocre outing.  Peavy has been on a very short leash (thanks to the presence of two reliable long-men in the Giant’s pen in Yusmeiro Petit and Tim Lincecum) but has given decent performances.  Advantage Giants in pitching in the first two games; I’ll go with a 1-1 split in KC.

Back in SF, Hudson and Vogelsong both were dominant against the Nats, but not so much against the Cards.  I have a feeling the Royals are going to hit them.  I’ll predict that the Giants take 2 of 3 in SF, sending the Royals back to KC down 3-2.  From there, Its hard to argue against the run the Royals are on, and they’ll have home field plus be done with Bumgarner.  Royals ride their wave of good fortune in beating “better” teams and take the series.  Prediction: Royals in 7.

Just a note: are you troubled  by the fact that both wild cards are in the world series?  Or that the teams with the best records (Nats and Angels) were both (rather easily) defeated in the divisional series?

So, in the Divisional series prediction post, I predicted the following:

• Washington-San Francisco: predict a Washington 3-1 series win.  Actual: SF wins 3-1.
• St. Louis-Los Angeles Dodgers: predicted a LA sweep or 3-1 series win.  Actual: StL wins 3-1.
• Detroit-Baltimore: predicted a Detroit sweep or a 3-1 win.  Actual: Baltimore sweeps 3-0.
• Kansas City-Los Angeles Angels: predicted a LA victory in 5.  Actual: Kansas City sweeps 3-0.

Had I published in time, I likely would have gotten at least one of the WC games wrong too (I liked Bumgarner but thought Francisco Liriano could revert to his dominant 2013 post season form).

Four predictions, four incorrect, mostly wildly so.  Damn.  So much for the “pitching wins in the postseason” narrative.

Now what?   Of course!  Post another prediction piece 🙂

In the NL; the two top teams lost in the divisional series, leaving the weakest divisional champ going against the wild card, both with two off-days to re-set their rotations.  In the AL; two surprising sweeps and a huge gap between games lets both teams re-set their rotations too.  I’m guessing at the rotation order, but it should go as follows:

NL:

• Game 1: SF@Stl: Jake Peavy vs Adam Wainwright
• Game 2: SF@Stl: Madison Bumgarner vs Lance Lynn
• Game 3: Stl@SF: John Lackey vs Tim Hudson
• Game 4: Stl@SF: Shelby Miller vs Ryan Vogelsong
• Game 5: Stl@SF: Wainwright-Peavy (if necessary)
• Game 6: SF@Stl: Bumgarner-Lynn (if necessary)
• Game 7: SF@Stl: Lackey-Hudson (if necessary)

SF barely hit against Washington’s starters but still squeaked out 3 games from 4.  St. Louis on the other hand hits the ball a ton and should pound SF’s lesser starters.  I like a split in Stl thanks to Bumgarner, then Stl taking two of three in ATT, and SF liking their chances throwing their ace in game 6.  But who the heck knows what is going to happen; Wainwright gave up 11 hits in his last outing.   St. Louis in 7.

AL:

• Game 1: KC@Balt: James Shields vs Chris Tillman
• Game 2: KC@Balt: Yordano Ventura vs Wei-Yi Chen
• Game 3: Balt@KC: Bud Norris vs Jason Vargas
• Game 4: Balt@KC: Miguel Gonzalez vs Jeremy Guthrie (or perhaps Danny Duffy)
• Game 5: Balt@KC: Shields-Tillman (if necessary)
• Game 6: KC@Balt: Ventura-Chen (if necessary)
• Game 7: KC@Balt: Vargas-Norris (if necessary)

I, and every other national pundit, continue to be underwhelmed by Baltimore’s pitching staff.  But they get the job done: Norris was un-hittable against Detroit, and Tillman pitched good enough to win.  Is KC on a mission to save Dayton Moore’s job?  It sure seems so.  They couldn’t surpass Detroit in the regular season but swept the best team in baseball in the ALDS.  But meanwhile, Baltimore *hits* the ball.  I think Baltimore could win both games at home to start and then two of three in KC.

Prediction: Baltimore in 6.

Strasburg’s first post-season start is upon us. Photo unk via thewifehatessports.com

Last year I went nearly game-by-game, night-by-night with predictions and analysis of the playoffs.  Can’t do that this year, but I am doing some quickie starter match-up analysis to do some Divisional Series match-up predictions.  The current list of probables is mostly guess work, with the help of MLB.com’s probable pitcher page.  Also using depth charts to make guesses on the probables.

Lets start with the home team.

Washington-San Francisco

Potential Pitching Match-ups:

1. Game 1: SF@Wash: Jake Peavy vs Stephen Strasburg
2. Game 2: SF@Wash: Tim Hudson vs Jordan Zimmermann
   
3. Game 3: Wash@SF: Doug Fister vs Madison Bumgarner
4. Game 4: Wash@SF: Gio Gonzalez vs Ryan Vogelsong (if necessary)
5. Game 5: SF@Wash: Peavy vs Strasburg (if necessary)
   

The WP’s James Wagner has a nice “how do the Nats fare against Peavy and Hudson” story on 10/2/14 with per-National stats against Peavy and Hudson for the first two games.  And Wagner also just announced the rotation order for the Nats.

Yes, it seems like we’re going to see Strasburg & Zimmermann at home instead of Stras-Gio.

Looking at the match-ups, its easy to say “advantage Washington.”  Strasburg has been hot.  Zimmermann has been even more hot.  We then throw the underrated Fister against Giant’s best starter, then come back with Gio in game 4 on the road, where he’s  going against the erratic Vogelsong.  Hudson has had the Nat’s number for years, but he’s been a train wreck in the 2nd half of 2014.  Peavy has been a bulldog for San Francisco since the trade, but was nearly a 5.00 ERA in the AL.

I’m predicting Washington sweeps the first two at home, loses Bumgarner’s start, then beats SF in game 4 to wrap up the series 3-1.

St. Louis-Los Angeles Dodgers

1. Game 1: Stl@LAD: Adam Wainwright vs Clayton Kershaw
2. Game 2: Stl@LAD: Lance Lynn vs Zack Greinke
   
3. Game 3: LAD@Stl: Hyun-Jin Ryu vs John Lackey
4. Game 4: LAD@Stl: Dan Haren vs Shelby Miller (if necessary)
5. Game 5: Stl@LAD: Wainwright v Kershaw again (if necessary)
   

St. Louis has already announced that Michael Wacha is *not* in the post-season rotation, which is a huge blow for their chances to out-last the Dodgers.  The game 1 match-up might be the pitching matchup of the post-season, with perennial Cy Young candidate Wainwright going against the likely MVP in Kershaw.  Lynn has gone from being barely a 5th starter to being the #2 guy on St. Louis’ staff, but I don’t know if he’s got enough to get St. Louis the split against Greinke.  Missing Wacha means that St. Louis will have to depend on both Lackey and Miller.  Long odds there.

This series might end up being a sweep frankly; I think LA has the distinct pitching advantage here.  And not having Wacha’s dominance from previous post seasons makes it tough.  Dodgers in a sweep or 3-1 if the Cards can get to either Greinke or Ryu.

Detroit-Baltimore

1. Game 1: Det@Balt: Max Scherzer vs Chris Tillman
2. Game 2: Det@Balt: Justin Verlander vs Wei-Yin Chen
   
3. Game 3: Balt@Det: Bud Norris vs David Price
4. Game 4: Balt@Det: Miguel Gonzalez vs Rick Porcello (if necessary)
5. Game 5: Det@Balt: Tillman-Scherzer (if necessary)
   

The 96-win Orioles get rewarded with having to face three Cy Young winners in the first three games.  Their rotation mates are underrated (3rd best ERA in the 2nd half) but certainly not in the same class as what Detroit puts up there.  Baltimore’s best case is to get a split at home, then a split away and get to the 5th game.  I don’t see it: I think this series hinges on whether Verlander is Cy Young-Verlander or inexplicably-bad-lately Verlander.  I’m guessing the former; Detroit wins this series in a sweep or perhaps 3-1.

Kansas City-Los Angeles Angels

1. Game 1: KC@LAA: Jason Vargas vs Jered Weaver
2. Game 2: KC@LAA: Yordano Ventura vs Matt Shoemaker
   
3. Game 3: LAA@KC: C.J. Wilson vs James Shields
4. Game 4: LAA@KC: Weaver vs Jeremy Guthrie (if necessary)
5. Game 5: KC@LAA: Shoemaker v Vargas (if necessary)

The Angels are struggling into the playoffs and have announced they’re going with a 3-man rotation.  Weaver’s history of going on 3 days rest is spotty; one decent start and one blow-out.  Meanwhile the Royals burned their #1 guy in the WC game AND threw Ventura enough to have people question Ned Yost‘s sanity (even moreso than they already were with his multiple bunting).  But the Angels hit, and the Royals’ guys won’t be able to completely put them at odds.

I think the 3-man rotation will backfire, and whether the Royals throw Guthrie or Danny Duffy in game 4 won’t make a difference; they’ll hit Weaver at home and push this to a 5th game, where everybody will be on deck.  Angels in 5.

Lets see if these probable pitchers hold up to guesses made on 10/1/14.

Will the Nats be staring down Kershaw in the playoffs? Photo via wiki.

Here we are.  After a crazy trade deadline in July, and an August and September that featured the division leaders (in most cases) solidifying their positions and extending their leads, the playoffs are upon us.

Lets take a look at the rotations of the playoff teams (despite the fact that the four Wild Card teams are just one-man pitching staffs until they win the play-in game).  Who lines up best?  For each team i’ve tried to line the pitchers up one through five, with the 5th guy being the one headed to the bullpen.

(Quick useful links: AL full standings on b-r.com, NL full standings, and post season schedule at MLB.com).

Trade deadline 2014 acquisitions highlighted in blue.  Pre-season acquisitions highlighted in Green for context.

NL Division Champs:

• Washington: Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmerman, Fister, Roark (yes this is how I think it will shake out despite Roark’s great season-long performance; we posted on this separately)
• St. Louis: Wainwright, Lynn, Wacha, Miller, Lackey (Masterson to the bullpen when Wacha came back)
• Los Angeles: Kershaw, Greinke, Ryu, Haren, Hernandez, Wright (Beckett hurt, done for year, Ryu coming back, should be ok for playoffs so I’ve inserted him as the #3.  Maholm, Billingsley, Fife hurt all year).

Just look at what the Dodgers have tried to do to keep their rotation afloat in terms of player acquisition over the past couple of years.  I’d like to have their budget.  They will have no less than eleven capable, MLB-experienced starters once they’re all healthy.  Yes Kershaw is unbeatable, but as pointed out earlier this year, they are basically a .500 team otherwise.  Their 4th and 5th starters have been below replacement for much of the past month but they’re getting back Ryu right in time for the playoffs.   St. Louis’ rotation looks just as strong as it has been for the past few years; Wainwright quietly has 20 wins and a 2.38 ERA on the season.  Lynn has been great.  Only Miller has struggled but still has a league-average ERA+.

It is hard not to look at the Nationals’ rotation and claim they’re the deepest one-through-four, despite Gonzalez’s struggles.   I’d take our #4 (Fister) over anyone else’s #4, I think our #3 matches up just as favorably to anyone els’es #3, and Strasburg has a 1.34 ERA in September as the #1.

NL Wild Card:

• Pittsburgh: Liriano, Cole, Locke, Volquez, Worley (Morton dinged up late Sept, made way for Cole).
• San Francisco: Bumgarner, Hudson, Petit, Vogelsong, Peavy (Lincecum to bullpen for Petit, Cain out all year)

The NL WC pitching match-up will be Bumgarner-Liriano.  Both teams manipulated their rotations at season’s end to preserve their aces for the coin-flip game.  We’ll do a separate prediction piece.

NL Also-Rans;

• Atlanta:  Teheran, Minor, Santana, Harang, Wood (Beachy, Floyd, Medlen out all year)
• Milwaukee: Lohse, Garza, Gallardo, Peralta, Fiers (Nelson and Estrada to bullpen)

The Braves fell so far, so badly in September that they were nearly surpassed by the lowly NY Mets for 2nd place in the NL East.  That’s crazy.  But they still remain here as an also-ran because they were in the wild card race until mid-September.  I still think it is crazy what they were able to accomplish given the starting pitcher injuries they suffered in spring training and don’t quite understand why Frank Wren was fired.  If you want to fire him for his crummy FA contracts so be it; but the man engineered a team that made the playoffs three of the past five years.  Harsh treatment if you ask me.  Insider comments seem to think that Wren lost an internal power-struggle involving Fredi Gonzalez.

And here’s what we’re looking at in the AL:

AL Division Champs:

• Baltimore: Tillman, Norris, Chen, Gonzalez, Gausman (Jimenez demoted to BP)
• Detroit: Scherzer, Verlander, Sanchez, Price, Porcello
• Los Angeles: Weaver, Wilson, Shoemaker, Santiago, Rasmus, LeBlanc (Richards injured, Skaggs hurt)

It is hard to look at these rotations and comprehend where these teams currently stand:

• How is Baltimore leading the AL East by 12 games?  None of these guys are a league-wide “Ace.”
• How is Detroit not pulling away from the AL Central with this collection of arms?  Of course, you could ask this question of Detroit over and again the past few years; with a stacked lineup and stacked rotation they have just barely won their (usually) weak division year after year.
• How does Los Angeles have the best record in the majors with a non-drafted FA and a waiver claim in their Sept rotation?  Would you favor this rotation over Detroit’s?

I guess it doesn’t matter; these teams have bashed their way to their titles and should continue to hit in the post-season.  Apparently the O’s aren’t going to go with Gausman in their playoff rotation despite his good seasonal numbers.  It may be a case of veteran manager going with the veterans, as Gausman’s numbers are pretty much in line with most of the rest of the Baltimore rotation.  The injury to Richards really hurts the Angels: Weaver may be close to an Ace but Wilson showed he is hittable in the post-season and lord knows what will happen when LA has to throw their #3 and #4 choices.

AL Wild Cards:

• Kansas City: Shields, Duffy, Ventura, Guthrie, Vargas
• Oakland: Grey, Samardzija, Lester, Hammel, Kazmir

AL Wild Card looks like a knock-out match-up of Shields and Lester; the A’s burned Grey yesterday to get the win that put them in the playoffs.  Oakland has to be kicking themselves; how did they go from (easily) the best team in the majors for the first half to struggling to hang onto the WC spot?   On paper replacing 3/5ths of the rotation (out with Chavez, Milone, Pomeranz and Straily, in with Samardzija, Lester and Hammel) sounded like a great idea … but to me the team’s chemistry was clearly un-balanced.  At least they held on to the spot and avoiding a one-game play-in against Felix Hernandez.

AL Also-Rans:

• Seattle: Hernandez, Walker, Iwakuma, Paxton, Young (Elias out for year)
• New York: McCarthy, Greene, Kuroda, Capuano, Pineda (with Tanaka finally coming back at season’s end.  Nova and Sabathia gone all year with injuries).

All Seattle needed to do was *get* to the wild card game … and they’d have great odds of advancing behind ace Hernandez.  But struggled to the finish line.  Meanwhile Cleveland and New York would have been mentioned here a week ago, but both squads just ran out of time to make comebacks.  I’ll give NY credit: they played 7 games better than their pythagorean record with huge chunks of their rotation gone for the season and depending on guys who’s names I had to look up.

Coming soon; a review of the WC matchups with predictions.

This year’s MLB trade deadline was crazy.  Never before have so many big-time names moved teams.  And certainly I cannot remember so many big-time pitchers relocating mid-season as well.

Lets look at the playoff contender rotations as they stand right now, with Trade deadline acquisitions highlighted in blue.

NL

• Washington: Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmerman, Fister, Roark
• Atlanta:  Teheran, Minor, Santana, Harang, Wood
• Milwaukee: Lohse, Garza, Gallardo, Peralta, Nelson
• Cincinnati: Cueto, Latos, Bailey, Leake, Simon
• St. Louis: Wainwright, Masterson, Lackey, Lynn, Miller
• Pittsburgh: Liriano, Morton, Locke, Volquez, Worley
• Los Angeles: Kershaw, Greinke, Ryu, Beckett, Haren
• San Francisco: Bumgarner, Hudson, Lincecum, Vogelsong, Peavy

St. Louis clearly did the most in the NL, acquiring two mid-rotation guys to help cover for the injured Michael Wacha and Jaime Garcia, but it is hard to look at their rotation and say they’d have the advantage over some of their potential playoff rivals.  San Francisco lost its ace (thought he hasn’t pitched like an Ace since signing his new deal) Matt Cain, and his replacement was not inspiring confidence (Yusmiero Petit), so they added former Cy Young winner Peavy (who is pitching better than his 1-11 W/L record .. but not a lot better).  Otherwise the NL playoff contenders mostly stood pat.  There was some small surprise that the free-spending Dodgers wouldn’t try to improve upon the suddenly underperforming Josh Beckett and/or the “fool-me-once” Dan Haren.  They’ll struggle to get through the #3 and #4 starts of their planned playoff rotation to get back to their co-aces Kershaw and Greinke (who was good but not shut-down in last year’s playoffs).  The home-town Nats may find themselves with an uncomfortable decision to make if they make the playoffs; which starter to send to the pen?  Roark is the least renound and the least tenured … but he has clearly been more effective than other rotation members.

It continues to amaze that the Braves are competing, given the losses they’ve faced in their rotation.  They are missing (arguably) their planned #2, #3 and #5 starters in Kris Medlen, Brandon Beachy and Gavin Floyd but are getting by thanks to two mid-spring acquisitions (Santana and Harang) and the surprise performances of youngsters Wood and David Hale (who didn’t merit his demotion to the bullpen).

AL

• Baltimore: Tillman, Norris, Chen, Gonzalez, Gausman
• Toronto: Buehrle, Dickey, Happ, Strohman, Hutchinson
• New York: Kuroda, Phelps, Capuano, Greene, McCarthy
• Detroit: Scherzer, Verlander, Sanchez, Price, Porcello
• Kansas City: Shields, Duffy, Ventura, Guthrie, Vargas
• Oakland: Grey, Samardzija, Lester, Hammel, Kazmir
• Los Angeles: Weaver, Wilson, Richards, Shoemaker, Santiago
• Seattle: Hernandez, Iwakuma, Paxton, Elias, Young

I didn’t include fringe playoff contenders such as Cleveland or Tampa Bay here; both of those rotations were purged and weakened, and their odds of catching one of these listed WC contendors is long.  Oakland completely re-made their rotation here, attempting to keep up with Detroit, who now features the last three AL Cy Young winners to go along with Sanchez (who finished 4th last year in a season where he led the league in both ERA and FIP).  That’s quite a lineup.  Meanwhile Seattle likely finishes 10 games back of the Angels and could end up facing them in the coin-flip wild-card game … and could end up throwing the best pitcher in the AL at them (which has been noted as a significant down-side to the 2nd wild-card matchup; who wants to see a team lose out to a divisional rival that they bested by so many games in a play-in game?).

New York is the “Atlanta” of the AL this year; they currently have four planned rotation members on the D/L and (likely) out for the year (CC Sabathia, Ivan Nova, Michael Pineda and Masahiro Tanaka).   Their 4th and 5th starters were a 14th and 15th round pick respectively.  They’ve been outscored by nearly 30 runs on the year yet somehow have a winning record.  It seems like just a matter of time before their luck runs out and they settle back below .500.

Who would you rather go to war with, Detroit or Oakland’s rotation?   Probably Detroit’s rotation, given its depth one to four.  But the ALCS could be one heck of a series.

Ventura has some serious heat. Poto Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

I present to you without further ado Kansas City’s Yordano Ventura‘s Pitch F/X stats from last night’s MLB debut start.

According to Pitch F/X, he threw 45 fastballs on the night with an AVERAGE velocity of 99.5mph, peaking at an absurd 102.9mph on one of the final pitches he threw as he finished off 6 shutout innings against the Rays.  He’s 5’11” and 180 soaking wet.

Lest you think he only has one pitch, he has a sick 89mph change with circle action (i.e., coming back in against righties); he threw 19 of them last night and 13 of those 19 change ups were “SNIPs,” or “Strikes not in play.”  In other words … exactly what a pitcher wants.   He only gave up one ball-in-play on his changeup the entire night.  He also featured a curve that has somewhere in the 16mph range difference from his fastballs (by way of comparison, everyone raves about guys like Strasburg and Kershaw‘s fb-curve deltas, as I talked about in this post from last year, and Ventura is right up there).   He threw a 4th pitch (a cutter in the 96-98mph range) but its awfully hard to tell if it had much action on it, or which pitches Pitch F/X thought were cutters versus just him taking a couple MPH off his fastball.

Fun to watch, absolutely.  Lets hope he’s not a TJ-surgery in waiting.

Adam Jones; my #1 fantasy draft pick in 2014. Photo unk.

As with years past … feel free to skip this post if you don’t care about fantasy.  I know for certain that reading about someone elses’s fantasy sports team can be a bit grating.  But, if you do play fantasy i’m sure you’ll at least appreciate reading the selections and then looking at the team’s strength analysis at the end.

I’ll include a jump line so your RSS feeds aren’t blown out either.

Read the rest of this entry »

The ace on the best rotation in the game. Photo: talksportsphilly.com

Last year, with my excitement over Washington’s Dan Haren signing and my supposition that Washington had the best rotation in the game, I ranked all 30 team’s rotations ahead of the 2013 season.  Then, after the season was done, I revisited these pre-season rankings with a post-mortem to see how close (or, more appropriately, how far off) my rankings turned out to be.

Here’s the 2014 version of this same post: Pre-season rankings of the MLB’s rotations; 1 through 30.  Warning; this is another huge post.  I guess I’m just verbose.  At this point midway through Spring Training there’s just a couple of possible FAs left that could have altered these rankings (Ervin Santana being the important name unsigned right now), so I thought it was time to publish.

The top teams are easy to guess; once you get into the 20s, it becomes pretty difficult to distinguish between these teams.  Nonetheless, here we go (I heavily depended on baseball-reference.com and mlbdepthcharts.com for this post, along with ESPN’s transaction list per team and Baseball Prospectus’ injury reports for individual players).

Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Sale singlehandedly doing his best to disprove the Verducci effect. Photo via landmarknews.com

I’m a number of weeks behind on this post, but I always enjoy the Tom Verducci article published in January of each year discussing what he titles the “Year After Effect” (here’s the link to the 2014 iteration).  In it, Verducci identifies a handful of pitchers who, using a simple innings pitched increase year-over-year rule-of-thumb and some added professional analysis, he believes are at risk for regression or injury.

Some links before we get started:

• Here’s my blog post on this topic from last year, which includes a number of links that criticize or dispute the so-called “Verducci effect.”
• Here’s Verducci’s 2013 iteration of his article.
• Here’s Verducci’s 2014 iteration, published on 1/21/14 at cnnsi.com

First, some numbers.  Prior to 2013, of the 69 pitchers he’s identified in the last seven years as being at risk, 55 of them suffered an injury/posted significantly worse ERAs.  That’s about an 80% prediction clip.   Lots of critics of the effect have pointed out that there’s no effect when studying the larger population of pitchers, but that doesn’t explain Verducci’s 80% prediction rate.  So I don’t entirely accept that Verducci’s opinion is useless here.

Lets look at 2013’s pitchers and decide whether or not we think they regressed.  Verducci named 11 pitchers he thought were in jeopardy of injury and/or regression thanks to a significant workload increase from 2011 to 2012.

Interesting; of the 11 pitchers Verducci mentioned last year, only one suffered any kind of arm injury, and that was Matt Harvey (who was well on his way to the NL Cy Young, posting incredible numbers for a guy with his sustained velocity).  A couple of these guys saw significantly fewer innings in 2013 thanks to being either relegated to the bullpen (Joe Kelly) or having suffered a non-arm injury (Alex Cobb, who suffered a concussion and missed 10 starts).   Meanwhile, only two of the eleven guys “really” regressed in 2013 (Jarrod Parker and Andrew Werner, who spent the whole year in AAA hence the question marks for some of the advanced stats,which are not kept for minor leaguers on fangraphs).   Six of the eleven guys distinctly improved their overall stats, including specifically Chris Sale, who had a *massive* innings increase from 2011 to 2012, threw more innings yet again in 2013 and posted better numbers despite having what is easily described as “unorthodox” mechanics.

Our own candidate Stephen Strasburg “regressed slightly” from 2012 to 2013, posting mostly 4/10ths of a point regressions in his major pitching statistical component.  He missed a couple starts here and there due to a shoulder strain and forearm tightness, but otherwise threw 183 innings, increased his workload by 23 2/3 innings, and made 30 starts.   For those that expect Clayton Kershaw-greatness out of Strasburg, 2013 was a disappointment, but in the larger picture his numbers still were generally top-10 across the board.  Its tough to claim he regressed when he’s “just” a top-10 pitcher in the league … but that’s the price of fame I suppose.

Conclusions: before 2013 Verducci was 55 for 69 in successful year-after effect predictions of regression/injury.  I’m saying he went just 5 for 11 with his 2013 predictions, so now he stands at 60-for-80 lifetime, still a 75% prediction rate.  Verducci does note that of the 11 candidates from last year, only four were “really” candidates (Kelly, Quintana, Parker and Sale),  and the rest just barely broke his 30 innings threshold.

Who did he pick for 2014’s watch list?  Unfortunately for Nats fans, another of our own is present; Taylor Jordan.   Jordan pitched nearly 48 more innings in 2013 than he ever had professionally before, which triggers his presence on this list.  We all know the reason why; he never really threw a full season in 2009 or 2010, had Tommy John surgery in mid 2011, came back to throw just 15 starts in 2012, and 2013 was his first full season back.  The team had an innings cap for him (just as they had one for Jordan Zimmermann and Strasburg), and when Jordan got up around the 140 innings mark he was shutdown for the year.  Even given that cap, he still threw a ton more innings than he’s ever thrown before and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the team cap his innings at around the 170 mark in 2014.

Here’s a statistical look at Verducci’s 2014 candidates:

A large number of these players were mid 2013 season call-ups, and their 2013 stats are mostly based on short-sample sizes (where noted).    We’ll revisit these pitchers next year to see what happened, and to judge whether teams are starting to mind these innings increases a bit more closely.  What interests me with this list (besides Jordan’s presence on it) is the number of high-profile arms listed here.  Salazar, Fernandez, Cole, and Wacha all are expected to be significant contributors in 2014; will the run into arm issues?

What do you guys think about Verducci’s annual study?  Bunk?  Pseudo-science?