{"id":13327,"date":"2017-01-26T08:34:02","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T13:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=13327"},"modified":"2017-01-26T08:34:02","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T13:34:02","slug":"roark-commits-to-pitch-in-wbc-why-this-is-potentially-bad-news-for-the-nats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=13327","title":{"rendered":"Roark commits to pitch in WBC: why this is potentially Bad News for the Nats"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Roark's<\/a>

Roark’s playing in the WBC; beware Nats fans. Photo Alex Brandon\/AP via wp.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Word came out that Nats under-rated star\u00a0Tanner Roark<\/strong> has committed to pitch for the US<\/a> in the World Baseball Classic (WBC) coming up this spring. \u00a0He was invited earlier but had yet to commit, and his participation comes on the heels of word that\u00a0Max Scherzer<\/strong> would be bowing out of the WBC thanks to a stress fracture in one of his fingers<\/a>. \u00a0(Which, as a side note\/tangent, is pretty distressing news that may be under reported; our $200M ace has a fractured knuckle?? \u00a0Should we be worried? \u00a0anyway, back to the post).<\/p>\n

Four years ago, I wrote a post titled “Gonzalez to play in WBC: why this is really Bad News for the Nats” and I’m recycling\u00a0that post (and title) here, because the message is the same: This is not good news for the Nats and t heir 2017 season.<\/p>\n

Simply put: Every Nationals pitcher who has *ever* participated in the WBC has regressed from previous performance in the season following.<\/p>\n

Here’s a quick table showing every Nats WBC pitcher with their ERA and ERA+ the season before their WBC participation and subsequent to it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t
WBC Yr<\/th>Pitcher Name<\/th>ERA Season before<\/th>ERA season After<\/th>ERA+ season before<\/th>ERA+ season after<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
2006<\/td>Luis Ayala<\/td>2.66<\/td>inj<\/td>153<\/td>inj<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2006<\/td>Chad Cordero<\/td>1.82<\/td>3.19<\/td>225<\/td>134<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2006<\/td>Gary Majewski<\/td>2.93<\/td>4.61<\/td>139<\/td>96<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2009<\/td>Joel Hanrahan<\/td>3.95<\/td>4.78<\/td>109<\/td>89<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2009<\/td>Saul Rivera<\/td>3.96<\/td>6.1<\/td>109<\/td>70<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2013<\/td>Gio Gonzalez<\/td>2.89<\/td>3.36<\/td>138<\/td>113<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2013<\/td>Ross Detwiler<\/td>3.4<\/td>118<\/td>4.04<\/td>94<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n

As you can see; every single one of our pitchers was either injured or regressed (mostly significantly) after playing in the WBC. \u00a0The worst case was Luis Ayala<\/strong>, who pitched against the wishes of the team and blew out his elbow on the field during the WBC. \u00a0That\u00a0injury cost him the entire 2006 season.<\/p>\n

But this is just our team’s experiences. \u00a0How about Baseball wide? \u00a0MLB has endeavored itself to argue that participation in the WBC does not lead to an increase in injuries<\/a> amongst its players and especially pitchers. \u00a0But we’re not talking about injuries here; we’re talking about performance. \u00a0 Here are two very well done studies that show the negative impact of pitching in the WBC:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. This July 2010 study<\/a> on Fangraphs<\/li>\n
  2. This Feb 2013 study<\/a> from BaseballPress.com<\/li>\n
  3. A 2014 study at BeyondtheBoxScore<\/a>\u00a0that does really in-depth studies of all three WBCs that uses better numbers than I do.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The BaseballPress study shows some of the same numbers I’ve shown above, but conducts the analysis across every pitcher who participated in both WBCs prior to the 2013. \u00a0And the results are pretty evident; across the board on average pitchers regressed both in the year of the WBC and in the year after. \u00a0The BeyondtheBoxScore\u00a0tries to do a much more scientific approach using control groups and finds less significant\/trivial regression, but depends on projection systems and not year over year performance, which is kind of the point; we live in the real world, not projection systems.<\/p>\n

    It isn’t hard to figure out why these guys regress; playing in the WBC interupts the decades-old Spring Training plans for getting a starting pitcher ready for a season by slowly bringing him along in terms of innings and pitch counts. \u00a0And, suddenly exposing both starters and relievers to high-leverage situations in February\/March that they aren’t ready for either physically or mentally puts undue stress on these guys that (as we have seen) manifests itself later on down the road.<\/p>\n

    Nonetheless, as much as I like the WBC as a concept I think its “bad” that one of our key pitchers will be participating. \u00a0At least we now know that Roark’s time may be limited thanks to new rules that allow roster augmentations. \u00a0If Roark throws one 5 inning stint maybe it won’t be so bad.<\/p>\n

    I just wish the WBC would be played AFTER the season (you know, like the World Cup does it; AFTER the pro seasons have ended) instead of before it.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Word came out that Nats under-rated star\u00a0Tanner Roark has committed to pitch for the US in the World Baseball Classic (WBC) coming up this spring. \u00a0He was invited earlier but had yet to commit, and his participation comes on the heels of word that\u00a0Max Scherzer would be bowing out of the WBC thanks to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1583],"tags":[861,821,385,121,1202,1037,51,1207,77],"class_list":["post-13327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","category-world-baseball-classic","tag-chad-cordero","tag-gary-majewski","tag-gio-gonzalez","tag-joel-hanrahan","tag-luis-ayala","tag-max-scherzer","tag-ross-detwiler","tag-saul-rivera","tag-tanner-roark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13327"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13367,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13327\/revisions\/13367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}