Nationals Arm Race

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.

Should we try Clippard as a starter? Absolutely! Photo: NationalsDailyNews/Meaghan Gay/DCist.com

Baseball writer extraordinaire Tom Verducci posted a fantastic article today talking about Neftali Feliz‘s proposed move from the Rangers closer to the starting rotation.  The article touches on a topic that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while; Starting versus Closing.  It also is literally the best summation I’ve seen yet describing why the save is over-rated, closers are overpaid and why you’d rather have starters versus relievers.

Lets face it; for the most part relievers are failed starters.  A few get drafted or signed as relievers (Washington’s Drew Storen being one local example), but most starters are drafted as starters and work their way through the minors as starters.  Some starters discover that they can’t develop secondary pitches, but their primary pitches are so fantastic that the club (rightly) turns them into relievers.  This especially allows hard-throwers (think someone like Joel Zumaya) to have a career despite the fact that they only really have one pitch and throw with such effort that they could not possibly last 6+ innings.

Minor league relievers definitely make the majors, but most often as either LOOGYs or rubber-armed replaceable right-handers (think Miguel Batista) out of the bullpen.  In recent  years the desire to have more and faster throwing arms out of the bullpen has led to more pitchers opting to become relievers sooner, but they still are converted out of starting roles for either performance or fragility.

Two items from his story that I’d like to comment on:

1. Managers don’t use Closers in the most high-leverage situations. I could not agree more.  When is the best spot to use your best, most reliable reliever?  In a one-run game in the 6th when your starter runs out of gas and loads the bases with one out?  Or at the beginning of the 9th inning of a 5-3 lead?  Verducci is right; managers in the modern game are slaves to the save statistic and will not bring in their closer unless its a “save situation.”   But he also notes what is common knowledge; that you could be putting out the 12th man in your bullpen and probably have only a slightly worse chance of getting 3 outs without losing the game for your team.  Per the article, 94% of 2-run leads in the 9th inning are won irrespective of who you put out there, and that percentage has not changed significantly over the past 50 years of baseball.  Joe Posnanski also wrote about this same topic in November with similar results, finding that teams in the 50s closed out games with the same regularity as teams now, but without high-priced one-inning closers.

Luckily for the Nats, we look to have 3-4 different guys who are of sufficient quality who we CAN bring in to a game in the 6th and get a high-leverage situation.  Storen, Clippard, Burnett or newly acquired Henry Rodriguez all seem to fit the bill.  But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a manager in Riggleman who is in the “slave to the save” category.  Matt Capps was brought in to be the closer and he closed games.  That’s it.  It is safe to say that if Riggleman decides on a closer, that’s going to be his role and that’s that.

The save stat is ridiculous and most people know it.  You can get a save in a game where you give up 2 runs and 5 hits in a 1/3 of an inning.  You can get a save when you perform mop up duty but let the score get too close while you rubber-arm your way through a meaningless blowout.  The save takes nothing about the pitcher’s performance into account; only whether or not the game ended while he was on the mound and the win was preserved.

But the save stat, and its monster creation the specialized one-inning closer, are here to stay.  Prospects come up through the ranks specifically to be closers, free agent players will only play for certain teams if given “the chance to close.”  Closers are well paid, and their pay is directly tied to this flawed save statistic.  Statisticians have tried to create a better set of metrics for middle relievers (“Holds” mostly) but the reality is that closers have high leverage in salary situations while middle relievers are lucky to get paid a bit more than the veteran’s minimum.  Verducci touches on this ridiculousness, pointing out that Papelbon‘s higher salary in 2011 than Cole Hamels despite the relative levels of production for their teams.

Ironically, some Major League managers *know* this fact, but continue to trot out their best reliever for a 3-out save at the beginning of the 9th inning in a 3-run game.  They do the same as the other 29 managers because the radical idea that backfires directly leads to termination.  No manager is willing to risk their job to try to do something the right way.  To say nothing of the reaction of a highly-paid FA closer who is suddenly told he’s going to be primarily used in the middle of the 7th to clean up the starter’s mess.

It makes you wonder if there’s a better way.  Here’s two radical suggestions:

1. Comprise a bullpen with no named closer role, and tell the entire 7-man bullpen they’re doing closer-by-committee.  It may infuriate fantasy baseball players and the union (since saves translate to salary for their FAs), but it probably placates an entire roster of wanna-be closers.  Imagine if 5 of the 7 guys in your bullpen (leaving out the LOOGY and long-man) know they may be brought in to rescue a game in the 6th or close it out in the 9th, and their roles change on a daily basis based on use.  That to me is a far better situation than pre-naming a closer (which invariably is the best guy out there) and then never using him until the 9th.

2. Comprise an ENTIRE pitching staff of long-men relievers.  Imagine if you didn’t have starters at all, but an entire bullpen of guys who were geared to pitch 2-3 innings every other night.  You would never have a need for specialized closers or even high-priced starters.  You’d rotate through who got the start, the starter would go 2-3 innings, then the next guy would go, and you’d repeat this until the game was over.  It’s kinda like spring training but all year.  Since these guys are only throwing 2-3 innings, they should be able to repeat this task multiple times in a week.

There’s 54 regular innings to be had per week mid-season (6 games at 9 innings per).  54 innings divided out by 12 guys in the pen means about 4.5 innings per WEEK per pitcher.  If you split those 4.5 innings up across three games you’d be pitching (say) 2 innings on monday, 1 on thursday then 1.5 on saturday.  That’s pretty manageable.  Plus if everyone else is doing the same, you can rotate through the guys and slightly adjust based on how they’re pitching that day.

Plus, think about how CHEAP this pitching staff would be.  12 middle relievers could not possibly cost your team more than about $15-20M annually in salary, even if they were mostly on veteran contracts.  Roy Halladay makes more than that in 2011 just by himself.

Coincidentally, this is exactly what Tony LaRussa tried at one point in the early 90s with the Athletics.  Unfortunately his experiment ended quickly, failing less because of execution and more because of lack of support from his players and management.  Its just a matter of time before someone tries it again.

Here’s the second item i’d like to comment on:

2. Starters are FAR more valuable than Relievers or Closers.  Last year in the midst of Clippard’s fantastic middle-relief run I asked myself, “Why isn’t Clippard in the rotation?”  He pitched 91 innings spread out over 78 appearances and only gave up 69 hits.  He maintained an 11.1 K/9 ratio, which is better than any starter in 2010.  91 innings was good for 4th on the entire staff in 2010.

The leading argument i’ve read for Clippard staying in the bullpen relates to the nature of his stuff.  He’s got a sneaky good fastball, a decent curve but his bread and butter pitch is the change-up.  Apparently the knock on him is that hitters adjust to him more quickly and thus he makes more sense in a relief role.  In a starting role hitters would be getting their third crack at him in the 5th or 6th inning, right when he’s tiring and right when he’s vulnerable.  In relief, he can “show” all his pitches in one at bat and work each batter individually, then leave the game before his “stuff” is exposed.

Clippard was a starter his entire minor league career, and his minor league numbers were pretty good.  He always maintained a small hits-to-IP ratio, a good k/9 ratio.  It wasn’t until he reached the majors that suddenly he couldn’t start.  I think perhaps he’s either gotten pigeonholed or he’s psychologically set in the reliever mind-frame now.

A quality starter gives your team 6+ innings, works through the opposing team’s batting order nearly 3 full times and keeps your team in the game.  6-7 innings at a 3.00 era is invaluable for your team’s psyche as it tries to win game after game.  Leaving just 2-3 innings a night for a bullpen staff of 7 means that there’s fewer days when your staff is over worked and you have to give up games for lack of bullpen arms.

How about using career WAR as a bench mark?  I don’t really like the career WAR analysis (since it is an accumulator stat and a mediocre guy with 22 years of experience appears to be better than the best pitcher of his day who only had a 15 year career).  But it is telling in this situation.  Here’s a link to career WAR for pitchers at baseball-reference.com.  And here’s the rank of the 5 best relief pitchers of all time (the 5 relievers currently in the hall of fame), along with the rankings of some of their active contemporaries who seem likely for the hall.

Smoltz and Eckersly both started for large portions of their career, hence the high rank.  Mariano Rivera is clearly (in my mind) the greatest reliever who has ever played and his career WAR shows.  But notice how low closer-only guys like Sutter and Fingers are on this list.  Both are currently below modern day starters Ted Lilly and Kevin Millwood, again guys who are hardly listed as being among the game’s elite.

By means of comparison, Trevor Hoffman, who is ranked 215th all time is ranked just ahead of one Freddie Garcia in all time WAR.  Now, is Freddie Garcia a serious hall of fame candidate?  Not likely; he’s currently on a minor league contract offer with the Yankees after nearly washing out of the game two years ago.

Oh, coincidentally, I absolutely think Felix should be in the rotation.  As should Aroldis Chapman in Cincinnati.  Because they’ll be able to help your team win on a much more frequent basis.  You always want the chance of 180 innings of quality versus 60.  Its that simple.

“Never leave town when Strasburg pitches” is the general lesson learned this past weekend.  If you do, be ready to return to 100s of blog postings, rants, old-school comments from Ron Dibble, and other opinions.  Its official today, Strasburg heads to the DL with a strained flexor tendon.  The umpire of the game says he heard an audible pop and Strasburg really looked like he was in some serious discomfort. One MRI inconclusive, so now they’re going with a reactive-fluid injection to more clearly see the damage.

All I can say is, the two words “Tommy John” seem to be in play here.

If there is a silver lining, it may be one of the following observations:

– If the nats shut him down for the rest of the year (and honestly, they really should at this point), he’s still gotten in enough innings to show some progress for the year (55 in the minors, 68 in the majors).  Certainly he did not hit the team goal of 150 combined innings … but then again 150 would put him into “Verducci Effect” territory.

– This move easily allows us to bring up Jordan Zimmermann, who has been just killing minor league hitters during his extended rehab, without having to sit one of our established starters (though, I still maintain that Stammen was unfairly demoted from the rotation; look at his advanced stats on fangraphs and you’ll see he’s basically our 2nd best starter behind Strasburg).

We’re moving forward with a rotation of LHernandez, Olsen, Lannan, Marquis, and Zimmermann for now.  Detwiler seems done for the  year.  I can see Olsen possibly getting dumped (and saving a few $100k starts) to make room for Maya in a couple weeks.  Wang continues to be MIA.