2008 Preview - The Pitchers
We did the hitters yesterday so today we’ll do the pitchers. What you will see is the ERA and Innings Pitched from 2007 then my projections for 2008 for each hurler.
Starters
Josh Beckett – 3.27/200.1 – 3.60/170
Daisuke Matsuzaka – 4.40/204.2 – 3.96/190
Tim Wakefield – 4.76/189 – 5.00/150
Jon Lester – 4.57/63 – 4.57/175
Clay Buchholz – 1.59/22.2 – 4.50/150
Curt Schilling – 3.87/151 – 4.50/50
Beckett will be missing at least one start obviously and I think it is a safe bet that he’ll have another blister/avulsion incident at some point during the season. Matsuzaka could do just about anything, I would not be surprised by a Cy Young Award and I would not be shocked if he wound up around where he ended 2007.
After those two the Sox have a mishmash of pitchers. Wakefield is what he is, health is the issue with him. Lester is a complete unknown. This is the first time since 2005 he is pitching healthy and with a full off-season behind him. That year he turned in a 2.61 ERA at AA Portland. We’ve heard of him for so long it is easy to forget he is still just 24 years old, just eight months older than….
Clay Buchholz. You may find my forecast of league average effort unreasonably pessimistic but it is hard to pitch in the big leagues and young pitchers take time to adjust. He’ll be great but it is not likely to be in 2008.
Schilling is just a wild guess and the 50 innings would represent about eight to ten starts. Those 50 innings could belong to Colon as easily as Schilling.
Relievers
Jonathan Papelbon – 1.85/58.1 – 1.67/65
Hideki Okajima – 2.22/69 – 3.33/65
Manny Delcarmen – 2.05/44 – 3.08/65
Mike Timlin – 3.42/55.1 – 4.28/40
Julian Tavarez – 5.15/134.2 – 5.30/100
Javier Lopez – 3.10/40.2 – 4.65/40
Kyle Snyder – 3.81/54.1 – 4.76/75
David Aardsma – N/A – 4.70/20
Bryan Corey – 1.93/9.1 – 4.83/30
Craig Hansen – N/A – 5.00/30
Miscellaneous – N/A – 6.00/40
Papelbon is unquestionably one of the elites and should have a great year in 2008. Having been babied in 2007 I would not be stunned to see the Sox use him just a shade more. Okajima and Delcarmen will both be solid relievers with Delcarmen allowing Francona to be a bit more judicious in how he uses Okajima. The innings Okajima pitch will be similar in number but a bit more evenly distributed over the course of the season.
Lopez will reprise his role as LOOGYWIBBAFF (LOOGY Who Issues Bases on Balls Annoying Fragile Freddy). Mike Timlin will continue his attempt to stave off Father Time and he looked good in the Spring. I expect he will pitch well but have some issues with staying healthy.
The rest of the staff will be the usual filler. I think that either David Aardsma or Craig Hansen could prove to be a different maker for this team in 2008 depending on what happens. Kyle Snyder I project to make a few starts to boost his inning total.
Three players not listed who could find themselves with a role are Justin Masterson, David Pauley (Freddy loves his sinker ballers) and Jon Switzer.
When you put this all together you get a ball club allowing 730 runs, a sizable increase over the 657 the team allowed in 2007.
(coming Friday – the Outlook for the Defending World Champion Boston Red Sox)
Starters
Josh Beckett – 3.27/200.1 – 3.60/170
Daisuke Matsuzaka – 4.40/204.2 – 3.96/190
Tim Wakefield – 4.76/189 – 5.00/150
Jon Lester – 4.57/63 – 4.57/175
Clay Buchholz – 1.59/22.2 – 4.50/150
Curt Schilling – 3.87/151 – 4.50/50
Beckett will be missing at least one start obviously and I think it is a safe bet that he’ll have another blister/avulsion incident at some point during the season. Matsuzaka could do just about anything, I would not be surprised by a Cy Young Award and I would not be shocked if he wound up around where he ended 2007.
After those two the Sox have a mishmash of pitchers. Wakefield is what he is, health is the issue with him. Lester is a complete unknown. This is the first time since 2005 he is pitching healthy and with a full off-season behind him. That year he turned in a 2.61 ERA at AA Portland. We’ve heard of him for so long it is easy to forget he is still just 24 years old, just eight months older than….
Clay Buchholz. You may find my forecast of league average effort unreasonably pessimistic but it is hard to pitch in the big leagues and young pitchers take time to adjust. He’ll be great but it is not likely to be in 2008.
Schilling is just a wild guess and the 50 innings would represent about eight to ten starts. Those 50 innings could belong to Colon as easily as Schilling.
Relievers
Jonathan Papelbon – 1.85/58.1 – 1.67/65
Hideki Okajima – 2.22/69 – 3.33/65
Manny Delcarmen – 2.05/44 – 3.08/65
Mike Timlin – 3.42/55.1 – 4.28/40
Julian Tavarez – 5.15/134.2 – 5.30/100
Javier Lopez – 3.10/40.2 – 4.65/40
Kyle Snyder – 3.81/54.1 – 4.76/75
David Aardsma – N/A – 4.70/20
Bryan Corey – 1.93/9.1 – 4.83/30
Craig Hansen – N/A – 5.00/30
Miscellaneous – N/A – 6.00/40
Papelbon is unquestionably one of the elites and should have a great year in 2008. Having been babied in 2007 I would not be stunned to see the Sox use him just a shade more. Okajima and Delcarmen will both be solid relievers with Delcarmen allowing Francona to be a bit more judicious in how he uses Okajima. The innings Okajima pitch will be similar in number but a bit more evenly distributed over the course of the season.
Lopez will reprise his role as LOOGYWIBBAFF (LOOGY Who Issues Bases on Balls Annoying Fragile Freddy). Mike Timlin will continue his attempt to stave off Father Time and he looked good in the Spring. I expect he will pitch well but have some issues with staying healthy.
The rest of the staff will be the usual filler. I think that either David Aardsma or Craig Hansen could prove to be a different maker for this team in 2008 depending on what happens. Kyle Snyder I project to make a few starts to boost his inning total.
Three players not listed who could find themselves with a role are Justin Masterson, David Pauley (Freddy loves his sinker ballers) and Jon Switzer.
When you put this all together you get a ball club allowing 730 runs, a sizable increase over the 657 the team allowed in 2007.
(coming Friday – the Outlook for the Defending World Champion Boston Red Sox)
10 Comments:
At 7:29 AM,
Lenny Harris said…
Great stuff, as usual, Freddy. How do your innings projections for Buchholz and Lester fit in with Verducci's and BP's young pitcher innings-increase models? It seems like you're predicting a big jump for both guys. How do their minor league innings from 2007 factor in?
At 8:42 AM,
Fragile Freddy said…
Buchholz = 147
Lester = 143
Those are their total innings last year combined. There is an understanding (Verducci) that minor league IP do not equal MLB IP so let's discount those by 20% (I don't believe Verducci has identified the true number yet, if he has, please share). That would give us "adjusted" totals of;
Buchholz = 122
Lester = 129
In Buchholz's case the +30 rule puts him at 152 with my projection at 150. Lester's +30 puts him at 159.
This looks like I'm OK on Buchholz, 10% high on Lester. I'd like to say this is how I got to the numbers but I'll admit to just guesstimating the IP totals.
At 11:00 AM,
t-nonymous said…
Why do you think the entire bullpen save Papelbon will be worse this year than last?
At 1:17 PM,
Fragile Freddy said…
To be honest I hadn't picked up on that. Delcarmen and Okajima are working from such low ERAs that it unlikely that they will decrease. From 1997-2006 106 times a pitcher pitched 40 relief innings with an ERA of 2.22 or less, only seven times did they improve the following season (including Rivera doing it twice).
Timlin is getting older and regression, not improvement at 42 years old seems the logical result.
Lopez' career ERA is 5.06, he won't meet the 3.10 he pulled off last year.
Snyder was a run and a half better than his career mark and Corey nearly two runs better. Tavarez is the one who could improve.
I don't expect the 'pen to be bad, in fact I think they will still be one of the best in baseball but they were SO good in 2007 that some regression is in order.
At 3:24 PM,
Anonymous said…
It just occurs to me that you see most of the pitchers, and plenty of the position players, performing worse than they did last year ... I'm thinking it would be hard to defend the title if you ended up being right.
At 3:32 PM,
Fragile Freddy said…
Not sure I would agree with that. On the offensive side I see three ups and three downs with Varitek and Ortiz forecasted to basically stay flat with an overall increase of 3 runs, basically staying where they were.
I agree on the pitchers side of the ledger. I would be curious to know if you feel I am misguided anywhere. The Sox were (Pythagorean-wise anyway) a 101 win team. That is exceptional and it is difficult to maintain that level of excellence.
At 3:38 PM,
Fragile Freddy said…
Edit to the above, I counted Youk as a "down" when in reality he is effectively stable. The only true drops I see are Lowell and Pedroia.
At 7:18 AM,
sugarshane024 said…
If Lopez is a LOOGYWIBBAFF, can Lester be a LHSPWIBBASS (left-handed starting pitcher who issues base on balls annoying Sugar Shane)?
At 9:59 AM,
TM said…
I don't know that I'm smart enough to say that you're wrong. I probably made the mistake of discounting some of your 'ups,' like Lugo, who you said would improve, but not to historic levels or anything. As you know, and as you probably were saying, he doesn't need to have a career year to make the Sox offense better.
If anywhere, I'd say that's where you err. You predict some guys who had great 2007s will regress, and that some guys who were bad will return to their norms, but where are the guys having career years? That happens too. So I wouldn't say your projections are outside the realm of realistic, but they're maybe conservative in that way. Maybe when you think James is being optimistic, he's gambling, saying *someone's* gotta have a career year, might as well guess Ellsbury.
At 10:04 AM,
Fragile Freddy said…
Someone will have a career year, someone will have a lousy year. These are true statements. These are also very difficult to forecast without it being a SWAG.
I also think it is a little less likely with the Sox because of the maturity of the team. For the most part they have pure rookies or veteran players with pretty established levels.
Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA ratings do a nice job of identifying boom and bust years for guys but I think for an accurate projection you use the midpoint.
For example, if I think Youk will have a career year while Drew will fall off the table, I probably get close to the same answer as I would if I project a midpoint year for both players.
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