With the way that Brad Penny is pitching — surrendering seven runs in five innings Monday as his ERA ballooned to 7.98 — it may seem that the surging Jaime Garcia is trying not for the fifth spot in the rotation, but the fourth. But Penny assured observers that it’s all part of "getting your work in" and though he has had "some really bad springs before," when the season starts, "it’s a different game." Should we take him at his word?

Let’s go back to the spring of 2007, just before the best campaign of the righthander’s career, in which he posted 4.3 WAR, seventh in the league. Penny struggled with shoulder stiffness in the Dodgers’ camp, and in his second-to-last start that spring, he needed 80 pitches to get through four innings (five walks will do that), though he couldn’t "remember feeling better." Stats-wise, he wasn’t much improved in his final tuneup, striking out one and walking one in five innings. As Penny closed out spring training with the Dodgers, what was his ERA? Believe it or not, it was even worse than it stands now: 8.44. Yet, in the regular season, he would go on to put up a 3.63 FIP and face a career-high 865 batters (208 innings).

So maybe Penny knows what he’s talking about. So if the pitcher himself and Dave Duncan aren’t concerned, neither are we.

This entry was posted by Pip on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.