Cards starters aren’t having off year
Post-Dispatch writer Rick Hummel wrote recently that the Cards starters are having an off year. His argument seems to rest on the rotation’s win totals, which is always an argument “smell,” of course. But he quotes pitching coach Dave Duncan making a similar, if more general observation: “I thought the performance of our rotation would be better than it’s been.” So have the Cardinal starters somehow not lived up to expectations?
First, their to-date numbers (as starters):
| Name | GS | IP | ERA | FIP |
| Chris Carpenter | 27 | 186 1/3 | 3.57 | 3.05 |
| Jaime Garcia | 26 | 159 | 3.45 | 3.22 |
| Kyle Lohse | 25 | 157 | 3.73 | 3.96 |
| Jake Westbrook | 26 | 149 1/3 | 4.70 | 4.32 |
| Kyle McClellan | 17 | 104 2/3 | 4.21 | 4.53 |
And if we revisit the preseason FIP projections for this group, who, with the exception of McClellan, has been the rotation the entire season, we see how well they actually fared relative to their average FIP projections:
| Name | RC | BJ | M | Z | F | Avg | Actual | How fared? |
| Carpenter | 3.48 | 3.27 | 3.50 | 3.44 | 3.59 | 3.46 | 3.05 | much better |
| Garcia | 3.44 | 3.87 | 3.56 | 3.61 | 3.92 | 3.68 | 3.22 | much better |
| Lohse | 4.36 | 4.36 | 4.14 | 4.20 | 4.36 | 4.28 | 3.96 | better |
| Westbrook | 4.23 | 4.15 | 4.14 | 4.13 | 4.14 | 4.16 | 4.32 | slightly worse |
| McClellan | 4.09 | 3.80 | 3.96 | 4.21 | 4.05 | 4.02 | 4.53 | much worse |
RC: RotoChamp
BJ: Bill James
M: Marcel
Z: ZiPS
F: Fans
The team’s top three starters — those with the most games started and innings — all have done better than expected. The last two, one of whom lost his spot in the rotation, have fared worse.
The Commish is right on a good many things, but on this one, he was led astray by reliance on a bad stat. The Cardinal starters haven’t had an off year: They’ve been no worse and, if anything, on the whole slightly better than anyone expected.
August 30th, 2011 at 9:28 pm
I don’t have a problem with the conclusions drawn on Lohse, Westbrook, and McClellan. Arguably, Lohse has put up (much) better numbers than most rational people would have expected (and the data suggests that) while Westbrook and McClellan have been (or were) disappointments as starters this season.
My problem is the conclusions drawn on Carpenter and Garcia. Objectively, for those two guys, I think the actual answer is a actually little of both…..those two guys have simultaneously exceeded and fallen short of expectations. You explain fairly well with supporting data how they’ve been “better than expected,” but I’d argue that potentially those expectations were a little too high and both Carp and Garcia are feeling the pain of finally getting a little less lucky and (at least in the case of Carpenter) finally feeling the effect of age-related decline that has been primarily dormant until this year. To put it more succinctly, they may be matching or exceeding performance expectations, but they’ve fallen short of results expectations, and I think that’s what Rick Hummel, Dave Duncan, et al are basing their opinions on, and let’s be real, in the game of baseball, people are far more worried about the end result than how you got there.
From a “results” standpoint, Carpenter has pitched much worse than expectations. Since 2004, when healthy, he’s pretty much been an All-Star and/or Cy Young contender and people have been accustomed to a high level of success from him. He showed minor signs of decline last year, but even this year at age 36 I don’t think many people were looking for him to slip to being a sub-.500 pitcher with an ERA in the mid to high 3s and not be considered a top 20 or 30 pitcher, much less a top 10 as he’s been the past 5-6 years (when healthy). It’s an alarming rate of decline and worrisome if the Cardinals pick up his option for next year and expect him to still be the “Carpenter of old” but that’s another story.
For Garcia, it’s much more dicey because we have such a small sample size of performance with only one full season on the books. He was obviously very lucky last year in having an actual ERA much lower than his FIPS, but those were the “results” and not his “performance.” His results have more closely tracked his performance this year, but you have to admit when your ERA jumps a full run from one year to the next, especially by a young pitcher that should be improving, that’s going to be perceived as a disappointment, no matter what the behind-the-scenes stats were/are telling us.
That’s my take. Good post overall; I just thought I’d add some additional perception on Carpenter and Garcia, though.