Great article Matt! It is heartening for me as a Royals fan to see some positive spin on the KC side for the big trade (although I do understand all the negativity about it). I hope for further positivity’s sake that more fans come to realize that even if Myers were to blossom into a Trout-esque 10.0 WAR hitter, it would not overcome the deficiencies of the pitching staff.
When you first started posting about the drop off that pitchers see in their fourth year, the first pitcher that came to mind was Haren. For your three year samples, Haren ended up pitching 5 of them, (2005-2007, 2006-2008, 2007-2009, 2008-2010, 2009-2011) and at the end of four of them, he managed to pitch more innings than he did at the beginning of them (though only 2008-2010 saw more than a 9 IP increase). His last streak of a three year sample of 200+ IP had an average of ~234.1 IP and in 2012 he pitched 75.5% of that, falling off a little more than the 80% average.
So now my question is this: After a dip in IP (for whatever reasons) how many pitchers go back to pitching 200+ innings? Or perhaps, how many of them can at least continue to maintain at that 80% as a minimum for the next three years and how has it effected their performance in regards to FIP-/+/xFIP-/+?
It’s a great article Matt, but there’s just so many questions left unanswered.
Two questions, one for clarfication, one for curiosity.
-Exactly how is the age determined? Is the year listed in the chart the age that the pitcher started the 4th season, or the age when they ended the season?
-Would you see a more significant decline if you took out knuckleballers?
It looks like the age of the pitcher when they started their 4th year after a 3 year run of 200+ IP, the number of pitchers that meet that criteria, and the percentage of IP during that 4th year.
Nice article – I wonder if it would be valuable to look at the 4th and 5th years (instead of just the 4th year) or even the 3 years after the three 200 inning seasons.
If you are looking to sign (or trade for) a workhorse, the team is probably looking at the next 2-3 years (or more) of production.
Agree strongly. There are so many things that can throw off a single season, and besides that, usually when we’re looking hard at performance over multiple previous seasons, it’s because a multi-year contract is contemplated. So knowing how pitchers with x number of innings over a three-year period performed over the following three-year period might be more useful than knowing how they did in just the one following year.
“even if Myers were to blossom into a Trout-esque 10.0 WAR hitter, it would not overcome the deficiencies of the pitching staff.”
…neither will Shields, really, and there lies the problem…
Signing Sanchez would have eliminated the need to do the trade, the Santana trade is merely going to give KC another Hoch-like pitcher (ES probably has the ugliest home/road splits in baseball because of Anaheim) and Guthrie is a recently unwanted, average-at-best pitcher moving further down the wrong-side-of-30 path. After that the rotation is a grab-bag of 2012 problems and a questionable experiment.
2013 is going to be quite disappointing to many people who are falling for the same “but he’s a big name” obsession Moore lives by – but hey, all it cost was 66.6 Million in salary commitments, 3 top prospects (one tarnished) another talented young hitter and a possible fair bullpen arm to build…
“Signing Sanchez would have eliminated the need to do the trade,”
There lies a an even bigger problem…
KC had to get an upper-shelf pitcher through a trade because of the vicious-cycle bias against Kansas City and any other Midwestern, small market team trying to shed a culture of losing. Zack Greinke left because he was “tired of losing”, and it is quite unlikely that he would have came back. KC was probably not on Anibal Sanchez’ radar either. As for Santana, sometimes it’s not a bad idea to secure a player in his contract year.
It definitely hurt to give up Myers, and there will likely be some hard feelings if Myers goes on to be an All-Star. But there are no guarantees for anyone when it comes to trades. I still remember some writers talking about what a brilliant, win-win swap the Delino DeShields-for-Pedro Martinez trade was.
KCDaveInLA says:
December 14, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Great article Matt! It is heartening for me as a Royals fan to see some positive spin on the KC side for the big trade (although I do understand all the negativity about it). I hope for further positivity’s sake that more fans come to realize that even if Myers were to blossom into a Trout-esque 10.0 WAR hitter, it would not overcome the deficiencies of the pitching staff.
Stuck in a slump says:
December 14, 2012 at 2:28 pm
When you first started posting about the drop off that pitchers see in their fourth year, the first pitcher that came to mind was Haren. For your three year samples, Haren ended up pitching 5 of them, (2005-2007, 2006-2008, 2007-2009, 2008-2010, 2009-2011) and at the end of four of them, he managed to pitch more innings than he did at the beginning of them (though only 2008-2010 saw more than a 9 IP increase). His last streak of a three year sample of 200+ IP had an average of ~234.1 IP and in 2012 he pitched 75.5% of that, falling off a little more than the 80% average.
So now my question is this: After a dip in IP (for whatever reasons) how many pitchers go back to pitching 200+ innings? Or perhaps, how many of them can at least continue to maintain at that 80% as a minimum for the next three years and how has it effected their performance in regards to FIP-/+/xFIP-/+?
It’s a great article Matt, but there’s just so many questions left unanswered.
murphym45 says:
December 14, 2012 at 3:47 pm
Two questions, one for clarfication, one for curiosity.
-Exactly how is the age determined? Is the year listed in the chart the age that the pitcher started the 4th season, or the age when they ended the season?
-Would you see a more significant decline if you took out knuckleballers?
Jaker says:
December 14, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Can you explain your chart better? It reads poorly.
Big Daddy V says:
December 14, 2012 at 4:22 pm
I would assume the age comes from Baseball-Reference, which I believe is based on the player’s age on July 1.
Stuck in a slump says:
December 14, 2012 at 5:15 pm
It looks like the age of the pitcher when they started their 4th year after a 3 year run of 200+ IP, the number of pitchers that meet that criteria, and the percentage of IP during that 4th year.
Tom says:
December 14, 2012 at 6:43 pm
Nice article – I wonder if it would be valuable to look at the 4th and 5th years (instead of just the 4th year) or even the 3 years after the three 200 inning seasons.
If you are looking to sign (or trade for) a workhorse, the team is probably looking at the next 2-3 years (or more) of production.
savin hillbilly says:
December 15, 2012 at 12:13 am
Agree strongly. There are so many things that can throw off a single season, and besides that, usually when we’re looking hard at performance over multiple previous seasons, it’s because a multi-year contract is contemplated. So knowing how pitchers with x number of innings over a three-year period performed over the following three-year period might be more useful than knowing how they did in just the one following year.
blahblahblah says:
December 15, 2012 at 12:52 am
“even if Myers were to blossom into a Trout-esque 10.0 WAR hitter, it would not overcome the deficiencies of the pitching staff.”
…neither will Shields, really, and there lies the problem…
Signing Sanchez would have eliminated the need to do the trade, the Santana trade is merely going to give KC another Hoch-like pitcher (ES probably has the ugliest home/road splits in baseball because of Anaheim) and Guthrie is a recently unwanted, average-at-best pitcher moving further down the wrong-side-of-30 path. After that the rotation is a grab-bag of 2012 problems and a questionable experiment.
2013 is going to be quite disappointing to many people who are falling for the same “but he’s a big name” obsession Moore lives by – but hey, all it cost was 66.6 Million in salary commitments, 3 top prospects (one tarnished) another talented young hitter and a possible fair bullpen arm to build…
iallm says:
December 15, 2012 at 7:21 am
I would suspect these numbers would be the same if you did 150 innings, or 100 innings.
MikeS says:
December 15, 2012 at 4:04 pm
Six whole seasons in a row? Shields is half way to Mark Buehrle.
Not sure how this article gets written without mentioning him. 12 seasons in a row of 200+ IP is pretty amazing in this century.
Cidron says:
December 15, 2012 at 6:01 pm
Shields > Hochevar
Chen = Chen
Guthrie > Sanchez
Santana > Mendoza
W.Davis > starting pitcher number five
Thats your improvement. Shields is better than Hoch.. (as well as down the rotation).
KCDaveInLA says:
December 19, 2012 at 2:39 pm
“Signing Sanchez would have eliminated the need to do the trade,”
There lies a an even bigger problem…
KC had to get an upper-shelf pitcher through a trade because of the vicious-cycle bias against Kansas City and any other Midwestern, small market team trying to shed a culture of losing. Zack Greinke left because he was “tired of losing”, and it is quite unlikely that he would have came back. KC was probably not on Anibal Sanchez’ radar either. As for Santana, sometimes it’s not a bad idea to secure a player in his contract year.
It definitely hurt to give up Myers, and there will likely be some hard feelings if Myers goes on to be an All-Star. But there are no guarantees for anyone when it comes to trades. I still remember some writers talking about what a brilliant, win-win swap the Delino DeShields-for-Pedro Martinez trade was.