Pedro’s New Digs
On July 14th, the Philadelphia Phillies officially signed Pedro Martinez to a one year, $1 million contract with bonuses for performance and time on the active roster. He was immediately placed on the disabled list. What kind of performance can Philadelphia expect or hope for from Pedro?
A lot will depend on his health, something we would only be able to speculate upon. What we do know is that 2008 Pedro was much worse off than previous years in several key ways. A pitcher that reliably hit the zone around 55% of the time suddenly dropped to just 50%.
What is worse is that hitters almost began making a very high percentage of contact on the pitches outside the zone, the sorts of pitches Pedro would use to generate strikeouts before were now being put into play. Naturally, that led to a big drop in strikeout rate and an increase in walk rate.
Even with those setbacks, Pedro graded out as just a slightly below average pitcher instead of horrible one that the 5.61 ERA might have suggested. His big problem was the home run. Pedro’s HR/FB jumped to over 15% in 2008, something not likely to repeat itself though pitching in Philadelphia certainly will not help.
If Pedro is fully healthy, he comes with the upside of a very good starting pitcher. If he repeats 2008, he should look like a below average starter. For roughly $2 million (over a full season) that is a pretty good gamble for the Phillies.
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That seems like such a low price it makes me wonder what the hell was going on there. Were all the other GMs asleep?
He wanted 5 million at the start of the season and now halfway in you only pay him about half. 2 million still is a pretty good deal if he performs well.
I really think that the inner circles of baseball consider Pedro to be an ex-steroid user. IN his prime, he was oone of the greatest strikeout pitchers of all time–perhaps even the greatest. His K/9 numbers in the late 90’s and 00 and 01 were flat out ridiculous. Since then his velocity has profressively decreased, and, like many other pitchers from his era, he has experienced arm problems.
Put it this way: either we can believe that Pedro was put up the greatest, most dominant stretch of strikeout performances in the history of the game (including one full season averaging over 13 K/9, something that was never done before him by a longshot and will likely never be done again), or we can believe that he enchanced his performance in some way.
If there were a remote hope that Pedro could be even a middle of the rotation starter at this point, he would have been signed a long time ago. Smoltz got 6 mil and he was coming off surgery and is seven years older than Pedro. I think it is widely suspected among GMs that Pedro’s prime was artificially enhanced, and there is no chance that he will even fainltly resemble the pitcher who dominated baseball at the turn of the century.
Look back at his numbers, if a pitcher like Pedro existed today, he would be so far and away better than anyone else statistically speaking that it would throw up red flags. Sites like fangraphs didn’t exist 10 years ago, so his (suspicious) greatness really slipped under the radar.
Randy Johnson was over 12K/9 every year from 1995 to 2001 and hit 13K/9 once. That was right through the middle of Pedro’s prime; the difference was home and walks allowed.
My assumption was that a little guy throwing that hard blew his shoulder apart and was never the same.
Randy was obviously also on steroids. Cmon, he had his best K years in his late 30’s. If we saw that kind of career arc for a hitter he would be all but convicted in the court of public opinion.
Randy and Pedro. LIke I sort of said before, either we can believe that the two greatest, most efficient strikeout pitchers of ALL TIME existed in our generation and pitched cleanly without cheating in a tainted era, or we can believe that they cheated as well. Before this era, no pitchers even came close to 12+ K/9. Closest was gooded in 84 with 11.4. Not even Koufax or Ryan came close.
Look back at the numbers, you will never see anything like it again in the history of the game. In the late 90’s we had pitcher after pitcher throwing 300 K seasons, if current trends continue (ie pitchers max out at 250 innnings per year) a 300 K season will be the rarest of events. Why did this trend of dominant strikeout pitchers all of the sudden show up during the steroid era? You can rationalize it however you want, but at the very least you have to admit that it is very very suspicious.
Ugh. When a website becomes too popular, no matter how great it is, there will be people like Wrighteous. You make me embarassed to be a Mets fan. Did Mike Francesa put this notion into your head?
Randy was a physical freak. 6′10 with ridiculously long arms throwing side arm to 3/4″ with velocity. Don’t forget that also means big hands with long fingers which can help with movement on his pitches. That’s pretty damn unique and difficult to prepare for. From talking to a guy (SSS) who met Pedro, he said Pedro’s hands were freaky, way too big for his body size with long fingers that curved up at the tips.
For an example of being a freak helping you out, Look at Micheal Phelps, 70% upper body 30% legs. He’s never juiced and he’s the best in the world while taking the opposite of PEDs.
And saying that it was tougher to strike people out in the steroid era may or may not be true (I don’t have the time to look up the rates), but I would go the opposite way. In an era where many are swinging for the fences, I would think common sense dictates more strikeouts. Just look at the hangover we have from the era, where 150+ K batters are common and in some cases more than acceptable.
Sure, strikeouts are up generally speaking, but once again, we saw those dominant (individual) strikeout seasons during the steroid era. We did not see such dominant seasons before the steroid era, we haven’t seen them since, and we will likely never see them again. Draw your own conclusions.
Most of all, I encourage you to go back and look at the numbers. I don’t think people realize how absolutely unprecedented those sseasons were. Lincecum had a tremendous strikeout year last year, but still only averaged around 10.5 K/9. Randy had a 13.4 K/9 year during a season in which he threw over 250 innings. Absurd! A new, undefinable level of greatness, after his 35th birthday! Didn’t happen before steroids, hasn’t happend since, won’t happen again.
If people followed statistics as rigourously then as they do now, I think we might have been more suspicious of such an outstanding year.
300*
Ok, fine, strikeouts are up generally speaking in this era. And it’s true, strikeouts are even up since Randy J and Pedro had those great years. So, why haven’t other players had those same kind of great K years? Why has it not even remotely come close to happening since?
Pitchers throwing less innings aught to be able to put more energy into each inning that they do pitch. The top reliever K rates are higher than starters every year, and this shows up when people switch roles too. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that a guy throwing 220 or 240 innings will be less tired than a guy throwing 300 or 350.
You’ve also got the fact that batters are more willing to swing hard with two strikes and take the strikeout for the chance at the home run. Babe Ruth led the league in strikeouts 5 times but his career high was 93. There are 8 guys with more than 93 already this season. While specialist relievers do give the league’s pitchers as a group an edge they didn’t have before, it’s pretty clear that hitters now are more willing to strike out than they were in the past.
Anyway, not all career trajectories are the same. Hank Aaron’s best offensive season came at 37. Tony Gwynn’s best stretch was age 34-37. Nolan Ryan’s three best strikeout rate years were age 40, 42, and 44. Roids?
Thank you for bringing up two other prime examples of ex-juicers, TOny Gwynn and Nolan Ryan.
Also, it is very true what you say about pitchers being able to put up better K numbers over fewer innings. However, Randy put up his PHENOMENAL K seasons, seasons with absurd K/9 rates, while still pitching 250+ innings.
Also, like I’ve been saying, players are striking out more on average this year than they did in 2001 when Randy struck out batters at a 13.4 rate per nine. Do we have any pitchers even remotely close to 13.4 K/9 currently, even though batters are striking out more? Who has the best K/9 rating among pitchers older than 35?
To answer my own questions, no one is even close to 13.4 K/9, the closest is Verlander who is 10.96. Also, the leader among pitchers older than 35 is (ta da!) Randy Johnson with 7.85. Perhaps he’s still injecting every now and again?
Everybody juices according to Wrighteous.
LMFAO at Tony Gwynn: the only things Gwynn injected were double cheeseburgers.
MPC – there are many other reasons why you should be embarrassed to be a Mets fan.
Philly-
Because being a Philadelphia sports fan isn’t embarrassing? When the Phillies don’t luck their way into a WS win this year, you’ll throw away all your Phillies gear and wear Eagles stuff year-round like the rest of the losers in that city.
Strikeouts are also way in the last 20 years than they ever were in other eras of baseball, and it has to do with the style of play quite a bit.
Randy Johnson also had bigtime control issues when he was younger, and when he was older and started to control his pitches better, he started to dominate.
As far as Pedro, how is his not a normal career arc? Best seasons from age 26-33, arm was pretty clearly not the same by 34-35.
believe whatever you want, the truth is out there
“the truth is out there”
What is this the X-Files?
That explains the tinfoil hat.
It is a legitimate contention, MPC. Although we all wish we could wipe the PED issue from our consciousness, the players who used should be blamed for putting it there. Direct your scorn at them.
At this point whenever a player’s performance is so transcendent as to be historical in nature, as a grown-up you have to allow for the possibility that it was helped along by artificial aid. The wider circumstances (pervasive use of PEDs in MLB) surrounding the performances of Pedro and Johnson at the very least make those performances suspicious, which was Wrighteous’s main point. This is not to say that every outstanding season must draw scrutiny and suspicion from fans and the public; however, when considering a stretch of several seasons with performances at such an exceedingly high level that they become historic, taking place when they did, the possibility of PED use certainly cannot be ruled out. Call it Okham’s Razor or some similar principle, but this type of suspicion – and this explanation for performances such as theirs – is undoubtedly rational.
PED use has been around since the 60’s & 70’s according to Tom House, and a few anecdotes in “Ball Four”
Greenies and Orangies were around how early?
I really don’t care if a guy juiced. As Raf and Bmore noted, there have been drugs in baseball for a loooooong time. There is no “PED issue.” The media and Bug Selig have made it an issue.
I can’t believe someone just claimed Tony Gywnn was a juicer. I mean, have you SEEN Tony Gywnn?
http://obscuresportsquarterly.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/gwynn.jpg
ok, so i was kidding a bit about gwynn. i do stand by what i say about pedro and randy. can anyone honestly look at some of the numbers pedro and randy put up during the prime steroid era years and not be at least a little suspicious, given how unusual those performances were?
like i keep saying: never happened before, hasnt happened since. we have a right to at least question these performances.
If someone does something that never happened before, and hasn’t happened since, that makes it immediately questionable and illegitimate?
Logic is your friend.
in this case, their performances are such extreme outliers that they do warrant suspicion, see previous posts. that one sentence was in sum of a much larger argument. thank you for being opportunistic and taking it way out of context.
Wrighteous, have you seen Pedro’s body? How could a scrawny little guy like that have been doing steroids? This is what I hate most about the whole steroids thing – that anybody who has had an exceptional year (or years) is assumed to be guilty of juicing. Why can’t there be players who are just a cut above the rest? Bob Gibson had an unheard of 1.12 ERA in 1968, with a 22-9 record, 13 shutouts, 0.85 WHIP, 268 Ks and 304.2 IP. Was he on steroids?
within the context of his own era, gibson’s performance actually does not stand out as much as randy and pedro’s do. also, he put up career lows in babip (.240 in 1968 compared to a career average .278) and a career high in lob% (86.7 compared to a career average of 75.7—a very considerable jump), indicating that the unusual nature of his low era can to some extent be explained by luck. gibson’s raw numbers, generally speaking, are also pretty consisnent throughout his career and he had what seems to be a very reasonable career arc.
the body-size argument is ridiculous, just look at the laundry list of players who have tested positive since 2003. the first player ever to test positive was ray’s middle infielder alex sanchez, hardly a monster at 5′10 179. the first pitcher to test positive was ryan franklin, who is a little bigger at 6′3 190, but still is not huge.
gotta disagree with you about pedro. just because a tremendous season has never happened before doesn’t automatically make it suspicious. babe ruth was hitting more homers than entire teams in the 1920’s (had never happened before or since..) but nobody is going to suggest he was using roids. pedro was a unique pitcher because his changeup and curve were both tremendous pitches (one wouldn’t ordinarily attribute such skills to juicing). i think pedro was just a perfect storm of pitching talent.
ur wrong