Five Numbers: Ubaldo Jimenez's Effectiveness, Baltimore's Complete And Thorough Tailspin, And More

By Jeff Sullivan - MLB Editor

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Jun 4, 2010 - Read. Reading is good for you.

1)      14.8%

Oh, those Diamondbacks. Those poor, unfortunate Diamondbacks.

You'll recall that it wasn't supposed to be like this. The Diamondbacks, powered by the return of Brandon Webb, were supposed to compete. Maybe not win the division, but certainly contend, and contend for a while. Instead, as of this writing, they've lost ten in a row, dropping deep into last place in a division with four other teams vying for the title. The Diamondbacks' misery doesn't even have company. They're just alone in the basement, disappointed and humiliated.  

It's hard to identify much that's gone right. Webb, of course, hasn't returned, and seems still a ways off. I suppose the defense has been good, but the offense has been only okay in a hitter-friendly environment, and Justin Upton hasn't gotten it going. Despite surprising standout performances turned in by Ian Kennedy and Rodrigo Lopez, the rotation has disappointed. And the bullpen has been a laughable gascan, with the worst ERA in the league by 134 points. Arizona's bullpen ERA of 7.52 is a full 22% higher than the next-worst of 6.18, in Milwaukee, and it's a full 169% higher than the league's best bullpen in Detroit.

In short, it's been the pitching. Despite the defense, the Diamondbacks have allowed the most runs in baseball by a pretty big margin. What gives?

The first thing to notice is that the Diamondbacks' peripherals haven't actually been that bad. They've posted a league-average strikeout rate. They've posted a league-average walk rate. They've given up a lot of fly balls, but nothing extraordinary. It seems like the Diamondbacks' pitching staff should be fine. But then you look over a few columns and see that they've allowed 22 more home runs than any other team in baseball. 22 more. And the team is running a Home Run/Fly Ball rate of 14.8%, against a median of 9.6%.

This team has been serving it up. The HR/FB of the rotation: 13.9%. The HR/FB of the bullpen: 16.6%. Nobody - nobody - has been able to keep the ball in the park.

Allowing a home run, naturally, is the worst thing a pitcher can do, and these pitchers have been doing it a lot. The next-worst HR/FB in baseball is Pittsburgh's 11.0%. Arizona has been outlandishly bad at keeping the ball in play, and that's by far the biggest reason they are where they are.

The good news is that HR/FB is one of those statistics that tends to regress pretty heavily towards the average. 14.8% is completely unsustainable. Even though the Diamondbacks play in a homer-happy ballpark, their HR/FB was only 10.3% a year ago, 9.9% the year before, and 10.3% the year before that. Dan Haren has no track record of struggling like this. Edwin Jackson has no track record of struggling like this. Juan Gutierrez, after allowing just two home runs in 71 innings a year ago, has allowed an unfathomable ten in just 18.1 innings in 2010. And so on. This pitching staff's ability to prevent home runs has been well below expectations, and there's every reason to believe that things will get better going forward.

The problem is, what's done is done. There's no undoing what's already taken place. And with Arizona sitting at 20-34 and 12.5 out of first place, all the regression in the world won't lift them back up. A HR/FB rate of 14.8% may be a statistical misfortune, but it's a misfortune that went and knocked a team out of the race.

2)      1.6%

Well, we're already talking about HR/FB rates, so I might as well point out another. Everybody, by now, is well aware of what Ubaldo Jimenez has been doing with Colorado. Through 11 starts, he has an ERA of 0.78. That ERA has actually gone down for three starts in a row, as he's thrown 26.1 consecutive scoreless innings. Ubaldo Jimenez has been on another level, and he's captured the nation's attention.

But let's look beneath the surface, shall we?

Stat	2009	2010
K%	22%	23%
BB%	8.7%	8.7%
GB%	53%	55%
HR/FB%	7.8%	1.6%

Let's make one thing clear: Ubaldo Jimenez is very good. He's very, very good. Ubaldo Jimenez throws a 98mph fastball and mixes in three quality offspeed pitches for good measure. If I were starting a franchise from scratch, and I had to choose one starting pitcher around which to build my rotation, Jimenez would certainly be under consideration.

But for as good as he is, he's not really pitching any differently than he did in 2009, when his ERA was 3.47. He's throwing the same amount of strikes. He's missing the same amount of bats. He's generating just about the same amount of groundballs. He's just done a better job of avoiding the home run, and he's clamped down with runners in scoring position, allowing an average of .135 in those situations, versus .191 with the bases empty.

It's pointless to mention that a guy with an ERA of 0.78 is pitching over his head. Of course he's pitching over his head. Sustaining an ERA of 0.78 would make a pitcher the best athlete in the history of sports. But it's worth pointing out just how far over his head Ubaldo has been. Nothing in hits numbers suggests that he's really picked it up. At least, nothing really sustainable.

Ubaldo has always thrown the same stuff. He's always had the fastball. He's always had the changeup, and the curve, and the slider. And with those same four pitches, he's allowed a HR/FB of 7.8% over his career. In 2010, he's allowed one home run. What seems better reflective of his true ability?

We've seen Ubaldo Jimenez throw some very good pitches through his first 11 starts. There's no reason to believe those very good pitches are going to become less frequent. However, there's good reason to believe some of those very good pitches are going to be hit, and hit harder. Ubaldo's great, but he's not the best pitcher in baseball.

3)      0.6

Rule of thumb: Pitchers age. Jamie Moyer doesn't.

Jamie Moyer is 47 years old. 2010 is his 24^th season in the Major Leagues. After an offseason with multiple surgeries, he has made all of his starts. He started 25 games a year ago. He started 33 games in 2008, and 33 games in 2007. Jamie Moyer keeps going.

And Jamie Moyer remains effective. Maybe not quite as effective as he used to be, but still effective enough to stick in a contender's rotation. Sure, he allows his contact and he allows his home runs, but it's amazing how far you can get when you limit your walks. Don't put anyone on base for free, and you can limit the damage when a ball gets hit hard.

It would be a hell of a story if Moyer used to be a flamethrower who had to adjust to getting by with guile and finesse as age took a toll on his arm. It would be a story of innovation, of creativity and improvisation, a story recounted to 40 year old men on their birthdays as they express concern that they're past their prime.

A better story, though, is that Moyer's been the same guy all along. He's been the same slop-throwing wisp of a man since the day he arrived, and the league's never figured him out. They say he used to throw 83-85mph in college. That guy was a sixth-round draft pick. And thanks to Fangraphs, which keeps track of pitch velocity, we can say that, since 2003 - a span of seven years - Jamie Moyer's average fastball has lost just 0.6mph. 0.6. From 81.7 to 81.1. For all intents and purposes, nothing has changed.

Even Tim Wakefield has lost nearly 3mph since 2003. Tim Wakefield, the aged knuckleballer who never puts strain on his arm. Moyer actually pitches with some force, and his body, rather remarkably, takes it with ease.

It's this sort of thing that, when people say "Jamie Moyer could pitch forever," makes you stop and think "well, maybe." As long as the stuff sticks around, and Jamie still has a desire to pitch, why not? What's stopping him? His repertoire over the last four years has literally not changed at all, and he's managed a K/BB of 2.2 and an ERA of 4.51 in a hitter-friendly ballpark. He's pitched like a fine, durable #3 or #4 starter. And durable #3/#4 starters are valuable guys to have.

Raul Ibanez has been proving career-decline pieces wrong for five or six years. Jamie Moyer has been proving them wrong for 20. He's not the most electrifying pitcher to observe, but you should take a little time out of your day to watch him go to work, because he's among the more unique and incredible players the sports world has ever seen.

4)      $150.5m

The Boston Red Sox currently have three players under contract through 2014. One of them is standout second baseman Dustin Pedroia, who continues to provide good offense, good glovework, and outstanding quotability from the middle infield.

The other two are John Lackey and Josh Beckett. And these two are worthy of a bit more concern.

The Red Sox signed Lackey to a five year, $82.5m contract last December. Then, in April, they signed Beckett to a four year, $68m extension, beginning in 2011. The combined value of those contracts is $150.5m. The combined numbers of those two starters on the year, to date:

113 innings, 78 runs, 14 homers, 51 walks, 79 strikeouts. And Beckett, for good measure, has landed on the disabled list with back problems.

Everybody's always known that long-term contracts to pitchers are a risky gamble. Pitchers are the most volatile asset in baseball, as a guy can get bad overnight, or get hurt on one pitch. Ordinarily, though, when you give a long-term contract to a pitcher, you're at least counting on him to be good for a while. Lackey's struggled from the beginning, and Beckett's had trouble before his shiny new extension has even begun.

The Red Sox are playing good baseball, but if you're looking for a reason why they're sitting in third place, look no further than the rotation, where they haven't gotten what they expected from some big money guys. Lackey's repertoire remains intact, as he hasn't changed his pitch mix or lost any velocity since last season, but he hasn't thrown as many strikes, and his contact rate has skyrocketed to 86% from a career mark of 80%. He's become both less accurate and more hittable, which is a bad sign for a guy who never had the world's best stuff.

And though Beckett's still been able to punch batters out, his command has suffered, as his rate of pitches in the strike zone has dropped from 52% to 47%, and his walk rate has climbed from 6.1% to 8.5%. Beckett hasn't pitched as poorly as his 7.29 ERA, and one must certainly wonder whether he came out of camp feeling physically fresh, but despite the bad luck and back trouble, he's pitched below his own established standard. Josh Beckett hasn't been Josh Beckett.

Theo Epstein and the Red Sox do a lot of things right. They're one of the smartest, most successful organizations in baseball, and there's little reason to think they'll ever end up rebuilding. With Lackey and Beckett, though, they took some big risks, and in 2010's early going, what they've received are some borderline worst-case scenarios.

Will Lackey improve? Probably. Will Beckett improve? Probably. Will they improve enough to be worth the money they'll get? Given what we've seen, it's fair for us to doubt it. Though the Sox are a big budget team that can absorb some inflated salary figures, they have to be worried that a couple expensive starting pitchers might end up doing more harm than good.

5)      1.3

No one was crazy enough to predict the Baltimore Orioles to hang in the race in the NL East. That would've been too outlandish to believe. So while the O's are an excruciatingly bad 15-39 and just fired their manager, their actual record doesn't mean much, as they were to be an also-ran from the start.

But while everyone understood that the Orioles were staring at another fourth- or fifth-place finish, they were at least kind enough to mention that the O's had the makings of a solid young foundation. Even leaving aside the talent on the mound, since pitchers are unpredictable, Baltimore's regular lineup was still set to feature the likes of Adam Jones, Matt Wieters, Nick Markakis, and Nolan Reimold on a daily basis. With a combined age of 100, that foursome was tabbed as the foursome that would lead the O's into better days ahead.

Unfortunately, even they haven't done anything.

Fangraphs keeps track of a statistic called WAR - Wins Above Replacement. It calculates a player's offensive contribution, defensive contribution, and playing time, adjusts for position, and puts it all together in a neat, singular little stat that shows how many wins a guy contributed above the level you could get from some random AAA call-up (known as Replacement Level). It's not a perfect stat, as there are some questions about the methodology, but it's at least a serviceable approximation, and it gives a great idea of who has and has not been a valuable player.

Jones, Markakis, Wieters, and Reimold have combined for a WAR of 1.3. Through two months, those four have been worth a total of 1.3 more wins than four half-decent AAA call-ups. For reference, David DeJesus has been worth 1.4 WAR on his own.

I suppose maybe I should leave Markakis out of this. Nick Markakis, at least, has hit .300 with an OBP of .397. But his power is missing and he's not a standout player in the field, so he's producing at a level well below where he was in 2008. Markakis hasn't yet taken it to the next level.

And then you have the other three. The other three, with a combined batting average of .238. Reimold's OPS is .639. Jones' OPS is .658. Wieters' OPS is .652. A year ago, those marks were .831, .792, and .753, respectively. They've all taken a massive tumble, to the point at which Reimold was optioned back to AAA.

It just has to be such a colossal disappointment. When you're rooting for a bad team, the only thing - the only thing - that makes it bearable is seeing young players develop. Baltimore's young players have taken a step back, almost to a man. Markakis isn't hitting for power. Reimold wasn't hitting for power. Jones has power, but he's been swinging at everything. And though Wieters is a catcher, and catchers need a little more time to develop at the plate, he hasn't matched the hype quite like Jason Heyward has. Wieters remains a work in progress.

The good news for Baltimore is that they do still have these four players, and these four players still possess all the same talent that made them look so appealing a few months ago. Beyond that, they have guys like Brian Matusz and Chris Tillman on the mound, and Josh Bell has made it into AAA. Hope remains. Seasons, though, don't get much more unwatchable than the season they've had to date, and the disappointing youth is a big, big reason why.  

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