2007 Preview Part 3

The four pitchers at the top of our rotation must not get hurt.

This is the second third part of a running season preview in which I look at things that I think have to happen in order for the Pirates to be a decent baseball team in 2007 and decide how likely I think they are to happen. Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 here.

I really like the Stats Geek's characterization of the top of the Pirates rotation as a "Jeff Suppan by committee" rotation. You don't necessarily need a defined ace, #2 guy, #3 guy, etc. if you have a bunch of guys that don't suck (Cory did a nice break down based on Jeff Sackmann's work here, with Sackmann's original article here). Among Duke, Snell, Gorzelanny, and Maholm there might not be one stand out ace, but there also isn't a Shawn Chacon. If the four of them can stay healthy, they're going to result in a very good top four of the rotation. Of course, health is the major question.

It's pretty hard to predict when or how a pitcher is going to break down, so I did a rather rudimentary study of Duke, Maholm, and Snell based on their Baseball Reference most comparable players through their current age. This is certainly not a perfect way of doing things because the BR comps are based on major league numbers and don't take minor league numbers (like the one I'm interested in at the moment, innings pitched) into account. BP 2007 hasn't shipped yet and I won't have the PECOTA comps to look at until it does, so I may revisit this post then if I see something alarmingly different. Still, this at least paints some kind of a picture to give us an idea of what we might be able to look for. Here's the data for Duke:

	23	24	Diff
Jackson	208	185.67	-22.33
Hendly	200	169.33	-30.67
Ruffin	204.67	144.33	-60.34
Antonelli	175.33	258.67	83.34
Castillo	205.33	141.33	-64
LaCoss	205.67	169.33	-36.34
Nichols	122.33	144	21.67
Shirley	214	166	-48
Aase	178.67	185.33	6.66
AVERAGE	190.444	173.777	-16.6678
Duke	215.33

I simply compared innings pitched in their 23 year old season (2006 for Duke), vs. their 24 year old season (2007 for Duke). I double checked Baseball Cube for minor league numbers in either of the years. If they pitched before the Cube's minor league stats and I had doubts about the numbers, I threw them out to be safe (Pat Combs) It's not perfect because in this list alone, Hendly, Ruffin, and Shirley all got shipped to the pen in their 24 year old seasons and I don't have the minor league data for Combs because he played before Baseball Cube's records minor league data (which I double checked with BR to ensure I got all their minor league innings). Still, it's not incredibly encouraging that Duke's comparable pitchers average a 16 and 2/3 inning drop in their 24 year-old year, especially when Duke pitched more innings as a 23 year old than anyone on the list.

Maholm and Snell are much tougher because they've got a smaller big league sample to study, still I'll post the tables for you to look at.

Maholm:

	24	25	Diff
Richert	190.67	194	3.33
Brissie	194	229.33	35.33
Hammaker	180.33	172.33	-8
Pulsipher	158.67	114.67	-44
Leibrandt	199	107.67	-91.33
Dayley	195.67	182.33	-13.34
Wilson	176.33	202	25.67
Jones	81	64	-17
AVERAGE	171.9588	158.2913	-13.6675
Maholm	176

And Snell:

	24	25	Diff
Hallady	176	239.33	63.33
Schmidt	187.67	214.33	26.66
Thomson	170	84.67	-85.33
Benes	191	161.67	-29.33
Davis	168.33	136	-32.33
Hitchcock	168.33	196.67	28.34
Higbe	210	283	73
Banks	171.33	138.33	-33
AVERAGE	180.3325	181.75	1.4175
Snell	186

Clearly Snell's table is the most favorable, and not only because his top two comps are Roy Halladay and Jason Schmidt. As I've said, I'm not sure these two are as meaningful because they've pitched 60 (Snell) and 83 (Maholm) innings in the bigs less than Duke to this point, but it's just something to think about.

Gorzelanny is entirely different because he's hardly pitched in the bigs at all. If the Pirates try to keep him within 20% of his inning count from last year he should throw around 193 and 2/3 innings in Pittsburgh, but he's got a much more extensive baseball-related injury history than the other three.

Anyways, from looking at this I'm definitely most worried about Duke. He threw a ton of innings last year and his comps seem to suffer the most, though some of that may be related to several of his comps being demoted to the pen (it's impossible to know if that kind of thing is injury related when combing back through things). I know it sounds incredibly cynical, but I think it's going to be almost impossible to go through this entire season with all four of these guys in the rotation the majority of the time and I'll be surprised if they made it through the season without a major injury among them. If this is what happens, then we're in a similar situation as last year, with two guys that define "#5 starter" or worse filling both the four and five slots in the rotation for the better part of the season and that's not good.