Kazmir, Francis and Helton
At least a couple of readers have recently asked about my Scott Kazmir projection, saying it goes against even his three year averages for an apparently improving pitcher. Kazmir is projected to go 9-12 with a 4.18 ERA in 31 starts. In 182 innings, we're projecting him to allow 179 hits, 77 walks and strike out 175.
The key to understanding the forecast is realizing that the 2006 season on its own doesn't necessarily represent Kazmir's current ability and if you look at our hits allowed projected, home runs allowed and walk rates, you'll see that they fall somewhere between 2005 and 2006 with the latter getting more weight, as it often should.
Three key factors are drawing the ERA into plus 4.00 territory. First, he should be allowing more earned runs even if he could repeat last year's performance. That is, the combination of hits allowed, walks allowed and home runs allowed per inning should not lead to an ERA anywhere close to 3.24 and even if he repeated last year's pitching line exactly, I'd be forecasting an ERA in the high 3's.
Second, I don't believe his control improved as much as his walk totals seem to represent and I'm expecting him to walk hitters at a rate closer to about 3.8 batters per nine innings than the 3.2 he did last year.
Finally, and this can be a deciding blow to an ERA forecast, I'm projecting the Tampa Bay bullpen to be even worse than it was last year and the individual pitching projections reflect that. In fact, the combined projected ERA for all pitchers in Tampa Bay who are projected to appear at least one game in relief is 5.39, this compared to the 4.98 that Devil Rays relievers posted last year. Remember that a worse bullpen doesn't just mean a higher ERA for relievers but it means a worse ERA for starters too as the relievers come in when the starter leaves runners on base and if they score, the starter gets charged with the runs.
Jeff Francis is another pitcher who's generated some emails to this column's in box. Francis is coming off an excellent season where he went 13-11 with a 4.16 ERA in 32 starts. This came after a year where he went 14-12 but with a 5.68 ERA in 33 starts. Many readers seem to think that it wasn't just Francis' improvement in 2006 but that suddenly, Coors Field is now a fair environment and that Francis won't again suffer from the bad environment he did in 2005. Let's look at both issues.
Like Kazmir, we do look beyond 2006 when building the Francis forecast. Unlike Kazmir, it's not concerns about Francis' control that hold back a healthy forecast but rather that I expect him to allow many more hits than he did last year, mostly because he saw an incredible decline in velocity last year. It's not that he was an exceptionally hard thrower before (with a fastball that was peaking in the low 90's back when he was pitching for University of British Columbia) but the drop-off in velocity here is significant and substantial, no matter how much money the Rockies just gave him for a contract extension.
Baseball Info Solutions, who is one of our licensed stats providers, helps confirm the anecodtal here with hard evidence. Francis' average fastball in 2006 was among the five slowest in the NL at an average of 86 MPH and he threw an amazing 728 pitches slower than 80 MPH, likely because he uses his change-up more often than most pitchers. Francis didn't even crack the top ten in either of these negative categories in 2005 and amazingly, as his results seemed to improve, the zip on his fastball has disappeared here even though the movement on his pitches has only increased slightly. In fact, his 2006 average fastball velocity put him behind only Greg Maddux, Livan Hernandez, Tom Glavine and Doug Davis in the National League. While many pitchers can get away with a poor fastball by relying on pure movement, as Maddux has done his whole career, Francis is only twenty-six years old and should be throwing harder based on what his stuff looked like just four years ago. Francis became more of a ground ball pitcher in 2006 but I don't believe it will be enough here.
On the park factor, a lot of people seem to have the impression that because the Rockies' pitching staff started so well in 2006 that suddenly Coors Field became a neutral park or close to it. Actually, that didn't last through the season and by season's end, the old Coors Field effect was showing up, so-called "humidor" or not. In fact, as things averaged out, the Rockies went from having the second-best ERA in the league as late as mid-August to finish with the 4th worst team ERA in the NL, thanks to a September that saw them post a dismal 6.38 team ERA.
By the end of the year, the park effect in Colorado saw it boosting hits allowed by 14%, boosting runs allowed by 15% and boosting home runs by 14%. What happened was a bit of a flukey year here, probably because of a combination of environmental factors (wind can be widely unpredictable at game time for example) and nothing has significantly changed since the start of 2004 in Colorado to make it a better place for pitchers to play (the humidor has been in use for several years). In fact, all that early talk in 2006 about it now being a fair park can be put on the shelf as by the end of the season, it was the second worst park in the NL for the effect on pitcher's ERA and third worst in all of baseball.
Thus, I'm expecting the park effects to be somewhat more damaging to pitcher stats in 2007 than it was in 2006 (the three year average here on the boost to hits is +21%) and I'm not projecting any Rockies pitchers to pitch well here over the long haul. I believe this park is going to further draw Francis' performance back to the territory where some run away from his results. His stuff is the main concern but the park doesn't help here either. I believe he overachieved significantly in 2006 and cannot sustain that level of performance through 2007.
Just as an aside for this edition and distantly related to the Colorado effect, we get word that Boston might be going after Todd Helton. As I've done recently with other scenarios involving Randy Johnson and Barry Zito, I'd like to offer how this could affect our forecast. Let's say that Boston trades for Helton and keeps him as an everyday player - considering his salary it would be hard to imagine him as anything but a regular. That means the projected number of games played would likely stand at 136. Moving to Boston however would significantly change the projected performance. His at bats would drop slightly and his batting average would be revised down from a projected mark of .310 to somewhere around .280. His projected home runs wouldn't drop too much as he'd be a decent fit in Fenway (think 13 home runs instead of 15) and his projected runs and RBI would drop by about 5-10 in both columns. If the stadium were the only factor, it might drop more but this would be a surrounding lineup that would offer him good R and RBI opportunities.
What I'd be most curious about, and can't offer much help, is wondering what happens to Kevin Youkilis and David Ortiz. Obviously, the Sox want both of these guys to play and Mike Lowell is at third base, making a move back to third for Youkilis somewhat unlikely. Still, if the Sox moved Youkilis back to third base and benched Lowell in favor of getting Helton's bat into the lineup, I would consider this an offensive upgrade.
The key to understanding the forecast is realizing that the 2006 season on its own doesn't necessarily represent Kazmir's current ability and if you look at our hits allowed projected, home runs allowed and walk rates, you'll see that they fall somewhere between 2005 and 2006 with the latter getting more weight, as it often should.
Three key factors are drawing the ERA into plus 4.00 territory. First, he should be allowing more earned runs even if he could repeat last year's performance. That is, the combination of hits allowed, walks allowed and home runs allowed per inning should not lead to an ERA anywhere close to 3.24 and even if he repeated last year's pitching line exactly, I'd be forecasting an ERA in the high 3's.
Second, I don't believe his control improved as much as his walk totals seem to represent and I'm expecting him to walk hitters at a rate closer to about 3.8 batters per nine innings than the 3.2 he did last year.
Finally, and this can be a deciding blow to an ERA forecast, I'm projecting the Tampa Bay bullpen to be even worse than it was last year and the individual pitching projections reflect that. In fact, the combined projected ERA for all pitchers in Tampa Bay who are projected to appear at least one game in relief is 5.39, this compared to the 4.98 that Devil Rays relievers posted last year. Remember that a worse bullpen doesn't just mean a higher ERA for relievers but it means a worse ERA for starters too as the relievers come in when the starter leaves runners on base and if they score, the starter gets charged with the runs.
Jeff Francis is another pitcher who's generated some emails to this column's in box. Francis is coming off an excellent season where he went 13-11 with a 4.16 ERA in 32 starts. This came after a year where he went 14-12 but with a 5.68 ERA in 33 starts. Many readers seem to think that it wasn't just Francis' improvement in 2006 but that suddenly, Coors Field is now a fair environment and that Francis won't again suffer from the bad environment he did in 2005. Let's look at both issues.
Like Kazmir, we do look beyond 2006 when building the Francis forecast. Unlike Kazmir, it's not concerns about Francis' control that hold back a healthy forecast but rather that I expect him to allow many more hits than he did last year, mostly because he saw an incredible decline in velocity last year. It's not that he was an exceptionally hard thrower before (with a fastball that was peaking in the low 90's back when he was pitching for University of British Columbia) but the drop-off in velocity here is significant and substantial, no matter how much money the Rockies just gave him for a contract extension.
Baseball Info Solutions, who is one of our licensed stats providers, helps confirm the anecodtal here with hard evidence. Francis' average fastball in 2006 was among the five slowest in the NL at an average of 86 MPH and he threw an amazing 728 pitches slower than 80 MPH, likely because he uses his change-up more often than most pitchers. Francis didn't even crack the top ten in either of these negative categories in 2005 and amazingly, as his results seemed to improve, the zip on his fastball has disappeared here even though the movement on his pitches has only increased slightly. In fact, his 2006 average fastball velocity put him behind only Greg Maddux, Livan Hernandez, Tom Glavine and Doug Davis in the National League. While many pitchers can get away with a poor fastball by relying on pure movement, as Maddux has done his whole career, Francis is only twenty-six years old and should be throwing harder based on what his stuff looked like just four years ago. Francis became more of a ground ball pitcher in 2006 but I don't believe it will be enough here.
On the park factor, a lot of people seem to have the impression that because the Rockies' pitching staff started so well in 2006 that suddenly Coors Field became a neutral park or close to it. Actually, that didn't last through the season and by season's end, the old Coors Field effect was showing up, so-called "humidor" or not. In fact, as things averaged out, the Rockies went from having the second-best ERA in the league as late as mid-August to finish with the 4th worst team ERA in the NL, thanks to a September that saw them post a dismal 6.38 team ERA.
By the end of the year, the park effect in Colorado saw it boosting hits allowed by 14%, boosting runs allowed by 15% and boosting home runs by 14%. What happened was a bit of a flukey year here, probably because of a combination of environmental factors (wind can be widely unpredictable at game time for example) and nothing has significantly changed since the start of 2004 in Colorado to make it a better place for pitchers to play (the humidor has been in use for several years). In fact, all that early talk in 2006 about it now being a fair park can be put on the shelf as by the end of the season, it was the second worst park in the NL for the effect on pitcher's ERA and third worst in all of baseball.
Thus, I'm expecting the park effects to be somewhat more damaging to pitcher stats in 2007 than it was in 2006 (the three year average here on the boost to hits is +21%) and I'm not projecting any Rockies pitchers to pitch well here over the long haul. I believe this park is going to further draw Francis' performance back to the territory where some run away from his results. His stuff is the main concern but the park doesn't help here either. I believe he overachieved significantly in 2006 and cannot sustain that level of performance through 2007.
Just as an aside for this edition and distantly related to the Colorado effect, we get word that Boston might be going after Todd Helton. As I've done recently with other scenarios involving Randy Johnson and Barry Zito, I'd like to offer how this could affect our forecast. Let's say that Boston trades for Helton and keeps him as an everyday player - considering his salary it would be hard to imagine him as anything but a regular. That means the projected number of games played would likely stand at 136. Moving to Boston however would significantly change the projected performance. His at bats would drop slightly and his batting average would be revised down from a projected mark of .310 to somewhere around .280. His projected home runs wouldn't drop too much as he'd be a decent fit in Fenway (think 13 home runs instead of 15) and his projected runs and RBI would drop by about 5-10 in both columns. If the stadium were the only factor, it might drop more but this would be a surrounding lineup that would offer him good R and RBI opportunities.
What I'd be most curious about, and can't offer much help, is wondering what happens to Kevin Youkilis and David Ortiz. Obviously, the Sox want both of these guys to play and Mike Lowell is at third base, making a move back to third for Youkilis somewhat unlikely. Still, if the Sox moved Youkilis back to third base and benched Lowell in favor of getting Helton's bat into the lineup, I would consider this an offensive upgrade.
posted by David Luciani at
3:23 PM
