2007 Free Agent Market: Starting Pitchers Part 6

Time to finish off our free agent starter review.  The position-based free agent posts are more of a summary of the market; I'll also do writeups of a lot of individual free agents.

Paul Wilson - Wilson's two-year, $8.2MM deal signed before the 2005 season has turned out horribly for the Reds.  He had his second labrum surgery in June of last year and has been unable to regain velocity.  A guaranteed contract would be a bad idea, and Wilson's career may be in jeopardy.

Comments

[bobo]

"Zito will get the most lucrative free agent contract for a pitcher this winter"

And it will be a massive mistake. He must be the most overrated pitcher in baseball.

"He keeps his ERA under 4 most years by virtue of a distinct ability to prevent hits."

He's pretty consistently better than average, but the number does flucuate a bit. I see no reason to think he's any more likely to stay below the average than move above it.

http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=944&position=P&page=7&type=full

For fun, compare the stats of 2 free agent pitchers to be: Zito and Padilla. Then try to justify the fact that Zito will get a contract about 5 times larger.

Some GMs will look at the ERA and the W-L record and (consciously or not) bet on the hit rate staying low. I feel bad for fans of their teams.

[Kramerica Industries]

"He's pretty consistently better than average, but the number does flucuate a bit. I see no reason to think he's any more likely to stay below the average than move above it."

"For fun, compare the stats of 2 free agent pitchers to be: Zito and Padilla. Then try to justify the fact that Zito will get a contract about 5 times larger."

The thing is Zito is left handed and has done it for 5 straight years Padilla is very inconsistent over his career

[RotoAuthority]

I'm sure Padilla has similar numbers, but he has nothing near the health record. While Zito has #3 starter numbers, he's got age, health, and consistency on his side.

[ptk420biatch]

Whoever signs zito better have a pitchers park. And roto, I agree he has the age, and the health, but consistency I dunno about. I just dont think he is worth the money some stupid team is going to give him.

[Kramerica Industries]

I have to agree he will be overpaid and If I was a gm i would go the other route of Schimdt(for less money and years)like roto said "Zito doesn't put up "ace" numbers like a Jason Schmidt"

[bobo]

Yes, he's a lefty, and you'd think that would be nice until you see that he's actually much better against right-handed batters (and often so much better that it's borderline absurd).

He's less than a year younger than Padilla.

Point taken about Padilla's health, but he only had about a year of injuries from 2004-2005. He's been fine for about a year and a half.

Finally look at Padilla's splits and think about how much better he'd look if he wasn't pitching half the time in Texas - I think that more that evens out any edge Zito has in handedness, age, or apparently health.

Zito is really nothing more than an innings-eater. If you want guys who can put up 200 innings of mediocre numbers, hoping to get lucky with their hit rate, how about Nate Robertson, Freddy Garcia, Miguel Batista, etc.?

[Dave]

Perhaps if Zito were pitching in the National League he would be putting up "Schmidt-like" numbers.

[Kramerica Industries]

"how about Nate Robertson, Freddy Garcia, Miguel Batista, etc.?"

Robertson isn't going anywhere,Freddy has an era over 5 or right near it and Batista is in his mid 30's

[bobo]

They're all similar pitchers to Zito. Ok, point taken on Batista's age.

Zito is Mike Hampton circa 2000, without the ability to keep the ball in the park. And that's being generous...

[gatling]

Zito has averaged a 3.50 ERA in the AL, which is damn impressive. His walk rate is up this year, but he's consistently been almost 2/1 K/BB rate in his career, with a decent .90 HR/9, and about 7 K/9.

He's not an ace by any means, but he's more than a number three starter also. He's a high end #2, and in this market will command ace type money. He's a much safer bet than AJ Burnett was last year, and he will be paid a bit more than he should because of that fact.

Comparing Padilla to Zito is really not worthwhile. If Padilla keeps this up for a few years, it can be revisited and seem likely. As it is, Padilla's year is a fluke, not the norm.

Averaging 200+ IP and NEVER spending time on the DL is part of the reason why Zito will command such a high salary. Being 6 years younger than Schmidt with much less injury risk is while he'll get more than Schmidt.

Zito has a lower career ERA than Schmidt, a better WHIP and H/9. Schmidt has a higher K/9 and K/BB rate(not by much though), which makes sense because he's a power pitcher while Zito is a finesse lefty.

Zito is very similar to Tom Glavine. Glavine had a lower BB/9, but an equally lower K/9. Glavine is a better comparison for Zito than anyone you've thrown out so far.

[bobo]

Zito has a 3.50 ERA for his career. Over the last 3 seasons it's been 4.04.

Yes, Zito is a safe bet to give you innings and have an ERA around 4. Would he be a number 2 on most teams? Maybe, but that speaks more to the blurring of the line between 2nd, 3rd, and 4th starters than to his quality.

2/1 K/BB rate: Are you actually citing this stat in his defense? A 2 to 1 command ratio is the borderline of mediocrity, and in his free agent year, Zito hasn't even been able to come close. If it even WERE 2/1 this year, he'd rank 52nd among qualified starters. As it is (1.63), he's ranked 70th out of 87! In 2005, he was 64th of 93.

For K rate, his 6.74 K/9 ranked 34th in 2005, and he's 42nd this year.

HR rate: I don't know where you get your numbers from, but I see 22HR in in 174.2 innings, for a 1.13 rate. Typically you want to be less than 1 per 9. This chart tells you all you need to know about HR rate:

http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=944&position=P&page=4&type=full

He's been league average for the past 3 years, while pitching half his games in a park which is actually the 5th best at SUPRESSING home runs:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor?sort=HRFactor&season=2006

Please, do yourself a favor and look at the other graphs (BB/9, K/9, K/BB) on the fangraphs site: Zito is a different pitcher over the past 3 years than he was in 2003 and before. You DO NOT want those trends on your team. Even more so, you do not want to be paying 7 figures a year for them.

How is Padilla a fluke? He clearly established these skills years ago, and yes, was hurt (which I admit lessens his value) in 04-05. Now, he's outperforming Zito, in a park that is one of the toughest to pitch in. This is anything but a fluke. His skills fully support his numbers, and actually his ERA could be a bit lower as his BABIP is a little above average. (Compare that to Zito's, which solely explains his low ERA).

I'll write more later but really, I really hope you wouldn't be happy with your team shelling out $12M a year (or more) for a lucky innings-eater with all trends pointing the wrong way...

[RotoAuthority]

But since the beginning of 2005 his ERA is 3.82. It's kind of deceptive to stretch it to include his one off year.

I don't know if I think Zito's worth 12 mil a year. But I don't think he's overrated. His ERA is typically 15-20% better than the league average, and he hasn't missed a start in five full seasons. Teams need that so that they don't have to give starts to Jose Lima - ever.

Free agent contracts, in general, are losing propositions. You pay for a guy after his peak seasons. But plenty of Zito's comps pitched well into their early 30s: Frank Viola, Tom Glavine, Bob Ojeda, Jim Palmer. Worst case, Zito goes Chuck Finley and you get five, six years of 4 ERAs. It's not like signing Carl Pavano or something.

[DentalPlan]

I think Barry Zito will sign for 6 years, $90 million. Mediocre AL pitchers become stars in the NL, it's hard to believe Zito can't pull a (2005) Andy Pettitte in the NL. I don't particularly like his stuff but you can't call his BAA fluky anymore after so many years.

I agree, I would gracefully bow out of the race at those dollars, but Vicente Padilla, come on. Padilla is not comparable at all. I predicted long ago that people would label Padilla the "smart buy" of the offseason (I don't agree with that assessment) and already it seems to have happened. Which means Padilla is probably in line for the "smart buy" contract of 3 years, $27 million.

Former "smart buys" include (last year) Matt Morris and the year before that Matt Clement and Odalis Perez. So far the "smart buys" look like crap buys.

The arguments about how Zito is going to not be worth his contract remind me of similar arguments when Pedro Martinez was a free agent.

[bobo]

Roto, come on - I thought you'd be the last one to get into an ERA argument. It's even more deceptive to say his career ERA is 3.50. My point is he's different pitcher now than he was in 2001-2003. He was very good then, and simply average, by nearly ANY metric now.

"Mediocre AL pitchers become stars in the NL"

Kind of like Mulder? And Mulder was better than Zito in the AL! Ok, this is an isolated case and for all I know his arm has already fallen off, and I agree that the NL chops a run off your ERA (on average, or at least it should, but of course ERA is still a rather lucky stat). But NL GMs should take advantage of that fact to get pick up 4th or 5th AL starters for $1-2M who can become decent #3 guys in the NL. NOT paying $15M a year for an overhyped pitcher with all his stats heading in the wrong direction.

I agree on Padilla. I thought he'd be a smart buy at 2-3 years at ~$5M per. Now it's pretty clear that he'll get more. Does he deserve it? Maybe in this market he does. Regardless, $27M/3 for Padilla is still worlds better than $90M/6 for Zito. Hell, $27M/3 for ME would be better than $90M/6 for Zito. In that case, the team would only be wasting $27M!

My point was not necessarily that Padilla was better than Zito (though it's close). I THINK, given the choice between the two at the same money, I'd still pick Zito, and as the length of the contract grows, I'd be more inclined to pick Zito because Padilla's more of a health risk, for sure.

My point was that it's a near certainty that the Padilla signing will turn out to be better than the Zito signing.

"The arguments about how Zito is going to not be worth his contract remind me of similar arguments when Pedro Martinez was a free agent."

Wait a second - Pedro was a good signing? There's no way you can say that yet. A great season last year, while this year he's been inconsistent and on and off the DL. I wasn't on this board at the time of the signing, but the general consensus elsewhere was this was a Kevin Brown-type contract. The Mets were overpaying in length to get Pedro for a couple good seasons - there's no way to know how healthy he'd be in seasons 3 and 4 (and as it turns out, season 2). But yeah, I guess all things considered it was a better signing than most of the $7M/year guys, because they just suck.

I think Roto said it best with "Free agent contracts, in general, are losing propositions".

So if that's the case, I'd rather lose for a third of the cost.

[bobo]

Oh yeah:

"I don't particularly like his stuff but you can't call his BAA fluky anymore after so many years."

You're right, I can't. Actually I am looking for the world's best coin-flipper. I want someone who can get heads at a better rate than other people. Let's take 100 people, put them in a room, and tell them to flip a coint 10 times. One of them is probably going to get 7 heads in a row at some point, and it's unlikely but he may get heads all 10 times.

Clearly he's the best coin-flipper of the group. You can't call his coin-flipping ability fluky anymore after so many tosses.

Right?

[Yu Hsing Chen]

I'm thinking that Zito if he takes a 7 year deal should only make 90M or so.. but someone will be stupid enough to give him a lot more so we shall see who's the foo this time around, i'm guessing Mariners or Cubs or Braves or Cards... or maybe the Indians...

Then again, maybe Bora$ recent track record will start to backfire on him... just like the Yankees will not make the playoffs (fat chance)

In this group betting on Randy Wolf with a shorter term, injury protected deal makes the most sense.

[DentalPlan]

I don't have the time to write paragraphs about all of that, but comparing allowed hits to BAA to flipping a coin is ridiculous. Such a thing assumes all balls put into play are equal, which they clearly aren't. Jason Johnson's problem isn't that he's a bad coin-flipper, it's that he is Jason Johnson. The same applies for many bad pitchers, like Sidney Ponson. He hasn't been "unlucky" for the past 2 years, he's been crap. Similarly, Glendon Rusch is not much worse now than he was in 2004 because the Cubs are playing worse defense behind him or he's unlucky.

[RotoAuthority]

Comparing it to a coin flip is ridiculous, but that's not where the research is at this point. I think it's been proven that the single biggest variable in BABIP is luck.