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By charliewilmoth | at
Email a copy of 'Paul Maholm And The Starting Pitching Market' to a friend
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jkoms57
Maholm is clearly a specific case where this guy is trying to make a name for himself. He is a good middle of the rotation guy who is using LAD as a platform to notoriety.
He’s taking less money now, to have a good record on a winning team, in hopes that it will pay off big in his next contract.
Daniel Morairity
I think that arroyo and maholm are very good pitchers but arroyo is the older pitcher so there isnt much when you compare the two
pft2
Only thing that makes sense is there must have been something in Maholms medicals, perhaps the elbow. I would treat it as an outlier and not reflective of the market for SPers.
rouscher
Possibly, or he saw LA as stomping grounds. Because with that offense and bullpen behind him, if he pitches 10-15 quality starts he could end up with a 10-15 win-loss, sub 4.00 era which we’ll end up as a decent contract. Or its elbow issues too never know, or both but he put himself in a great position
BlueSkyLA
The performance bonuses are probably very achievable, so the headline number is deceptive, and likely Tim’s projection is going to be very close, assuming Maholm doesn’t land on the DL. The real story here might be that the player has assumed most of the risk, which isn’t something we are used to seeing for a player who isn’t coming off a serious injury. Now if that became a trend….
Seamaholic
This. Maholm isn’t that much of a bargain. Although I agree Arroyo was a little overpaid, especially that 3rd year.
BlueSkyLA
The Dodgers are also showing a clear preference for one-year hires to fill out the bottom of the rotation, and those contracts don’t generally come at bargain rates.
dieharddodgerfan
A couple factors to probably consider:
1. The Dodgers are a contender so he gets to play for a team with a chance to win it all. Probably factors in.
2. The NL West, in general, has a lot of pitcher friendly parks and less potent lineups so it gives Maholm a chance to pitch well, rehab his value, and go back on the market and get a long term deal as a 32 year old.
We could see the Dodgers start to have a bit of an advantage with veteran players who may be willing to come to play for them for slightly lesser money with a chance at possibly winning a championship in mind.
As guys get older, winning likely becomes more and more important.
connfyoozed .
I agree on both counts. Maholm pitched on some pretty bad Pirates and Cubs teams for most of his career. I would not be surprised if he was OK with taking less guaranteed money from the Dodgers in exchange for a promise to compete for a title. A player never knows how much longer he has until he is done.
dieharddodgerfan
Yeah, veteran players who have played for a while and not been to the postseason a lot (or ever) tend to favor playing for contenders.
And, in Maholm’s case, he can do that and probably post some decent numbers and maybe get a long-term deal in 2015.
Contributing to a playoff team would definitely raise his free agent stock next offseason.
John Cate
You’re using the Fangraphs version of WAR, which is based on what their system “thinks” the pitcher’s run-prevention performance should have been, rather than what it actually was. If you use the Baseball Reference version, which is based on what the pitcher actually did, Arroyo was worth 5.1 WAR the past three seasons (-1.0, 3.6, 2.5), rather than 1.7, and he’s ahead of Maholm 6.1-1.9 if you only use the past two seasons. The Fangraphs system heavily favors high-strikeout, ground-ball pitchers, and Arroyo out-performs it almost every year even though he’s pitched in bandboxes.
Steve_in_MA
With Arroyo, you get 200+ innings, AND one less walk per 9 innings. I think there’s a big value to eating the additional innings and not putting that additional guy on base via the free pass.
connfyoozed .
Yours is a good point, but Maholm is relatively stingy allowing walks as well (2.9/9 innings for his career, vs. 2.5 for Arroyo). The only difference there is that Arroyo’s BB/9 numbers have been significantly better than his career average over the last 3 years, whereas Maholm’s numbers have remained consistent from year to year. Arroyo certainly does eat more innings than Maholm, although I would add the caveat that Arroyo has pitched for better teams for most of his career: this means he likely was pitching with leads more often, and was less likely to be pinch-hit for in earlier innings. Arroyo’s K/9 numbers also rose in the last couple of years, which also helps to offset his higher HR/9 numbers compared to Maholm.
In short: I agree that Arroyo is a better pitcher than Maholm, but that shouldn’t be a reflection on Maholm. Arroyo is the more desirable pitcher, but I don’t think the difference between him and Maholm is that huge. Arizona may or may not have gotten a good deal in signing Arroyo, but the Dodgers did very well signing Maholm for the money.
Steve_in_MA
No doubt, the Dodgers got rotation depth at a deep discount. And I can’t recall there ever being a team in the modern era who went a full season with just 5 starters making starts. An excellent investment, especially given the health, wear/tear and age of Beckett.
That said, I can see why Arroyo would get $5MM more per season. The difference in innings is attributable to durability, not pitching with a lead, even though your statement regarding the quality of teams they’ve pitched for is entirely correct. Maholm just has a nasty habit of hitting the DL every year. And Arroyo’s BB/9 is more like 1.7 for the last 3 years – a full pass per game less than Maholm’s. 1 runner sounds miniscule in the abstract, but I’ll bet that 30% of the time, that 1 runner ends up scoring on him.
Anthony Hughes
This is a very thoughtful article from Charlie, and I’ve never seen him on the site before, so I welcome him. Nice work.
I think Arroyo is the better pitcher, but the $22MM difference in guarantees here is MASSIVE. These guys are similar pitchers, after all. The Dodgers played this really well, especially if their interest in Arroyo drove up the price for the D’backs.
charliewilmoth
Thanks, but I’ve been writing for the site for a year!
Anthony Hughes
I guess I don’t notice everything. LOL. Nonetheless, good work!
Haastile
I think you need to clarify that you are using fWAR and not WAR. When you say Jason Vargas has produced 4.5 WAR, thats not actually correct. fWar is based on FIP and is a based on what fangraphs thinks the pitcher was worth based on the only factors a pitcher can control- walks, k’s, homeruns.
Some pitchers consistently outperform their FIP and Bronson Arroyo is one of them. Since Bronson has outperformed his FIP for nearly a decade, its not that useful of a statistic.
charliewilmoth
There is no pure WAR, just WAR from different sources, and I did indicate above that I was using Fangraphs WAR. Because the point of the article is to examine why there’s such a difference in what two teams should pay for a pitcher next year (that is, based on projected performance), I’m not that comfortable with a blunter tool like bWAR. I do agree that FIP isn’t the most favorable statistic to Arroyo, though, for the reason you mention. A WAR based on something like SIERA would have been more useful in this case. SIERA still likes Maholm better, but not by as much. Unfortunately, that doesn’t exist, at least not that I’m aware of.
Haastile
Thanks for the response Charlie. I love what you all do here, I read every day.
My only response/question is:
Is using fWAR a fair tool to use to measure Arroyo’s PAST performance? I understand it is valuable to measure future performance.
Because of his ability to outperform FIP, fWAR is not indicating what Bronson was actually worth to the Reds. It indicates what he should have been worth but we already know what he was worth according to the same algorithm that produced fWAR minus the adjustment for FIP .
Same with Vargas- he “should have been worth” 4.5 WAR according to his FIP but he was actually worth this (not sure what it is) WAR.