2005 in Review, Part II - the Pitchers

And now to the pitchers. More briefly stated, because I don’t have the detailed projections like I did for the batters. Last year I looked at Runs Saved Above Average (RSAA), which is now stated as Pitching Runs (PR). It’s the same calculation, however, and I got the numbers from the Hardball Times. Here’s how I did in this area:

Starting Pitchers:

Curt Schilling. He was terrific in 2004, and I expected an injury-related decline in 2005 to about 30 PR. Well, he declined all right, but the injury (and dropoff) were much worse than I thought. He came in at -10 PR, or about four wins worse than I predicted.

David Wells. I didn’t actually come up with a prediction for him, other than that his dropoff from Pedro Martinez’ 2004 “shouldn’t be too severe.” He came through with 2 PR, just a little better than average, compared to Pedro’s 24 in the prior year. It’s about a two-win drop, which, I suppose, isn’t “too severe”, but probably not what I really had in mind here.

Matt Clement: I thought Clement would be head and shoulders better than Derek Lowe was in 2004 (-33 PR), predicting about a five-win improvement. Clement didn’t produce like I thought (-1 PR), though he still represented a three-win gain over Lowe. Still, this was the third straight overly optimistic call on my part.

Tim Wakefield. This one’s a bit confusing. I had Wakefield down for 13 PR in 2004, despite the fact that his ERA was exactly league average, then I predicted a one-win improvement. Wake was very good last year, yet THT is showing just 6 PR. Maybe I meant -13 PR when I blogged this last season. The data is no longer available. Suffice to say that Wakefield was much better in ’05 than ’04, so I think I was pretty accurate with this prediction.

Bronson Arroyo. I predicted a 1-win improvement from the 3 PR that he posted in 2005. Instead, he came in at -7, or a 1-win decline. Rose-colored (Red Sox-colored?) glasses once again.

Overall, I predicted the rotation (with Wade Miller also in the mix) to be about five wins better in 2005 than in 2004. Based on the above, they were about three wins worse, and Miller, along with Jeremi Gonzalez and John Halama, didn’t do anything to fill in the holes.

As for the bullpen, I wrote that we can expect “more of the same” from Keith Foulke and, overall, “no real change” in performance by the bullpen. In fact, the bullpen was a disaster last year, save for a solid year from Mike Myers, a terrific late-season run by Jonathan Papelbon, and yeoman’s work from Mike Timlin. Most of the guys who were expected to be big contributors (Halama, Alan Embree, Matt Mantei) weren't even on the team at the end of the season.

It’s safe to say that I was way off base in my analysis of the pitching staff. That’ll make this year’s rosy predictions look all the more silly, I suppose.

In the end, I added up my projections and predicted that the Sox would improve by five games and finish with 103 wins in 2005. That didn’t happen, obviously, but they still won 95 games and finished tied with the Yankees for the AL East title. That was pretty good considering all that went wrong for the team.

Come back in the next couple of weeks to see what the Monkee (and the monkey, aka I) come up with predictions for the 2005 Red Sox. Hopefully I’ll learn from last year’s mistakes.

I doubt it, though.