Pitching Review

A few weeks ago, I reviewed my preseason forecasts for the Red Sox batters. I also did a forecast for the pitching prior to the season, and I suppose I ought to review that as well. The major problem here is that The Hardball Times has once again changed its pitching metrics, including one that I focused on in the preseason. Fortunately, they re-cast the prior year stats, so I still may be able to make a comparison.

Curt Schilling 31 GS, 204 IP, 15-7, 3.97 ERA, 3.69 FIP, 104 Pitching Runs Created (PRC). For the preseason forecast, THT used a pitching runs metric that showed pitching runs against an average baseline. Now they've attempted a bottoms-up metric that compares with Runs Created for batters. Hopefully they are happy with it, because it's becoming a burden to my forecasts! That said, I predicted Schilling to go from a -10 to a +30, or a four-win improvement. By the updated measures, he went from 31 PRC to 104, which is a seven-win improvement. My prediction was off by a few wins, which is really as much of a function of the 111 additional innings pitched as it was a function of his performance. Schilling was a bright spot in the rotation.

Josh Beckett 33 GS, 204.7 IP, 16-11, 5.01, 5.22 FIP, 77 PRC.
The good news is that Beckett set career highs in starts, innings pitched and wins last season. The bad news is that he had stretches of being an awful pitcher. Other than his remaining healthy, 2006 was not a good season for Josh Beckett. I suggested that Beckett was replacing Bronson Arroyo, and would be 2.5 - 3 wins of an improvement. Arroyo came in at 66 PRC in 2005, so Beckett was an upgrade, but only by about one win.

David Wells 8 GS , 47 IP, 2-3, 4.98 ERA, 5.52 FIP, 15 PRC.
This is what I said: "Wells is very consistent. Like Beckett, he has injury concern, and his back or his knees are likely to have him miss a couple of starts. Even at age 43, however, I see no reason to expect anything less than about 30 starts of league-average (or better: the 2005 season was one of the worst of Wells’ career) pitching, just like last year." And I was completely correct - David Wells did have injury concerns last year. I was looking for "about the same", meaning ~ 68 PRC in 2006. Wells missed that to the tune of about five wins, and his replacements were no better. The best than can be said about Wells last year was that he netted catcher George Kottaras in an August deal with the Padres.


Matt Clement 12 GS, 65.3 IP, 5-5, 6.61 ERA, 5.56 FIP, 17 PRC
From the frying pan into the fire. Quote: "Like Wells, I’ll venture that Clement will give us more of the same or better in 2006." Correct again. Like Wells, a precipitous five-win drop from 2005.

Tim Wakefield 23 GS, 140 IP, 7-11, 4.63ERA, 5.05 FIP, 52 PRC
The third unanticipated injury of the year. Wake missed a couple of months, and wasn't as good as the previous year when he pitched. The 52 PRC was down from 88 in 2005, or about three and a half losses.

Between Wells, Clement, and Wakefield, my Monkee predictions were off by about 14 wins. However, one needs to account for all of the starts lost to injury. Those starts were taken, for the most part, by Jon Lester (34 PRC), Kyle Snyder (18), Kason Gabbard (12), Lenny Dinardo (8), Jason Johnson (6) and David Pauley (4). That's a grand total of 82 PRC, about 8 wins, though much of Snyder's value was achieved in the pen. I boldly predicted that Schilling and Beckett would be worth about +7 wins this year, and I was spot on. The other guys I thought would be level with the prior year, yet they were -6.

The bullpen is harder to figure, with lots of moving parts. I predicted that the pen would be better than the prior year, but it was a tentative prediction. I guess I was probably right, just going by PRC, because Jonathan Papelbon had such a lights-out season (97 PRC). Nobody else really lived up to expectations, however, so that's tempered. I also need to take Papelbon's PRC with a grain of salt when translating it to wins (that's 9-10 wins attributable to Paps, going by the generally accepted runs/wins factor), because there are a lot of situations that a closer pitches in where a run or even two does not impact a win. So, they were better because they had a solid closer, but overall the pen disappointed in 2006 as it did in 2005.