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Saturday, December 18, 2004 |
Vetting The Angels Rotation
Richard took this Times story quoting Bill Stoneman as saying "We're going to go with the best team that we can" to mean the Angels have given up and the rotation now consists of
- Escobar
- Colon
- Washburn
- Lackey
- Byrd
To answer that question, we first have to look back to March 31, when the Angels announced their starting rotation of Colon, Escobar, Washburn, Ortiz, and Lackey. Baseball Prospectus still has their 2003 PECOTA up; let's take a look at that to get our estimates. For now, we'll take the 50th percentile VORP, in the middle of their (very conservative) projection range.
| Pitcher | 2004 Proj. | 2004 Actual |
|---|---|---|
| Bartolo Colon | 40.5 | 22.2 |
| Kelvim Escobar | 20.1 | 53.2 |
| Jarrod Washburn | 25.8 | 22.4 |
| Ramon Ortiz | 12.8 | 24.9 |
| John Lackey | 22.9 | 29.3 |
| Total | 122.1 | 152.0 |
Regardless of the answer to that question, clearly PECOTA undervalued the Angels' starting rotation. That the Angels got 7.4 VORP out of the zombie that once was Aaron Sele ended up being icing on the cake, though You Can Never Have Too Much Pitching.
So, where are we now with the Angels' rotation? Since BP doesn't have PECOTA for 2005 up yet, I'll just take the 50th percentile numbers for 2004 and the provided graph therefore for each pitcher, with one exception, Escobar, for obvious reasons; in his case I average between what PECOTA thinks he would have done and where he ended up this season.
| Pitcher | 2005 Proj. |
|---|---|
| Kelvim Escobar | 32.0 |
| Bartolo Colon | 20.0 |
| Jarrod Washburn | 18.0 |
| John Lackey | 18.0 |
| Paul Byrd | 15.0 |
| Total | 103.0 |
Comments:
Ortiz certainly wasn't worth 24.9 as a starter. And I think you could make a reasonable assumption that Colon will have a better season than last year. I think the rotation looks at least as good as it did at the start of last year, and certainly as good as it did after Ortiz and Colon collapsed on us.
Granted about Ortiz, but BP doesn't split relief/starting VORP, and I can't calculate MLVr on my own, let alone VORP.
# posted by 
: 12/18/2004 06:12:00 PM
: 12/18/2004 06:12:00 PM
Assuming for a second that Stoneman has an actual plan for the direction of this club (and that’s a rather large leap of faith based on what I’ve seen), does it bother anyone else that he’s focusing more on 2006 and beyond than 2005 after having made the playoffs in 2004? Though that would imply that there weren't ways to improve the team in the short term while also securing it's future success, which is simply not true.
I don't see that as a big problem because they have a lot of young guys they need to try out, and they may not be fully ready before 2006. Mainly Morales, McPherson, Kotchman, and Weaver (if they ever get him signed). They may be figuring that next year could be hit or miss anyways because of the unpredictability of these guys and are looking towards 2006 as a year where they already are more settled down. The Angels have the luxury of staying good while this retooling takes place because they have money already spent on guys they don't want to get rid of. Sure, it would be nice if they tried to make one or two more moves, but they can certainly make the playoffs with the current team.
Alchemist -- this strikes me as a good read on the situation. There's too many quality minor leaguers who will need a place to come up for the team to be good all at once. On the other hand... the Braves always managed to put one -- and only one -- minor leaguer into the big club's roster during the 90's, and it worked very well for them. Perhaps something like this is on the way for the Angels? I mean, it doesn't seem likely that Kotchman will bust down the doors at first, not unless Erstad gets injured again -- oh, wait, maybe it will happen...
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