6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

I seem to recall one of my earliest and most successful posts (successful being measured by hits and outside links) last year being this ranking of the Dodgers rotation in light of the widely expected assumption that Hideo Nomo would turn out to be pumpkin instead of the staff ace he was in 2003. But not even PECOTA foresaw the depths that Nomo would plumb; he was one of the two worst starters in the majors by VORP (-23.2), and started in three times as many games as the worst pitcher in the majors, Denny Stark, who accomplished his staggeringly bad -26.3 VORP in a scant six starts. (Interestingly, Dodger fans, you might notice one of Nomo's near neighbors here is Derek Lowe, with an -11.5 VORP.) Let's revisit that exercise again this year, only this time, instead of just IP, K/9, K/BB, and VORP, we'll add dERA to the mix, too. As with last year, I'm not going to consider Jackson, who still hasn't pitched enough major league innings to be really projectable.

Notes:

• Starters are listed in alpha order by last name.
• I ignore Jackson for the same reasons I did most of last year; he's just too young to project with any accuracy.
• I use Jay Jaffe's DIPS (dERA) numbers, as his are the only ones providing any kind of historical data.

Kazuhisa Ishii

Year	IP	ERA	K/9	K/BB	G/F	dERA	VORP
2002	154	4.27	8.36	1.35	1.04	5.01	12.1
2003	147	3.86	8.57	1.39	0.85	4.66	21.0
2004	172	4.71	5.18	1.01	0.64	5.42	13.2

2005 PECOTA projection: 5.04 ERA, 123.1 IP, 2.7 VORP

Ishii's fall from whatever grace he had merely put an exclamation point on what appears to be a fizzling career in the U.S. majors. That he is still with the Dodgers is testament to either (a) the fact that DePodesta is not the miracle worker Billy Beane is, or (b) that not even Beane could move Terrence Long before he became a free agent this year. Some players are simply untradeable, and if there was a moment to trade Ishii, it's long past. His declining K/9 rate in conjunction with his usual second-half meltdown caused Dodger fans long ago to vote him off Mound Island. The paranoid might be tempted to speculate that Norihiro Nakamura was acquired, not so much as a realistic option at third, as somebody to keep Kaz from getting lonely.

Derek Lowe

Year	IP	ERA	K/9	K/BB	G/F	dERA	VORP
1997	69.0	6.13	6.78	2.26	1.75		-1.7
1998	123.0	4.02	5.63	1.83	4.58		21.2
1999	109.1	2.63	6.59	3.20	3.17		47.2
2000	91.1	2.56	7.79	3.59	3.45		42.1
2001	91.2	3.54	8.05	2.83	3.57		22.8
2002	219.2	2.58	5.2	2.65	3.46	3.70	-3.7
2003	203.1	4.47	4.87	1.53	3.92	4.46	24.7
2004	182.2	5.42	5.17	1.48	2.87	4.40	-11.5

2005 PECOTA projection: 148.0 IP, 4.01 ERA, 17.6 VORP

Lowe's clearly getting paid for some combination of his phenominal 1999-2000 years, as well as Paul DePodesta's failure to correctly predict the bull market in 2004/2005 free agents. Even though Lowe is a groundball pitcher, radical changes in the Dodgers' infield make his future harder to predict (though the change might not be as bad as some think, a topic for another day). Nonetheless, PECOTA is clearly skeptical about him, not even putting him at two wins above replacement. His strikeout rate and control have seen better days, and begin to approach the red alert levels Ishii has descended to. It's reasonable to expect better things from Lowe in the NL, but it is best to remember, when praying for miracles, that God often replies, "No."

Update: Immediately after I wrote that, Jon linked to Tom Meagher's second big piece in a week at Hardball Times, this time digging pretty deeply at Dodger Stadium's park effects. He finds, unsurprisingly, that regressed to Dodger Stadium's new peculiarities, Lowe should have been an 11 RAA pitcher in 2004, enough, he claims, to be worth the contract he's been given. Is it convincing? I don't know. I have two nits to pick with Meagher's analysis:

• I would feel a lot more comfortable if he used plate appearances in the denominator of $L, $K, etc.
• If, as he claims, Dodger Stadium hurts flyball pitchers, please explain the decline of the healthy Chan Ho Park into craptacularity in Arlington.

Jon also refers to (but doesn't actually link to) this Phil Allard piece claiming Lowe has actually "spent the bulk of his time being a 2.65 ERA pitcher", this based on a couple pieces of data:

• Lowe had cancer treatments in the 2002/2003 offseason.
• In 2004, Lowe had a constantly shifting and below-average-fielding infield.

While I can buy those arguments to some extent, the fact of the matter remains that the ERA curves above are what they are. That is, the argument that Lowe's been a 2.65 ERA pitcher rests on selective sampling, and as such, needs several shovelsful of salt. I mean, if we're going to play that game, Jose Lima, based on his most recent postseason appearance, is one of the greatest pitchers ever to take the mound for quieting the Cardinals potent lineup, so we should pay him a gazillion dollars. Okay, that's taken to an extreme, but you get my point.

Brad Penny

Year	IP	ERA	K/9	K/BB	G/F	dERA	VORP
2000	119.2	4.81	6.02	1.33	1.3		13.6
2001	205.0	3.69	6.76	2.85	1.5		41.3
2002	129.1	4.66	6.47	1.86	1.3	4.65	3.1
2003	196.1	4.13	6.33	2.46	1.2	4.13	28.2
2004	143.0	3.15	6.99	2.47	1.1	3.59	34.1

2005 PECOTA projection: 128.1 IP, 4.14 ERA, 15.4 VORP

Find a penny, pick it up
And all day long, you'll have ...

... a one-year, $5.1M contract that will scare the bejesus out of Dodger fans everywhere. Okay, I'm being melodramatic; it's only one year, and it's really not for that much. (For a definition of "too much", see Lowe.) Penny's nerve damage in his arm is so unusual that Frank Jobe claims to have never seen anything like it before, which says nothing about its likelihood of recurrance. Without that we have comparables -- the big key to finding out how confident PECOTA is in its projection -- we don't know how good this projection is, but the low number of innings pitched tells us PECOTA thinks he's a solid bet to return to the DL. On the other hand, if he makes it to, say, 160-180 IP, he'd be worth 21.7 VORP. The upside is a guy who can get the job done when healthy, but isn't necessarily going to be healthy for you. Four wins is probably the upper limit for Brad, and I'm skeptical of calling him the likely team ace this year. Still, with stable and increasing strikeout rates and solid control, he's one of the top bets for that mantle -- along with our next subject, Odalis Perez.

Odalis Perez

Year	IP	ERA	K/9	K/BB	G/F	dERA	VORP
1998	10.2	4.22	4.22	1.25	3.14		1.6
1999	93	6	7.94	1.55	2.14		-1.1
2000	0	0	0	0.00	0	0	0
2001	95.1	4.91	6.7	1.82	1.6		6.9
2002	222.1	3	6.27	4.08	1.36	3.56	59.9
2003	185.1	4.52	6.85	3.07	1.99	4.09	19.2
2004	196.1	3.26	5.87	2.91	1.62	4.21	49.7

2005 PECOTA projection: 166.1 IP, 3.89 ERA, 24.9 VORP

Is PECOTA being conservative because of his injury year in 2000? With increasing dERA (but too little data to accurately assess it), and gradually declining strikeout and K/BB rates, OP nonetheless is still a fine pitcher. I wouldn't go so far as to call him a guy to build around; his 2004 postseason meltdowns were proof enough of that. But, he's a solid 2-3 guy in the presence of a real mound menace -- something the Dodgers decidedly lack this year.

Jeff Weaver

Year	IP	ERA	K/9	K/BB	G/F	dERA	VORP
1999	163.2	5.55	6.27	2.04	1.2		16.4
2000	200	4.32	6.12	2.62	1.51		45.9
2001	229.1	4.08	5.97	2.24	1.21		38.4
2002	199.2	3.52	5.95	2.75	1.27	3.7	44.7
2003	159.1	5.99	5.25	1.98	1.11	4.46	-5.1
2004	220	4.01	6.26	2.28	1.06	4.4	37.9

2005 PECOTA projection: 178.0 IP, 4.07 ERA, 21.7 VORP

Lil' Jeffy had a pretty good year last year, rebounding from the hellhole that is the Bronx; pitching instruction seems to have vanished over there, and they spit out former aces-to-be faster than other teams can bring them up to be traded. This is the first year he'll be dramatically overpriced, thanks to one of Steinbrenner's Himalayan contracts. Solid control and an increasing strikeout rate put him in the front line of the likelies for the title of Dodgers' best pitcher.

And The Winner Is...

The temptation, of course, is to go with a straight line on what PECOTA predicts. Yes, I'm about to succumb, but let me explain why, first. For one thing, the Dodgers don't have a clear ace, so in a sense, me trying to anoint one amounts to an exercise in roto-head futility. For another, you've got a staff -- with the exception of Weaver and Ishii -- who have a significant injury history. So anything could happen at any time. All that said, I'll take my chances with, in order, Perez, Weaver, Penny, Lowe, and Ishii, with the caveat that if Penny gets and stays healthy, he could outdo all of the others, but that is, at best, speculation.