The Futility Infielder

Remaking the Yankees for 2003, Part III: Filling the Rotation

In my last installment, I broke down the performance of the Yankees' 2002 pitching rotation, using traditional stats, rate stats and DIPS to gain different perspectives on their starters' performance. This time we'll see how the team's options stack up for 2003.

Having spent all of last season with a surplus of starters, the Yanks have enough parts at hand to construct an excellent (though not dazzling) rotation. They hold contracts on three of last season's starters: Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte, and David Wells, plus Jeff Weaver, whom they acquired last summer with the intent to include him in this year's rotation. Where they go from this point is the real question.

Roger Clemens is a free agent, likely to be expensive (upwards of $10 million per season). Orlando Hernandez is arbitration-eligible but likely less expensive ($6-7 million per season). Sterling Hitchcock, under contract for $6 million, is being shopped to reduce payroll, his performance in pinstripes too shaky to merit consideration for a starting spot. If the Yankees are serious about cutting costs, they could let Clemens walk and keep El Duque. They could sign Clemens and trade El Duque, who could fetch a solid bat to cover third base or a corner outfield spot in a trade. They may NEED to include El Duque in a package in order to clear Hitchcock's or outfielder Raul Mondesi's salary from the books.

In a slow free-agent market, Clemens has yet to receive serious attention from any team, including from the Yankees. While Texas and Boston have been mentioned as possible destinations, neither team has shown more than lukewarm interest, let alone made an offer. National League teams touted as potential suitors by Bob Klapisch (the Astros and the Mets) seem even less inclined to entice Clemens to leave the AL.

The most actively courted free-agent pitcher this offseason has been Tom Glavine, with the Mets, Phillies and Braves all making offers. With Greg Maddux seen as more likely to re-sign with Atlanta, Glavine at first glance looks like the prize of the class, coming off an 18-11, 2.96 ERA season. But he may not be all that he's cracked up to be.

As I did with the Yankee staff, I took a look at the stats for 14 starters listed among ESPN's Top 50 Free Agents. The only one on that list whom I didn't include was Jon Lieber, who will be coming back from Tommy John surgery and thus unavailable until late in the season. This selection includes some obvious no-gos for the Big Apple, such as Kenny Rogers (been there, done that) and Shawn Estes (flushed out of Flushing), but it gives a more complete picture of just what the market is. I also included a few names tossed around in this winter's trade winds (one who's already changed addresses) and the two big-named Yanks currently without contracts. Here they are:

          2003

           Age  W	 L	  IP	   ERA	   K/9	 WHIP	  K/W	 HR/9	 BFP	 BABIP dERA

Clemens	   40  13	 6	 180.0	 4.35	 9.60	 1.31	 3.05	 0.90	 768	 .316	 3.34

Finley	    40  11	15	 190.7	 4.15	 8.21 	1.37	 2.23	 0.61	 809	 .313 	3.43

Maddux	    37  16	 6	 199.3	 2.62	 5.33	 1.20	 2.62	 0.63	 820	 .282	 3.59

Williams 	 36   9	 4	 103.3 	2.53	 6.62	 1.05	 3.04	 0.87	 412	 .249 	3.77

Hernandez  37	  8	 5	 146.0	 3.64	 6.97	 1.14	 3.14	 1.05	 606	 .264	 3.91  

Colon	     30  20	 8	 233.3	 2.93	 5.75	 1.24	 2.13	 0.77	 966	 .274	 3.92  (not FA)

Moyer	     40  13	 8	 230.7	 3.32	 5.74	 1.08	 2.94	 1.09	 931	 .244	 4.34

Trachsel	  32  11	11	 173.7	 3.37	 5.44	 1.38	 1.52	 0.83	 741	 .279 	4.34

Haynes	    30  15	10	 196.7	 4.12	 5.77 	1.48	 1.56	 0.96	 852	 .304	 4.35

Glavine	   37  18	11 	224.7	 2.96	 5.09	 1.28	 1.63	 0.84	 936	 .269	 4.39

Byrd	      32  17	11 	228.3	 3.90	 5.08	 1.15	 3.39	 1.42	 935	 .259 	4.39

Rogers	    38  13	 8	 210.7	 3.84	 4.57	 1.34	 1.53	 0.90	 892	 .278 	4.48

Estes	     30   5	12	 160.7	 5.10	 6.11 	1.58	 1.31	 0.73	 713	 .317	 4.48

Daal	      31  11	 9	 161.3 	3.90	 5.86	 1.21	 1.94	 1.12	 668	 .252	 4.54

Valdes	    29   8	12	 196.0	 4.18	 4.68	 1.23	 2.17	 1.19	 818	 .265	 4.57

Neagle	    32   8	11	 164.3	 5.26	 6.08	 1.42	 1.76	 1.42	 724	 .280	 4.72  (not FA)

Helling	   32  10	12	 175.7	 4.51	 6.15	 1.30	 2.50	 1.59	 751	 .273	 4.82

Hampton	   30   7	15	 178.7	 6.15	 3.73	 1.79	 0.81	 1.21	 838	 .318	 5.38  (not FA)

Person	    33   4	 5	  87.7	 5.44	 6.26	 1.48	 1.20	 1.33	 388	 .256	 5.58

I sorted these pitchers not by wins or by ERA but by our new friend, Defense Independent ERA (dERA). As I discussed last time, dERA is a better predictor of next season's ERA than the ERA itself. Because it assumes that the results on balls in play will even out over time, it places a premium on the outcomes controlled by the pitcher's skill -- strikeouts, walks, and homers. The pitchers whose dERAs are the lowest are the ones with a combination of good strikeout rates (K/9), good control (K/W), and low homer rates (HR/9). That's a veritable shopping list for a quality pitcher right there.

Notice that the BABIP figures are all over the place. Roger Clemens, Chuck Finley, Shawn Estes and Mike Hampton are within five points of each other, giving up hits like crazy, though with diverging results. Meanwhile, Robert Person, Omar Daal, Ismael Valdes, Paul Byrd, Woody Williams and Jamie Moyer are at the other end of the spectrum, giving up very few hits on balls in play, yet failing in their quests for world domination. That figure doesn't tell you much about the quality of the pitcher.

What strikes me as most interesting about the pitchers on this list are the low strikeout rates. Strikeout rates themselves are good indicators of a pitcher's future success, and if that's the case, we won't be seeing a hell of a lot of future success from this bunch. The AL average was 6.26 strikeouts per nine innings last season, while the NL was higher, 6.77, making the major league average 6.53. Only THREE of the 19 pitchers listed above have rates above their league average (or the ML average, in the case of those who split their time between leagues), and two of those are Yankees (or not, perhaps). Only eight of the 19 are with 0.5 of the ML average. Hardly a bumper crop of free agents.

Back to Glavine. The venerable Braves southpaw had an impressive season based on his won-loss record and ERA. But any team thinking along the lines of a 4-year/$44 million contract for the 37-year-old pitcher ought to think again. DIPS doesn't paint a rosy picture of his season; Glavine's dERA is a mere 4.39. A low strikeout rate (just over 5 per 9 innings), unimpressive control (1.63 K/W, well below the league average of 1.93), and a relatively lucky .269 average on balls in play do not herald another Cy Young either. It is worth noting that Glavine has succeeded with records like these before; in fact, he's made a career out of it, but you'd be hard pressed to find too many others who get away with this combination. His BABIP in 16 major-league seasons is .278, which is a bit lower than we might otherwise expect. It compares favorably to a few other semi-randomly selected pitchers whose career BABIPs I took a few moments to calculate. Four of these guys come from the free-agent list, two you know already, and the other two are a couple of guys who stuck around the game for only a quarter of a century :

Glavine   .278

Maddux 	  .279

John      .284

Clemens   .286

RJohnson  .291

Morgan    .291

Finley	   .297

Not a hell of a difference in a stat where Mike Morgan can match Randy Johnson over the course of a long career. On a typical workhorse season of 500 balls in play, ten points in batting average (.010) comes out to be five hits, five hits that stayed in the yard. Big deal.

What does this all mean for the Yanks? Before spending a week building my spreadsheet, my gut feeling was that they had several other viable free-agent options besides Clemens, including the marquee Atlantans. If you're going to shell out big bucks, I reasoned, why not go a few years younger and chase Glavine or Maddux? But looking at this, it's clear that even at age 40, the Rocket is still at the head of the class. He's MILES beyond these other pitchers with his strikeout rate, and he's still got great control. His 4.35 ERA last season is more a product of lousy luck than a decline in his ability. As much as we can trust projections of any pitcher, Clemens projects very well.

What Clemens does lack, increasingly, is stamina. He hasn't completed a game since 2000, and he no longer eats innings the way a #1 starter, even an aged power-pitching one, should -- I mean, a #1 supposed to be the guy who gives the bullpen a night off, right? Ten times in his 29 starts, Clemens didn't make it past 5 innings, and only three times did he make it through 8 innings. A couple of times leaving games due to being hit by a batted ball here, a few twinges there, and an annual trip to the DL with a nagging lower-body injury don't paint a picture of a rough, tough take-no-guff cowboy (guff?). They show an aging athlete whose body doesn't spring back the way it used to, who may not be able to carry the burden of being Numero Uno.

Much has been made by some local writers of the value of having Clemens chase his 300th victory (he's at 293) while still in a Yankee uniform. Given that the Yanks haven't had any problem selling tickets recently (they set their all-time attendance record in 2002, with 3,465,807), this is highly overrated. It's certainly not worth paying a premium for, given that Rocket isn't exactly inclined towards sentimentality over the matter; after all, he could have taken his $10.3 million "buyout" as a contract for next season.

What it likely comes down to for the Yanks is whether they're willing to commit something like 2 years/$20 million on a pitcher who is -- six years too late to save Dan Duquette -- heading into the twilight of his career. That still makes more sense than spending for four years worth of Glavine, absolutely. But does it make as much sense as letting him walk and completing the rotation with El Duque, who fares pretty well in the comparison above and who might cost them 2 years/$12 million as their fifth starter?

If Mike Mussina had dominated in 2002 the way he did in 2001, if Andy Pettitte had put together a full season at the level he's shown tantalizing glimpses of over the past couple, maybe even if David Wells hadn't thrown the Yankee org's dental insurance rates out of whack (anybody think Steinbrenner's petty raid on his employees' dental plan was completely random spite?), I think the Yankees would consider the top of their rotation complete and make do without Clemens, unless he came cheap. But I don't think they have the courage to do that right now, not when coupled with the way they've jerked Hernandez around (and vice versa) over the past several seasons. Signing Rocket will make lowering their payroll costs harder, and it won't win them any points for creativity, but it's not the most horrible baseball decision in the world.