With most of the top-tier free agent pitchers already signed, teams that missed out on the first round of signings will open their wallets towards the second tier starters. Jarrod Washburn fits the bill and rumor has it the Rangers and Nationals are interested in signing him. After going 18-6 with a 3.15 ERA in 2002, he had two disappointing seasons with an ERA over 4.00. In 2005 he seemed to recapture some of that 2002 form by going 8-8 with a 3.20 ERA. His 8-8 record was mostly due to his 5th worst run support in the American League. Is he likely to repeat his 2005 season or will he revert back to his 2003 and 2004 mediocrity?

If only he never had to face a right handed batter. I guess that could be said about any left-handed pitcher but it's especially true with Jarrod Washburn. In 2005 he had a strikeout to walk ratio (K/BB) of 6.75 against left handed batters, the fourth best ratio in baseball. Unfortunately, only 20% of the batters he faced actually batted left-handed. His K/BB against right-handed batters has been in a four year decline, and despite his success against left-handed batters, his overall K/BB has also been headed down the past four years.

To add the list of things that are down, take a look at his fly ball percentage. He used to be primarily a fly ball pitcher, but in recent years he's managed to even it out by allowing an equal number of fly balls and ground balls. Depending on where he ends up, this may or may not be ideal. If the Nationals sign him, a fly ball pitcher would be perfect for the spacious outfield of R.F.K. Stadium. Overall though, it's nice to him induce less fly balls as it may help him limit the number of home runs he allows. He's never been particularly good at keeping the ball in the park.

Jarrod Washburn will assuredly have more wins next year, but I doubt he'll be able to keep his ERA as low as it was in 2005. I think his success against left-handed batters was inflated, which contributed to his low ERA. He should be a reliable, but unspectacular addition to any pitching staff.

After just one season with the Red Sox, Edgar Renteria and his four year 40 million dollar contract were shipped off to Atlanta for third base prospect Andy Marte. In 2002 and 2003 Edgar Renteria posted back to back season with a batting average over .300. Since then, he's reverted to his pre-2002 days where he was a around a .275 hitter for five straight years. Is there any hope him ever doing as well as his 2003 season?

In 2003 he had a tremendous spike in his walk to strikeout ratio (BB/K) which validated his .330 batting average that year. What this graph doesn't show is just how out of whack is 2003 season was. Here's a little sneak preview of our right handed/left handed split graphs.

Most of that spike in his his BB/K was due to a incredibly dominant year against left handed pitchers. In 2003 he was an amazing .391/.507/.669 against lefties. I think we can safely say that is not going to happen again.

With a return to his 2003 season likely out of reach, considering his career averages, I'd say the best you can expect out of Edgar Renteria is a return to his 2002 season. The good news is, besides his 2002 and 2003 seasons, he's been incredibly consistent. I doubt he'll be worse than he was in 2005, and chances are he'll be a little bit better next year

ESPN is reporting that Nationals players Brad Wilkerson, Terrmel Sledge, and a player to be named will be headed to the Rangers in exchange for Alfonso Soriano. After Brad Wilkerson hit a career high 32 home runs in 2004, he and the rest of the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals. The move was not kind to Brad Wilkerson, as he experienced his worst season to date by hitting just 11 home runs with a .248 batting average. Now that he'll be playing in the batter friendly confines of Ameriquest Field in Arlington, is it likely that he'll rebound in 2006?

Where did your power go Brad Wilkerson? Playing in R.F.K. stadium certainly didn't help. Only 7% of fly balls hit in R.F.K. stadium became home runs, the lowest in baseball. Yet he wasn't just bad playing at home, he was even worse on the road. Check out his Home/Away splits from 2004 compared to 2005.

HR/FB Splits
Season	Home	Away
2002	18%	11%
2003	15%	15%
2004	15%	17%
2005	7%	5%

As you can see, something was seriously out of whack last season and chances are it was an “irritated ulnar nerve” in his forearm that bothered him the entire 2005 season. It's also worth noting that in 2004 he altered his approach at the plate which caused him to start hitting more fly balls. With his HR/FB of just over 16% in 2004, that easily explains the career high 32 home runs.

But what about his sub par batting average? His walk percentage was down slightly to just under 13%, but that's still very good. It really all boils down to his high number of strikeouts. The good news is, he's been chopping away at his strikeout percentage (K%) each year he's been in the league. If he can continue to lower it, there's bound to be improvements in his batting average.

Brad Wilkerson's 2005 power outage seems like it's mostly due to injury, with some additional help from R.F.K. stadium. If he's healthy in 2006, I see no reason why he won't be able to fully rebound. He's a perfect match for Ameriquest Field where left handed batters hit a league high 15% of their fly balls for home runs. Also, let's not forget he's only 28 years old and just entering what should be his most productive years.

We've recently acquired a slew of new stats from our stats provider Baseball Info Solutions. While none of them are being graphed yet, I made them available in the “Season Stats” section for each player.

Here is the list of stats that have been added:

GB/FB	Ground Ball to Fly Ball Ratio.
IFFB%	Percentage of fly balls that are infield fly balls.
HR/FB	Percentage of fly balls that are home runs.
IFH%	Percentage of ground balls that are infield hits.
BUH%	Percentage of bunt hits.

IFFB	Total number of infield fly balls.
IFH	Total number of infield hits.
BU	Total number of bunts.
BUH	Total number of bunt hits.

Since these stats have just been added to our database, I haven't done much research on them. It's tough to say whether the particular ratios and percentages added are useful.

There have been two other changes:

1. Some of the existing stats are now carried out an extra decimal point.

2. Choosing a player for comparisons should work a little better now.

I'd like to remind people that it's ok to use any “Fan Graph” in your own articles, blogs etc…. If you want the image to be permanent, you must save the image and host it yourself. The graphs hosted here are periodically wiped clean because of the large amount of space they take up. Over 80,000 graphs were generated the past two months.

There will be another site upgrade sometime in the next two weeks that should include “split graphs”. These will allow you to track a player's right-handed or left-handed only stats against one another and the players combined average.

Paul Byrd and the Indians have agreed on a 2 year contract worth slightly over 14 million dollars with an 8 million dollar third year option. This will be his fourth different team in his past four seasons. After having a breakout year in 2002, he spent all of 2003 recovering from Tommy John surgery. When he returned in 2004, he picked up right where he left off by having another 2 season with an ERA slightly below 4. Is there any reason to suspect he'll be any different in 2006?

His walks per 9 innings (BB/9) have been very consistent the past three years. Obviously he issues very few walks. He had the fifth lowest BB/9 among all starting pitchers in 2005. However, his strikeouts per 9 innings (K/9) are an entirely different story.

Once again he's very consistent, but this time not in a good way. His low number of walks and low number of strikeouts means he puts the ball in play often. This inspired me to take a look at the number of home runs he allows per fly ball (HR/FB). In 2005, 7% of his fly balls ended up being home runs where the league average is around 11%. Due to his low HR/FB percentage, my research (see HR/FB analysis) shows there's about a 70% chance it will increase the next year. It's also worth noting he's a fly ball pitcher, so a larger HR/FB percentage means even more home runs than a ground ball pitcher.

Despite a likely increase in his home run totals, I think Paul Byrd next year will probably be pretty similar to what he was in 2005. There's not much suggesting his previous three seasons were flukes. Watch to see what his K/9 does next year. Any increase in his strikeouts will go a long way considering his BB/9 is so low.

Reports are that free agent Kyle Fransworth will likely be signed by the Yankees to a three year contract somewhere in the neighborhood of 17 million dollars. This past year he had his best season ever by posting an ERA of 2.19 and striking out 87 batters in just 70 innings of work. He was traded to the Braves in early August and took over the closers role by the end of that month where he went 10 for 10 in saves. The last time Kyle Fransworth pitched nearly this well was 2001 and he's never had back to back seasons with an ERA under 4. Will he be able break that trend and repeat his 2005 season next year?

If his strikeouts per 9 innings (K/9) are any indication of how well a reliever does (which they are), then I'd say he's a pretty attractive relief pitcher. He had the sixth highest K/9 of any relief pitcher in 2005. Unfortunately, he has been periodically wild and that has kept him from consistently being one of the best relievers in baseball.

The two other things he had going for him in 2005 were the small number of home runs he allowed and his Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP). He only gave up 5 home runs the entire season making his home runs per 9 innings (HR/9) the lowest of his career. Likewise, his .261 BABIP was also the lowest of his career.

I think Kyle Farnsworth was definitely a little lucky last year, but that's no reason to think he can't be a dominant pitcher in 2006. His K/9 is exactly where you want it to be for a relief pitcher and while an increase in his home runs and BABIP are likely, there is still plenty of room to improve the the number of walks he issues. I think we'll see a similar Kyle Farnsworth next year, and for the first time he'll keep his ERA well under 4 for two consecutive season.

Stemming from the Home Runs & Fly Balls research, there is some question about how much control a pitcher has over the amount of home runs he allows. In an attempt to answer this question, I made a scatter plot of a pitchers Home Runs per Fly Ball (HR/FB) and the change in his HR/FB the following year using data from 2002-2005.

The horizontal red line is the average HR/FB, and the vertical red line indicates the place where zero change would be from year to year. This divides the chart into four quadrants. The percentages in each corner show the percentage of data points in each quadrant. For instance, 41% of the pitchers sampled had a below average HR/FB that increased the following year. Likewise, 32% of the sampled pitchers had an above average HR/FB which decreased the next year. That means that 73% reverted their home run fortunes the following year and only 27% continued their current trend.

Careful though, just because a player reverted their HR/FB doesn't mean they're doomed or saved from home runs. Here is another scatter plot that compares the first year's HR/FB directly with the next years.

As you can see there is pretty much no correlation between a player's actual HR/FB from year to year. This tells me that while a player is likely revert their HR/FB the following year, it's unclear how much of a change there will be. One thing to note is it seems that below average players are slightly more likely to continue having a low HR/FB. However, this may just be a result of the pitchers sampled in this study.

I believe this data shows that pitchers generally do not have control over their HR/FB from year to year. This would mean that the number of home runs a pitcher allows is based on both chance and the number of fly balls a pitcher allows.