For your enjoyment:

The good writing entry

Jonah Keri’s A Not-So-Brief History of Pitching Injuries

Easily one of the finest pieces of baseball writing and reporting produced this year. The plethora of quality here left me feeling jaded as I decided which paragraph to display in order to entice your click-through. In the end, I think this quote by Barry Zito exemplifies that he is more aware than expected:

“Baseball has always been the good old boys sport,” said Zito, whose father Joe was such a big believer in long-toss that he insisted on a clause in Barry’s first contract guaranteeing that the A’s wouldn’t interfere with his son’s regimen. “You’ve got a lot of old-school guys with old-school methods. It seems other sports will adjust and change with technology, whereas baseball has always been slow to adjust to the times, and to new technologies.”

The hardcore statistics entry

Kincaid’s ZiPS ROS Projections as Estimates of True Talent

This is FanGraphs-related. There is a lot of math there that supports what can be intuitive. The smaller the sample size, the more volatile the results can be. There is a tendency to ignore what exactly the projected numbers stand for. Maybe that is unavoidable, so an occasional reminder like this requires my appreciation.

The Joe Posnanski entry

Amazing Baseball Stuff

A collection of worthwhile baseball writing without Posnanski is like the best of soul music without any Marvin Gaye. Much like the aforementioned Keri piece, this much quality spread throughout this much quantity produces an insane overload that we should be more thankful for than we already are. What I’m saying is that Posnanski is a robot.

With the Dodgers sitting at 72-75, 11 games out of the NL West leading and facing an elimination number of only 5, it’s safe to say that their season is over. Now along with that, Joe Torre’s managerial tenure in Chavez Ravine has also come to an end. Replacing Torre will be longtime bench companion and former Yankee Don Mattingly, who will get his long-awaited chance to manage.

Torre has seen his fair share of criticism of late, particularly in regard to his bullpen management (Scott Proctor immediately comes to mind) and his lineup construction. However, Torre’s teams have done fantastically well, as the last time a Torre led team failed to reach the postseason was in 1995, when the Cardinals finished 4th in their division and missed the playoffs in a strike-shortened season. Every single one of Torre’s Yankee squads reached the postseason, winning six AL championships and four world series titles, and Torre’s first two Dodger teams won the NL West.

Of course, the immediate counterpoint to the performance of Torre’s teams is the fact that they were, at least in New York, ridiculously talented. His Dodgers teams, too, at least relative to their division, were quite good. It brings up the question of how much we can credit a manager for winning with supreme talent. It’s easy to give credit to Buck Showalter when his relatively talent-less Orioles go on a winning streak; it’s not as simple when Joe Maddon has the deepest stock of position players on the continent or when Tony La Russa has the best player on the planet.

The question of whether or not Torre will take another managing job is purely based on his personal life. The question of whether or not another team should offer him a job is something different entirely. At 70, Torre’s age is a bit of a question mark and he certainly made some questionable decisions with the Dodgers: ruining Scott Proctor’s arm, batting Matt Kemp eight for a majority of 2009, and benching Manny Ramirez during the Dodgers’ last gasp this season are just a few. However, every manager is prone to these types of decisions, and although it’s easy for us on the outside to sit back and cry foul on them. Whether or not Torre is fit to manage is a decision that is much better left to those inside baseball than to us outsiders, even though on the surface it can seem apparent that Torre is hurting the team more than he is helping.

Now, Don Mattingly will take over a Dodgers team that is undoubtedly on the decline and is mired in an extremely ugly divorce case. This isn’t going to be an easy first situation for Mattingly, but at the very least it should serve as a decent test of his ability in the clubhouse.

In his post about Jason Heyward yesterday, Matthew Carruth referred to Adam Dunn as a “maybe” Hall-of-Famer. When I read that, I assumed Matthew had taken leave of his senses, or was making some kind of joke that I didn’t quite get. After all, Dunn has a career +27.7 WAR through age 30, and the established bubble for HOF players is currently about +60 WAR. It is highly unlikely that Dunn will be able to double his value in the second half of his career, especially given his skillset.

But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized Matthew was right – Adam Dunn very well may end up in Cooperstown if he can stay healthy.

Career HR totals are definitely one of the magic numbers that get voters attention. The guaranteed entry barrier used to be 500 before the offensive explosion of the 1990s. Only 25 guys in history have ever hit 500+ home runs, and almost all of them are or will be in the Hall of Fame. Now that non-superstars like Gary Sheffield and Rafael Palmeiro have joined the list, its exclusivity has been diminished, but it’s still the kind of number that will draw notice, especially for a guy who has never been linked to PEDs.

Well, Adam Dunn is only 149 home runs away from 500, and he’s averaged 35 HR per 600 PA in his career so far. Barring injury or a very early collapse of his skills, 500 homers seems like a very easy target for Dunn. That’s averaging just under 30 homers a year for the next five seasons, and the last time he hit fewer than 30 long balls in a year was 2003. His bat may begin to slow down, but he’s got enough power that he can lose some and still crank out that piece with relative ease.

Given just how bad defensively he was in the outfield, however, he’ll almost certainly be the worst player ever to reach that milestone. Even with the power, his offensive production has always been just good, not great, and he’s one of the worst defenders and baserunners of his generation. In terms of actual value, there’s almost no way Dunn will deserve to go into the Hall, but I’m not sure that will matter.

If he hits 500 homers, and is presumed to have done so while “clean”, there will be support for his candidacy, especially if he’s going up against other guys who have tested positive or been linked to steroids. If he gets anywhere near 600 and keeps away from scandal, he’s a mortal lock, and it’s not impossible to see Dunn launching 250 homers over the remainder of his career.

So, I have to conclude that Matthew is right – Adam Dunn is a “maybe” Hall of Famer. If he stays healthy for the next 5 to 10 years, he’s got a pretty decent chance at putting up the kinds of numbers that voters will take notice of. He won’t deserve to go in based on total value, but the sexy numbers just may be enough. He does the things that voters like, and the aspects where he fails, there is little emphasis. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there’s a decent chance that my kids might walk past Dunn’s plaque in Cooperstown some day.

Now a full fifty games under .500, the Pittsburgh Pirates hold, by far, the worst record in the majors. The Bucs have “earned” that sordid status, and then some. The club has been outscored by 287 runs this season, giving them a Pythagorean record of 42-104 instead of their actual 48-98 mark. There are signs of progress — Andrew McCutchen, Pedro Alvarez, Jose Tabata and Neil Walker form a quartet of talented position players, and the organization’s pitching depth has increased. But Jameson Taillon, Stetson Allie and Luis Heredia aren’t walking into the PNC Park clubhouse any time soon, and while prospects like Bryan Morris, Brad Lincoln, Rudy Owens and Jeff Locke offer promise, none are considered top-tier talents. There’s help on the way, but there are no guarantees. And James McDonald aside, the current rotation is getting trounced.

Zach Duke has become the poster boy for Pittsburgh’s pitching struggles. The lefty has been a fixture in the team’s rotation since 2005, but a disastrous stretch since the beginning of August (44.1 innings pitched, 38 runs allowed) had the Pirates considering banishing him from the starting five. In 141.2 IP this season, Duke has a 5.78 ERA. That’s the highest figure among starters who have tossed 140+ innings — most guys who get crushed like that get hooked off the stage. Some Pirates fans are ready to make Duke walk the plank, advocating that the team get rid of him instead of tendering him a contract for his last season of arbitration eligibility in 2011. But I’m left wondering, is he really pitching that much differently than in years past?

Duke has both struck out and walked more batters per nine frames in 2010, but we’re speaking in relative terms. Pittsburgh’s 20th-round selection in the ’01 draft has 5.65 K/9 (4.73 K/9 career) and 2.92 BB/9 (2.45 BB/9 career). His 47.8% ground ball rate is close to his career 48.9 GB%. Duke’s expected fielding independent ERA (xFIP), based on his K’s, walks and a normalized home run per fly ball rate, is 4.41. His career xFIP? 4.38.

Like his rotation mates, Duke is a pitcher who often puts the ball in play. Unfortunately, the guys behind him have done a terrible job of converting those balls put in play into outs. The Pirates’ lineup has transformed drastically over the course of the season, but on the whole, the team has been about 48 runs worse than average, according to Ultimate Zone Rating. Only the Indians have been more inept with the leather. Per Baseball Prospectus’ Defensive Efficiency rating, Pittsburgh has converted the lowest percentage of balls put in play into outs (67.5%) of any big league team. Duke has a whopping .351 BABIP, highest among all MLB starters. While his career BABIP is elevated (.325), in part due to other lumbering Pirates teams, he has especially been the victim of a combination of poor luck and lousy defense in 2010.

He’s also finding fly balls that died at the warning track in past seasons are reaching the cheap seats this year. Duke has surrendered 23 home runs, or 1.46 HR/9. His home run per fly ball rate has jumped to 14.6%, compared to the 10-11% MLB average and his career 10.1% career mark. According to Dan Turkenkopf of The Hardball Times, PNC Park decreased homers per fly ball hit by six percent over the 2006-2009 seasons. If Duke had coughed up a homer about 10.3 percent of the time a fly ball was hit at home (the average HR/FB rate, multiplied by .94) and 11 percent on the road, he would have given up 18 HR, or 1.14 HR/9.

Despite the macabre ERA, Zach Duke is basically the same starter he has always been –ZiPS projects that he’s a 4.37 FIP pitcher moving forward. Duke is making $4.3 million this season, and even with ugly surface stats, he would likely get a modest salary bump in arbitration. Pittsburgh could non-tender him and move on, or they could try to bring him back at a lower rate. I think that he’s worth bringing back and is a serviceable starter in a vacuum. But the Pirates haven’t done Duke, Paul Maholm and other low-K arms any favors by so often failing to get to those grounders and cover the gaps. Collectively, Pirates starters have a 4.78 xFIP. That’s bad, worst in the NL in fact. Even so, that looks sparkling next to the team’s actual 5.44 ERA.

The club has to hope that Alvarez, Walker, Tabata et al take to their positions well, because starters who don’t miss bats and fielders with limited range go together like oil and water.

2010 has been miserable for the Orioles. The vaunted young position players have been disappointing as a group, and no Orioles position player has reached three WAR yet this season. In particular, Adam Jones‘ incipient superstardom looks to be on hold yet again, as he’s not even at two WAR yet. The pitchers have been even worse. However, for those people who see ERA as the go-to pitching stat, Jeremy Guthrie (3.74 ERA over 190 innings so far) might seem to be a “bright spot” in this otherwise wasted season.

If you’re reading this, you probably know that ERA is not considered to be a first-call pitching stat around here. FanGraphs uses FIP when calculating Wins Above Replacement in an attempt to avoid the problem of giving pitchers credit or blame for the fielders behind them and batted ball luck. It’s not perfect, but it is more stable from season-to-season than ERA/RA. FanGraphs has Guthrie at 2.1 WAR currently, which is helpful, of course, but if that’s a team’s bright spot… His decent rating is mostly due to his endurance, given his number of innings pitched, as his 4.39 FIP is actually below average (FIP is always scaled so that it is equal to league ERA, which is currently 4.10). While Guthrie does “eat innings,” the differential between his ERA and FIP indicates he’s likely been the beneficiary of good fortune regarding the fielders behind him and some batted ball luck (.265 BABIP). But even that FIP is a bit deceptive, as Guthrie has had a career-best 7.8% HR/FB ratio this season. xFIP accounts for this by normalizing his HR/FB ratio to league average, which puts his xFIP at 4.90 — the fifth-worst among qualified starters in baseball this season. If we widen the net a little further, we find his xFIP to be about the same as less bright spots such as David Bush, Kyle Kendrick, Brian Bannister, and Tommy Hunter.

Guthrie’s main skill is that he doesn’t walk hitters, and his 2.23 BB/9 is the lowest of his career. Guthrie’s strikeout rate has never been impressive, but 2010 is his second season in a row with strikeout rate under five per nine innings. While Guthrie is getting more hitters to swing at pitches outside the zone than ever before (27.6%), this probably reflects the overall higher O-Swing percentage in the league more than an improvement on Guthrie’s part — he’s still below average. Moreover, when he does get hitters to swing at pitches outside the zone, they’re making contact with those pitches at a greater rate than before. Pitchers with Guthrie’s stuff usually survive by getting good groundball rates (which FIP doesn’t take into account), but Guthrie has never been exceptional at getting grounders, despite his this season’s improvement over 2009.

This sort of thing isn’t atypical for Guthrie. In his 2007 and 2008 seasons his ERA was much better than his FIP and xFIP. In 2009 his luck “evened out,” as it were, as his 5.04 ERA was relatively close to his 5.31 FIP and and 5.22 xFIP. One season isn’t a great indication of true talent on its own, but when looking at Guthrie’s 4.90 xFIP, it isn’t that surprising coming off of a 4.54 in 2008 and a 5.22 in 2009, and is probably a decent indication of his “true talent.” While Guthrie’s straight FIP of 4.39 is the best of his career, his 4.41 FIP and 4.53 FIPs in 2007 and 2008 came in seasons where the league average was 4.47 and 4.32, respectively. This season, the league average is 4.10, making his performance that less valuable than it might appear to be.

Guthrie was an excellent waiver pickup by the Orioles in 2007, and gave them a couple of decent years at the league minimum. Even after his poor showing in 2009, it was a low-risk move for Baltimore to offer him arbitration given his previous performance and the reasonable likely award (they settled without a hearing). Given his overall WAR of 2, it was a decent investment, and the Orioles have had success when he has started, at least in terms of preventing earned runs. However, once taking into account his poor strikeout rate, his good fortune on balls in play, HR/FB ratio, his age (Guthrie will be 31 in April), and the Orioles’ place in the “success cycle,” the notion that Guthrie will be part of the next contender in Baltimore seems far-fetched, however shiny his ERA may appear. Even if the Orioles keep Guthrie around in order to “stabilize the rotation” (whatever that means), a closer look at his performance this season shows him to be a very faint bright spot, indeed.

Actually, Loverboy, not everybody’s working for the weekend — or working at all, in fact.

(NERD scores in parentheses.)

San Diego (10) at St. Louis (3) | 8:15pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Padres: Mat Latos (10)
166.2 IP, 9.40 K/9, 2.43 BB/9, .262 BABIP, 44.7% GB, 8.6% HR/FB, 3.28 xFIP, 3.6 WAR

Cardinals: Kyle Lohse (3)
71.0 IP, 5.07 K/9, 3.17 BB/9. .375 BABIP, 42.4% GB, 5.9% HR/FB, 5.07 xFIP, 0.7 WAR

Notes
• I don’t particularly care about Kyle Lohse one way or the other. I’m sure he’s not someone whose starts — all things being equal — whose starts I’d actively seek out. But the way he’s rendered fictionally by Dan Moore of Viva El Birdos actually makes him considerably more interesting in reality. (There must be a cultural critic who’s written on this phenomenon, no? Jean Baudrillard much? Umberto Eco? Someone?)
• Also notable is that tonight’s game represents a battle between two saints: Didacus of Alcalá (ca 1400 – 1463) and Louis IX of France (1214 – 1270). A brief look at their respective Wikipedia pages reveals that Didacus is, conclusively, a way better saint.
• Mat Latos at 3.6 WAR seems low. You can look at the pitching WAR leaders for yourself, but here are some names I wouldn’t have expected, anecdotally, to see ahead of him: Anibal Sanchez (3.9 WAR, 172.0 IP), Jason Hammel (3.9, 165.2), Gavin Floyd (4.3, 187.1). Those guys are good — I’m not debating that. I’m just saying I wouldn’t have expected them to be there. Really, it’s probably almost entirely due to run environment. The run environment is so deflated at San Diego that you have to really bring it in order to scale the WAR charts.

If I Had My Druthers
• Matt Stairs or Chase Headley or someone would experience ecstasy before the cross.

Other Notes
Cleveland (3) at Kansas City (1), 8:10pm ET
• Carlos Carrasco is (a) pitching tonight and (b) doing this through 20.2 IP: 6.10 K/9, 2.61 BB/9, 66.7% GB, 3.67 xFIP.

Detroit (4) at Chicago Americans (5), 8:10pm ET
• This game features Max Scherzer (8) versus Edwin Jackson (8), who either were or weren’t traded for each other this past offseason. In any case, I know for a fact that they’ve both been Diamondbacks recently. And Tigers. And men among men.

Gridiron Football
• I, Carson Cistulli, have also written about two of this weekend’s gridiron match-ups over at Advanced NFL Stats.

Also Playing
These games are very likely playing at some kind of sporty channel near you.

*Note: As reader Dave has pointed out, Roy Oswalt is listed as an Astro still. That could be a mistake, sure. But then again, it could be a sign that HE’S STILL AN ASTRO AT HEART.

But it’s probably just a mistake.

Read the rest of this entry »

At this time last year, the future seemed uncertain for Marcus Thames. Although his OBP was above .300 for the first time in two years, he was hitting for less power than he had in his entire career. That’s not a good sign for a guy whose sole skill is hitting a baseball hard. The extra times on base were nice, but when combined with the reduced power it amounted to a .329 wOBA. That’s not bad for a fourth outfielder that can play defense, but Thames had proven so poor in the field that he was relegated mostly to DH duty in 2009. The Tigers cold have brought him back, but the possibility of a non-tender loomed.

The situation actually never got to that point. Faced with re-adding players from the 60-day disabled list, the Tigers released Thames in early November. That made him a free agent one year early. It wasn’t going to lead to big money, but there were a few teams that could have used a righty DH/OF with some pop. Yet as the winter wore on it became clear that teams just weren’t interested in Thames. He didn’t sign a contract until early February, and even then it was a minor league deal with the Yankees. Since they had Rule 5 pick Jamie Hoffmann in camp Thames wasn’t at all guaranteed a spot. But despite a poor spring the Yankees did add him to the 25-man roster.

The idea at first was to platoon him in left field with Brett Gardner, but a combination of Thames’s horrible defense and Gardner’s excellent play brought that to an early halt. It took injuries to starting DH Nick Johnson and center fielder Curtis Granderson for Thames to get more opportunities. He took advantage, producing numbers that were previously thought to be out of his reach. Through 212 PA he is hitting .299 with a .368 OBP and a .214 ISO. It amounts to a .382 wOBA, easily the highest of his career. As with any player performing at that level it raises the question of what team will sign Thames for next year.

Since his batting average is 50 points higher than his career mark we can assume that he is playing above his head. A BABIP more than 80 points higher than his career average confirms that idea. This might signal that he’s due to regress and will become a burden to any team that signs him next season. Yet that might not exactly be true. While there is little chance that Thames will hit .299 with a .360 BABIP next season, might he be a useful bench option for a team looking for a little pop against left-handed pitching?

Throughout his career Thames has been known as a lefty-masher. His career wOBA against lefties is .362 against just .332 when facing right-handed pitching. The Yankees understand this, as they’ve sent him to the plate 123 times against lefties and 89 times against righties. The Tigers sent him to the plate against righties more often than lefties in each of his six seasons there. At first glance, this might seem like the key to Thames’s increased production this year. He does, after all, have a .370 wOBA against left-handed pitching. But the Yankees have seen him succeed smashingly against righties, too. In those 89 PA he has seven home runs and has walked 10 times, amounting to a staggering .398 wOBA.

An 89 PA sample is an awfully small one, so it would be unwise to draw from it conclusions about Thames’s ability to hit righties. In fact, running his numbers through the xBABIP calculator we get .264, which is exactly his career BABIP against righties. His performance this season, unsurprisingly, is an anomaly that shouldn’t fetch him a better contract. Even his numbers against lefties this season seem a bit inflated. He has a .383 BABIP against them, which according to the xBABIP calculator should be closer to .290. That is, again unsurprisingly, right around his career mark.

It would seem, then, that Thames’s numbers just don’t add up this season. His expected numbers appear to be right around his career averages, while his actual performance soars above his previous production. That should buy him a job on some team’s bench next season, and in that capacity he could continue to succeed. By limiting his appearance against right-handed pitching teams can avoid exposing his greatest weaknesses. There has to be at least a little concern about his BABIP-fueled numbers against lefties, but given his career success against them it might not prevent him from helping a team.

Matt Thornton throws a lot of fastballs – more than anyone else in baseball, actually. He’s thrown the pitch 92 percent of the time this year, in fact, relying heavily on his ability to blow hitters away with his velocity. Thornton throws it with such regularity that he might just be the most predictable pitcher in the history of the game.

On the first pitch of an at-bat, Thornton throws a fastball 96 percent of the time. You can be pretty sure that you’re going to get a first pitch fastball from him, pretty much every time. If he falls behind in the count, well, then you can forget the pretty much – you will see nothing but fastballs until he’s evened the count up again. Literally, nothing but fastballs.

On 1-0 counts, he’s thrown the fastball 100 percent of the time this year. Same with 2-0 counts, 3-0 counts, 2-1 counts, 3-1 counts, and 3-2 counts. He has not thrown a single non-fastball in any of those situations all year.

When he gets ahead in the count, he’s more willing to work in the slider. He throws the slider 18 percent of the time on 0-1 counts, 17 percent of the time on 1-2 counts, and 13 percent of the time on 0-2 counts. Every count is dominated by heavy reliance on the fastball, but he’ll at least show you something else in those situations from time to time.

Behind in the count, though, and he becomes the definition of a one pitch guy. And here’s the crazy part – it still works. Despite some struggles since returning from the disabled list, Thornton has still been one of the game’s best relievers this year, and his dominance over the last three years is rivaled only by the likes of Mariano Rivera, who also interestingly throws just one pitch most of the time.

I love the game theory aspect of pitching, where guys like Jamie Moyer can get hitters out through pure deception, keeping hitters off balance and not letting them figure out patterns. The other side of that coin is kind of fun too, though, and that’s Thornton in a nutshell. You often hear announcers say that any big league hitter can drill a fastball if he knows its coming. Well, apparently not. Not this fastball, anyway.

Edinson Volquez is back in the rotation for the second time in 2010 after missing the entire first half of the season due to Tommy John surgery (with a PED suspension thrown in for good measure). Volquez’s results haven’t been much to write home about, as in nine starts prior to yesterday’s start against Arizona, Volquez held a 5.14 ERA and a 4.98 FIP. The Reds have to hope that Volquez can anchor their rotation in the playoffs, as there are definitely some question marks after Johnny Cueto and Bronson Arroyo.

The Reds really haven’t had any idea what to expect from Volquez this year, and his results so far really aren’t giving any concrete answers. Take a look at his game scores so far this year – his results can be pretty well described as all or nothing.

This includes his latest start – a 55 game score against the Arizona Diamondbacks in a losing effort. Volquez hasn’t recorded a game score between 34 and 55 all season, which only goes to enforce this idea of all or nothing.

The problem for Volquez has been a 6.0 BB/9. He survived with a 5.8 BB/9 in 2009, posting a 4.35 ERA despite a 5.01 FIP, but his BABIP (up to .338 from .231) has risen and is forcing him to pay for the free passes. Not only that, but his HR/FB rate is still at a high level, 16% after 14% last season.

On the encouraging side for the Reds, Volquez’s velocity is right where it’s been his whole career, and he’s striking out 9.9 batters per nine innings, which would be a career high over a full season. His ground ball rate – something that stabilizes relatively quickly in small samples – is also up above 50% for the first time in his career.

It’s hard to say which Volquez the Reds can expect for the stretch run and the playoffs. The velocity is there, but the ERA is elevated. The strikeouts are up, but so are the walks. There are more ground balls than ever, but the ball is still leaving the yard. We’ve seen on multiple occasions that he can still bring it – his 69 game score against Colorado in July and particularly his 84 against Pittsburgh last week were both solid performances, and outside of a few hits, he looked good against Arizona yesterday as well. Recent results are encouraging, but Volquez’s performance has to be considered anything but a sure thing going forward.

Jake Westbrook made his ninth start with the St. Louis Cardinals last night. Fittingly, against the San Diego Padres – the third team in involved in the trade that landed Westbrook in St. Louis. Westbrook did what he’s done since: pitch well and get massive amounts of groundballs.

Wise men say Westbrook always has been a groundball extraordinaire and that would be correct – they are called wise men for a reason. The 32-year-old’s groundball rate has increased from 53% to 62% since switching teams. That number increased after his performance versus the Padres. Eight innings pitched, three strikeouts and walks alike, no earned runs, and 26 balls in play. Seventeen – or 65% — scored as groundballs, with three as liners and the rest as flies.

Many credit Dave Duncan for positively affecting many a loathsome pitcher’s career. Westbrook’s time with Duncan is only in its infancy, but there are some signs in pitch usage that could signify what the future may hold. Whether under Duncan’s advice or demand, Westbrook is throwing more fastballs now than he did with Cleveland. Pitchfx data also has him tossing fewer cutters, although I did not confirm whether that is a classification issue with the sequential increase in sliders.

Beyond peripheral alterations, Westbrook’s performance has changed too. Unlike with the pitch usage metamorphosis, which is hard to detail as a pro, or a con, we know that Westbrook walking fewer batters while striking more out is a good thing. Or, at least, should be a good thing. Westbrook’s xFIP is down exactly a run and his FIP and ERA with subtractions of nearly the same magnitude.

Can he be this good heading forward? Can just a league switch really change who a pitcher is? The National League Central features the two worst team on-base percentages in the National League (Pirates/Astros) with the Cubs not far behind. Three of his seven starts entering the Padres’ game had come against those Pirates/Astros’ squads, raising issues over whether wise men would agree that his numbers contain a good degree of mendacity.

Whatever the answer, the results to date have been worthwhile.