Dodgers Risk Little on Garland
Outside of the Javier Vazquez and Tsuyoshi Nishioka news, the only move of note over the holiday was the signing of starter Jon Garland by the Los Angeles Dodgers to a one year, $5 million deal. Garland moves from divisional foe San Diego, where he posted good traditional numbers (14-12, 3.47 ERA) in exactly 200 innings with the Padres.
Garland is the quintessential “innings-eater.”
The 31-year-old has now thrown at least 190 innings in every season since 2002, Garland’s third season as a Major Leaguer. Perhaps not coincidentally, Garland’s new contract contains a vesting option for $8 million dollars if he managers to reach that mark for a 10th straight time.
Despite the very good traditional numbers and even decent raw peripherals (4.41 FIP and a career high 6.1 K/9), Garland may have had the worst season of his career in 2010. As we’ve seen with countless pitchers, Garland was undoubtedly aided by the cavernous PETCO Park. Even with over half of his innings coming at home, his HR/FB rate was still a roughly average 11%, resulting in a good – but not awe-inspiring – 0.9 HR/9. We also can’t ignore the impact of the park on plate statistics (strikeout and walk rates). According to StatCorner’s park factors, strikeouts are heavily inflated at PETCO – reflected in Garland’s 2010 numbers – as are walks, although to a lesser extent. Garland’s 3.9 BB/9 was the highest of his career and the first time since 2004 that he even walked more than three batters every nine innings – the park can’t account for that kind of inflation completely.
Even though Garland’s raw numbers look good, the effects of the park make them pedestrian, even in comparison to the rest of Garland’s career. Despite this, Garland still managed to post just under 1.0 WAR due to his durability. Garland won’t turn 32 until late in the 2011 season, so his 2010 season may be a signal of his decline phase. But it seems equally likely that he could also have three or four productive seasons remaining. Based on his solid 2008 and 2009 – 4.2 combined WAR – Garland is a good bet to produce at least one win above replacement in 2011, essentially the value of what the Dodgers will play him. As the fifth starter, many teams can (and will) do worse. Outside of his performance, Garland also brings decent depth to the Dodgers rotation, making this low-risk move a no-brainer for Los Angleles and Ned Colletti.
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Good signing by the Dodgers. If he is in his decline and isn’t playing close to the 2 WAR level it will be easy enough for them to skip him in the rotation a few times late in the season to make sure that the option doesn’t vest.
nice piece, Jack. I was looking at him the other day and noticed a career low BABIP, career high strand rate and GB%. If his HR/FB holds steady and the remainder regress to norms… yeesh.
This is the type of pitcher that the Dodgers need. An innings eater.
Unless Garland pitches 2 WAR each of the next two years, this is a bad deal. Your essentially paying him the maximum value of a two WAR player. It would be so much easier to add 6 or 8 guys (hypothetically) on minor league deals and hope one of them sticks while saving 14 million dollars. My guess here is that Colletti is looking to trade Billingsley. I’m sure he’s at least shopping for an affordable left fielder/ first baseman, when he should just move Ethier to left and shop for a center/right fielder.
Except that Garland adds value by reducing the innings pitched by Clayton Kershaw, and, to a lesser extent, Chad Billingsley. If you can go to a true 5 man rotation, you reduce the innings on those far more valuable arms and Garland is worth more than his WAR. Also, I think Garland’s WAR was a little too weighed down by park factors, especially considering he will be turning around and going back into another big park.
Only 12 pitchers have thrown 1400+ innings since the start of 2004. Jon Garland will be paid the second-least among them, behind only Livan Hernandez. Javier Vazquez just signed for $~7MM, and after that, the next cheapest for 2011 is Bronson Arroyo at $13MM. I’m thinking Garland, Hernandez, and Vazquez might want to have talks with their agents about not getting longer deals earlier in their careers. I apologize in advance for the lack of formatting.
IP—-ERA+-AGE–SAL-NAME———-
1539.0 129 30 23.00 CC Sabathia
1529.1 118 31 14.00 Mark Buerhle
1513.0 131 33 16.00 Roy Oswalt
1512.1 151 31 22.50 Johan Santana
1497.0 95 35 ~1.50 Livan Hernandez
1471.1 111 33 13.00 Bronson Arroyo
1458.1 106 31 5.00 Jon Garland
1455.2 145 33 20.00 Roy Halladay
1430.1 103 32 18.50 Barry Zito
1421.1 107 37 15.00 Derek Lowe
1418.0 103 34 Javier Vazquez
1403.2 117 32 15.25 John Lackey
Garland had an amazing early career deal that saw him being paid 3/29 for his last year of arb and first 2 years of free agency.
What was wrong with John Ely, other than the woeful LAD outfield defense?
Ely’s problem was his command inside the strike zone. He always throws strikes, but his fastball just isn’t hard enough to miss either the corners or the high and low parts of the zone. Without establishing the fastball, his wicked change isn’t effective, and his curve is really just a show-me pitch that drops in to a batter looking for the change.
The other issue is that he isn’t established as an innings eater yet and certainly can be aided by more development.
Could someone explain, or link to a good explanation, how park factors effect strikeout and BB numbers?