Oft-Injured SP Profile: Carl Pavano

Like most recent off-seasons, there’s no shortage of injury prone starting pitchers hobbling around for another gig. Over the next week I’m going to look at a few of the more intriguing options to see what teams should expect and whether a signing would be a wise investment. Since poster boy Mike Hampton is off the market, we’ll instead begin with the “new era” Hampton, former Yankees pitcher Carl Pavano.

When Pavano signed for four years and roughly 40 million in December 2004, the Yankees expected Pavano and fellow free agent signing Jaret Wright to transform their lacking rotation. Although there was no way of knowing at the time, Pavano would only make a total of 30 starts for the Yankees. Pavano was fresh off back-to-back 200+ innings seasons, a sixth-place finish in the National League Cy Young voting, an all-star appearance, and a pretty win-loss record that mystified the New York media.

A myriad of injuries would strike Pavano, beginning with shoulder tendonitis in July 2005 that effectively ended his season. Back strains, forearm tightness, elbow surgery, and just about any other injury you can name kept Pavano out in 2006 and most of 2007. Pavano would make his return from surgery in August 2008, starting seven games without much success.

Pavano has always relied heavily on his fastball, throwing it more than 50% in each of his past three seasons, including 63.5% in 2005. Unfortunately, it appears he’s lost a few ticks since then, with his average fastball coming in just shy of 88, rather than 90. A mixture of sliders, changes, and split-fingered fastballs make up the other 40% of Pavano’s pitches. While Pavano was never much of a strikeout pitcher to begin with, his per nine ratios should exceed 2008’s 3.93. It’s worth noting that Pavano’s swinging strike rates were on par with his 2005 totals, that indicates that at least some of the stuff that made him successful is still there.

Generally, the question that needs to be answered in cases like this concerns the percentage of playing time (or number of innings) makes this player a wise investment. For that, we turn to Marcels. The monkey has Pavano pitching 78 innings with a 4.60 FIP. That is an optimistic projection and one not completely based in reality, considering Pavano hasn’t thrown that many innings combined since 2006. For the sake of argument, if Pavano does reach such a point he’ll be worth roughly a win over a replacement level starter, and if he can give a team 100 innings around his career FIP (4.21), he’ll be a worthwhile pick-up out of the junkyard.