Regression Will Find You

As we head into the all-star break, the pause gives us a chance to look at some players who have had a few months worth of performance that we just don’t think they can sustain – in short, they’re poised to regress to the mean, for one reason or another. For the second half of 2008, here’s the pitching staff for the All Regression Squad:

Justin Duchscherer: .216 BABIP, 4.5% HR/FB.

Duke’s first half is a good story, and he’s pitched very well at times, but there’s no way those two numbers are sustainable. He won’t implode, but he’s not going to keep his ERA under 2.00 all year.

Gavin Floyd: 3.69 ERA, 5.09 FIP.

Good luck keeping that BABIP at .226, and when it inevitably rises, so too will the curtain on what artificially appears to be Floyd’s breakout year.

Dana Eveland: 3.7% HR/FB rate.

I don’t care how big your home park is, that just can’t last. With his command problems, the depressed home run rate is really the driving force behind his success – when that goes, he’s going to be in trouble.

Jake Peavy: 83.7% LOB%.

Peavy is awesome, but he can’t keep stranding runners like this. No one can. He’s still going to be very good, but not quite this good.

Scott Olsen: 3.77 ERA, 5.00 FIP.

His velocity is gone, his strikeout rate is gone, his groundball rate is gone. It’s all smoke and mirrors at this point, and there’s just no way he keeps getting people out with the repertoire he’s currently throwing.