Archive for Jeremy Bonderman

The Royals officially released Kyle Davies earlier this week following poor performances in parts of five seasons. Acquired from the Braves in exchange for half of Octavio Dotel’s 2007 season, Davies seemed like a solid return. He threw hard, complemented the heater with a decent yet underwhelming curve, and was not yet eligible for arbitration. In other words, he was exactly the type of project the Royals were looking for. While the trade itself was good for the team at the time, Davies has arguably been the worst regular starter in baseball over the last five seasons. His presence on the Royals roster this season, as well as his career numbers, invites discussion regarding tendering contracts, building rosters and large gaps between ERA and estimators.

Since debuting in 2005, Davies has thrown 768 innings with below average peripherals, poor controllable skill marks and abysmal run prevention rates. He has a career 6.4 K/9 and 4.3 BB/9, and a 39 percent groundball rate. He doesn’t miss many bats, exhibits poor control and struggles to keep the ball on the ground. The anti-Halladay, if you will. He stranded runners at a meager 67 percent clip, which hurt mightily given his 1.62 WHIP and .318 batting average on balls in play. Plenty got on and plenty came around to score, translating to a 5.59 ERA. Though his xFIP and SIERA were a bit kinder — they are identical at 4.91 — they didn’t exactly vouch for his performance.

Since 2007, the year he was traded to the Royals, there are 83 pitchers to throw 600+ innings. Davies has the sixth lowest WAR (5.6), the worst ERA (5.40), third worst SIERA (4.87), fifth highest BABIP (.313), second worst WHIP (1.58) and second worst strand rate (66.8 percent). No matter how one slices it, Davies has been the, or one of the, worst starting pitchers in baseball.  Read the rest of this entry »

Back in 2003, the Detroit Tigers went 43-119, narrowly avoiding a tie with the expansion 1962 New York Mets for the most losses since 1900. Dmitri Young proved to be their top hitter with just +2.1 wins added, and Nate Cornejo led the pitching staff at +1.9 wins. At most, their top two players were league average. Hope sprung eternal in the motor city, however, thanks to the promising young arms of Mike Maroth, Nate Robertson, Nate Cornejo, And Jeremy Bonderman. Suffice it to say, none of the four have lived up to the hype sent their way several years ago. They might have a better track record than the Bill Pulsipher/Jason Isringhausen/Paul Wilson triumvirate of the Mets in the mid-90s, but the fearsome foursome has not met expectations.

Maroth became famous for losing 21 games, becoming the first pitcher to surpass the 20-loss plateau in over two decades. Many felt his varied repertoire, precision control, and ability to induce grounders would lead to a long and prosperous career. They were wrong, primarily because his putrid strikeout rates never factored into the equations. Throughout his career, Maroth’s K/9 has topped out at 4.95, though his career rate is lower at 4.34. He performed quite well in 2004-05, producing a sum of +5.2 wins, but injuries and the inability to miss bats finally caught up with Maroth in 2006, and he is yet to regain form. After splitting time with the Tigers and Cardinals in 2007, Maroth spent last season in the Royals farm system. He figures to repeat the act with the Blue Jays this season, though surgery may in fact end any chance of making the roster. This could very well be his last hoorah.

Teammate Bonderman graduated with a Masters in Underperforming from the JVIOSPBPR – the Javier Vazquez Institute of Solid Peripherals But Poor Results. From 2003-07, Bonderman never made less than 28 starts or pitched fewer than 162 innings. With a K/9 comfortably above 7.0 Bonderman also decided to limit free passes, reducing his walk rate from 3.5 to 2.5 per nine. Because of this, his win values have overstated actual contribution, similarly to Vazquez himself. Not that Bonderman has struggled, but his average of +3.4 wins/yr might not be a completely accurate depiction of his performance. Last season, things ironically went in reverse, as his 4.29 ERA bested a 5.18 FIP. He missed most of the 2008 season with injuries, however, and his return date is still up in the air.

Cornejo, the aforementioned top pitcher of that 2003 squad, managed just five appearances the following season, largely ineffective, before injuries got the best of him and forced an early retirement. His first name doppleganger, Nate Robertson, seems to be a mix of Maroth and Bonderman, posting average strikeout and walk rates, keeping balls on the ground, throwing strikes, and matching up ERAs and FIPs more closely. After struggling in 2003, Robertson averaged approximately +2.3 wins/yr from 2004-07, showing signs of improvement in a few areas but consistently serving as that slightly above average pitcher capable of toeing the rubber and logging innings with regular consistency. His performance dropped to just +1.2 wins last season in 28 starts thanks to a .343 BABIP, a reduced strikeout rate, increased walk rate, and higher home run rate. In actuality, the HR/9 of 1.39 is much closer to seasons past; the 1.11 in 2006 is the outlier.

Robertson recently stated that his time with the Tigers may be nearing its end given his demotion to the bullpen, meaning that Bonderman could be the lone remaining member of this particular prospect quartet. Hopefully he can brush aside the injuries that hindered last season’s production and get his career back on track, but this definitely goes to show how nothing is ever a sure thing. For every solid pitching prospect there are likely 3-4 that fall by the wayside. For Tigers fans everywhere, here’s to hoping that Rick Porcello kid does not fall into the same category as any of these four pitchers.

A conundrum is loosely defined as anything that puzzles… so it makes perfect sense to use the term when describing the anomaly present in the ERA and FIPs of both Carlos Zambrano and Jeremy Bonderman. We’ve written about pitchers either outperforming their FIP or failing to live up to it plenty of times here, but, in probing the last three calendar years feature recently instituted on the leaders page, it appears that things tend to even out a bit. Except, of course, with regards to Zambrano and Bonderman.

Sixty starting pitchers qualified for inclusion over the last three calendar years and they produced the following averages:

ERA-FIP: 0.12
BABIP: .303
LOB: 71.8%
K/BB: 2.48
HR/9: 0.98

One standard deviation of the ERA-FIP is 0.28, meaning we can expect about 2/3 of the data to fall within the -0.16 to 0.40 range; additionally, 95% of the data can be expected to fall within the -0.44 to 0.68 range. Of the group of sixty pitchers, just two fell beyond the 95% confidence interval: Carlos Zambrano at -0.53 and Jeremy Bonderman at 0.83.

Now, one potential reason that someone like Zambrano consistently posts better ERAs than his FIP would suggest could deal with his BABIP: the average BABIP of this group in this span is .303 and Zambrano comes in at .273, a full thirty points lower. On the other end of the spectrum, Bonderman comes in at .325, over twenty points higher. In fact, when looking at the eighteen pitchers who fell beyond one standard deviation of the ERA-FIP mean, the nine higher than 0.40 ranged from .297-.332 in BABIP while those below -0.16 ranged between .269-.309.

I actually discovered whilst writing this post that a question regarding Zambrano outperforming his FIP was posed in the Inside the Book mailbag, to which MGL mentioned the possibility of him posting a lower than average BABIP after concluding that it is definitely possible for certain pitchers to post certain types of BABIPs. This is definitely the case. As MGL also noted in the mailbag, “FIP is a very good at eliminating the noise in BABIP, which allows us to get a better estimate of a pitcher’s run prevention skill, in the short run. In the long run, ERA, RA or ERC is MUCH better because it captures the differences in BABIP skill among pitchers, as well as the other things I mentioned above that contribute to a pitcher’s run prevention skill but are not addressed at all in FIP (like WP rate).”

So, one reason these two guys are constantly posting ERAs much better or worse than their FIP would suggest could be that they have posted above or below average BABIPs with enough regularity to show they have some type of control over it; in that regard, their ERA would be a better indicator of run prevention. Then again, they might not have control over their BABIP and this could all even out, but it would seem that this is a very likely cause at this juncture.

The words flounder and founder are often misused in the English language (including by me), as they sound similar and actually have meanings that aren’t that different. Floundering means “to struggle to move or stay upright, especially in water”, while foundering means “to sink below the surface of the water”. Essentially, floundering is the struggle to succeed while foundering is just failing to succeed. What does any of this have to do with baseball?

Well, Jeremy Bonderman is currently floundering, and it’s raising questions whether his career is on the fast track to foundering. He’s had a very interesting career path, reaching the majors at age 20 as a highly regarded prospect, but then proceeding to lose 19 games as a rookie that year. From 2003 to 2006, he steadily improved, taking his FIP from 4.69 to 3.29, and after using his power stuff to post one of the better seasons in the American League at the age of 24, he looked like a guy who had turned into a young all-star hurler.

However, the last two years have seen a regression in both stuff and performance. His average fastball velocity now sits at just 90.7 MPH, down from the 93.3 MPH mark he notched in 2006. He now throws about as hard as Kevin Millwood and Braden Looper, when he used to throw as hard as Matt Cain and Kelvim Escobar. The loss of velocity is clearly manifest in his strikeout rate.

His strikeouts are way down (5.0 K/9) and his walks are way up (5.8 BB/9), and when you combine that information with the velocity drop, you have to wonder if he’s healthy. Of course, we’ve seen similar problems with Justin Verlander this year, so perhaps the Detroit coaching staff might want to see if there’s something going on with their young starters and see if it’s fixable. If it’s not, Bonderman’s floundering could easily become foundering, and a once promising young pitcher could be seeing the decline of his career set in a little earlier than hoped.