Archive for Mark Mulder

Over the next week or so, we’re going to learn who gets into the Hall of Fame and (likely) the results of Alex Rodriguez‘ suspension appeal. Those are the kinds of stories that tend to bring out a lot of ugliness around the game, so it’s important that we take the opportunity to focus on smaller stories that remind us why we spend so much time following this sport in the first place — things like Mark Mulder signing a contract with the Angels on New Year’s Day, attempting a comeback after not having appeared in the bigs in the previous five seasons.

It’s incredibly unlikely to work, for reasons we’ll get to in a second, but it’s pretty easy to see why the Angels are willing to give this a chance. Mulder’s deal reportedly has zero guaranteed money, making it entirely performance-based, so the risk is low, and despite the well-received additions of Hector Santiago and Tyler Skaggs in the Mark Trumbo trade, the Los Angeles rotation is still thin. Jered Weaver and his terrifying trends remain at the top along with C.J. Wilson, and Garrett Richards figures to slot in somewhere. Joe Blanton will likely be cut loose one way or another, and the Angels may yet be the most likely landing spot for Matt Garza, but for the moment, their improved rotation is one that could still use some help.

So, fine, it’s a chance worth taking. But can Mulder make this work? Has anyone, ever? Read the rest of this entry »

The Los Angeles Angels have experienced a slew of unfortunate injuries on top of the devastating death of young Nick Adenhart. If starting the season without Kelvim Escobar in the rotation wasn’t bad enough, John Lackey and Ervin Santana were both lost to ailments with the jury still out as to when they will return. Though the Scioscia-led Halos always seem to find a way to win, as Dave recently noted, all of this hardship might be too much.

According to Ken Rosenthal, the Angels are currently showing interest in Paul Byrd, Pedro Martinez, and Mark Mulder. Tony Reagins isn’t going to sign all three of these unemployed hurlers but Robo’s report suggested that there is a better than good chance that one of them ends up in California by summer’s end. All three have issues, however, ranging from Byrd’s desire to play to the shaky health histories of both Martinez and Mulder.

Mark Mulder has not pitched a full season since 2005 when a +2.2 win value deemed him a league average pitcher. He had experienced great success in Oakland for several years before going to St. Louis in the Dan Haren deal, but his time in St. Louis worked out about as well as Carl Pavano’s with the Yankees. In 2006, he made 17 starts and posted an ugly 6.01 FIP in 93.1 innings of work, and had made just six total appearances over the last two seasons. At 31 years old, Mulder is not exactly a decrepit southpaw trying to hang on, but while his previous success will garner at least one more opportunity to pitch in the big leagues, why would the Angels, a team ridden with pitching injuries, sign someone with his history?

The same goes for Pedro Martinez, who might be a league average pitcher when healthy but who spends more time on the disabled list than on the roster. With Pedro, some think that signing him for just half of a season will eliminate the wear and tear that leads to his issues, but again, why take that risk?

Byrd publicly stated he was going to sit out the first half of the season, an odd move given that he has not exactly been at the top of everyone’s wishlist. Though durable, Byrd has not been truly effective since the 2005 season with the very same Angels. Strangely enough, Byrd’s strikeout rates experienced a sharp dropoff between the 2004 and 2005 seasons and have never looked back. He no longer fans hitters at a rate in the vicinity of the league average but is still tremendous with limiting free passes.

If the Angels were going to sign any of these three pitchers, given their injury troubles, Byrd makes the most sense given his durability. The bigger question is why would these three cover substantial ground on the Reagins Radar? A guy like Odalis Perez is available, likely for a fraction of the price of Pedro, and with much more of a track record for staying healthy than Mulder. I’m not necessarily advocating that the Angels sign Perez but rather questioning why their search would be somewhat limited to Martinez, Byrd and Mulder. A team suffering from pitching ailments should in no way, shape or form, bring in equally risky players to fill the void.

After it became abundantly clear that the Mets were going in a different direction to fill the back of their rotation, Pedro Martinez had very limited options. Teams certainly had interest in his services but not for the $5-6 mil asking price. Considering that Martinez is closer to replacement level than very productive these days and that he is an incredible injury risk the hesitance made perfect sense. Many advocated the signing of an incentive-laden deal that would pay Martinez handsomely if he actually stayed on the field. Not realizing that he is but a shell of his former self, Martinez rejected the idea of such deals.

When nobody bit, he resorted to using the World Baseball Classic as an audition of sorts. Pedro did not exactly “wow!” anyone in the WBC and continues to remain available. Yet instead of lowering his asking price in the hopes that someone will bite, Pedro is now resigned to the idea that a team will see a pitcher or two go down with injuries and view him as a knight in shining armour… worth $5-6 mil on a guaranteed deal.

Mitch Williams mentioned that the Cleveland Indians might be a fit especially with the uncertainty surrounding someone like Carl Pavano. The Angels are certainly not among the interested parties as they are convinced injured pitchers like Ervin Santana and John Lackey could be ready in the same amount of time that it would take a free agent to prepare. The aforementioned Halo stalwarts certainly project more optimistic lines than Martinez as well.

Beyond Pedro, Odalis Perez is still available, and though it may seem as if I am beating a dead horse here, Perez is still quite productive and incredibly consistent. Over the last four years he has virtually posted identical +1.5 win values. How someone like Tim Redding was given a guaranteed deal by a contender with worse production and a more storied injury history than the equally aged Perez, who couldn’t even get a major league contract from the Washington Nationals will continue to puzzle me.

Pedro Martinez has had a tremendous career. He is a first ballot hall of famer and, in my eyes at least, owner of the two best pitched seasons in the rich history of this sport. He should not be signed, however, for anything above what Odaliz Perez could be signed for given that the latter has proven himself durable over the last several seasons and closer to league average. Pedro might provide better value when healthy but if I am investing a certain amount of money and have two options, my risk-averse personality is going to lean in the direction of the more reliable option. Pedro is one of the best pitchers of all time but he is not anymore, and $5 mil at this point for a fifth starter who might make three starts and then miss the rest of the season just does not make sense for a team, especially given that the teams in question are looking to fill voids that came undone due primarily to injuries.

Today we tackle Mark Mulder.

When the Cardinals dealt Dan Haren (amongst others) for Mulder prior to the 2005 season, they assumed an ace was on the way. In 2005, Mulder looked like a good enough pitcher despite losing a bit in performance, 200-innings, 4.3 FIP, so-so strikeout, walk, and homerun rates, and an increase in groundballs. Then 2006 came, and since here’s a list of injuries Mulder has suffered:

– Left shoulder impingement (6/06)
– Left shoulder surgery (8/06)
– Left shoulder surgery recovery (07)
– Left rotator surgery recovery (3/08)
– Left shoulder strain (7/08)

That’s a scary pattern for someone who just so happens to rely on his left shoulder to throw a baseball. As you would expect, Mulder’s velocity has been inconsistent, jumping from 88 in 2005 to 86 in 2006 back to 87.5 in 2007 and finally to 90 in the 1.2 innings 2008 provided. Changing speeds manually is good, changing speeds because your body requires you to as part of the aging process is okay too, but changing speeds because your body can’t decide how it feels that year is a bit frustrating.

Concerning performance, Mulder has been awful since 2005. In 2006, Mulder had a 6.01 FIP in 93 innings. Only a dozen innings since leaves Marcels without a decent outlook, and the monkey actually has Mulder with a FIP of 5.06 and 55 innings. Frightfully, that would actually be an upgrade over Mulder’s past two seasons. Still, that would not be too much better than a replacement level starter would bring, making the case for signing Mulder a pretty weak one.

As for the talk that Mulder could become a LOOGY, well, there’s the small problem of him not being exceptionally good at pitching to these of the same hand. The graph below is a nice visualization of his splits, but for the most part Mulder held lefties to an OPS between .650 and .700. His career OPS against is a touch higher due to rough seasons recently and in 2000.

I hesitate to state that any player is “done”, but Mulder doesn’t appear to have a ton of pitches left on his shoulder. If injured pitchers are like used cars, then Mulder’s the one with clanks bellowing beneath the hood and leaves a trail of smoke and oil behind him.

Much has been discussed over the last few days regarding the lists I have brought forth involving single-game WPAs exceeding 1.0, as well as the top performances of the year via the same win probability metric. I wanted to clear something up: just because Jon Lester‘s and Carlos Zambrano’s no-hitters do not show up in the top ten, does not mean that these games were inferior to those on the list. To truly determine which games were the best, something as simple as the Game Score would be just fine. The point of the previous posts, though, was to show interesting occurrences of WPA and which performances in 2008 added the most wins to a team.

Some great points evolved in the comments thread of the two-part series evaluating the top ten pitching WPA performances of the season. It is very difficult for a pitcher to post a single-game WPA above 1.0, counting only pitching, unless he manages to log 12+ innings. As we saw last night, of the 13 pitchers to accrue a WPA above 1.0 since 1974, only two featured pitchers logging under 8.2 innings. In fact, one threw 10.2, two threw 11, and five threw 13!

Mark Mulder’s 2005 game was mentioned in the thread as well; in that game, Mulder tossed a 10-inning complete game shutout. He only managed to amass a 0.832 WPA, leading us to wonder which pitchers have come closest in recent history. Was Mulder the closest? Below are the top ten WPA performances from 2000-2008:

Roy Halladay    9/6/03   10 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 1 BB,  5 K   0.936 WPA
AJ Burnett      6/26/05   9 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 2 BB,  7 K   0.904 WPA
Jason Schmidt   5/18/04   9 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 13 K   0.856 WPA
Brad Penny      4/4/02    9 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 3 BB,  3 K   0.834 WPA
Al Leiter       4/18/02   9 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 2 BB,  8 K   0.834 WPA
Johan Santana   8/12/05   9 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 1 BB,  9 K   0.834 WPA
Mark Mulder     4/23/05  10 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 0 BB,  5 K   0.832 WPA
Steve Trachsel  5/6/00    9 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 3 BB, 11 K   0.818 WPA
Brad Radke      9/17/00   9 IP, 8 H, 0 ER, 1 BB,  4 K   0.815 WPA
Curt Schilling  6/7/07    9 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 1 BB,  4 K   0.811 WPA

All of these were complete-game shutouts, with Schilling and Schmidt coming within pitches of a no-hitter. Schilling’s game was the one during which he shook off Jason Varitek before surrendering his lone hit at the end of the game. Mulder’s 2005 game may be the most recent wherein a pitcher logged ten or more innings while shutting the opponent out, but Halladay did the same thing two years earlier, earning about a full tenth of a win more than Mulder.

What happens when we incorporate the Game Score? Looking at the top game scores from 2000-2008, Schmidt’s performance in 2004 ranked ninth, with a 97 GSC, and Halladay’s 2003 performance ranked 97th. None of the others in the top ten via WPA finished amongst the top 100 game scores this decade. When evaluating single-game performances, the game score is likely the best way to do so, or at least the WPA/LI, but it is nevertheless interesting to see which games brought with them the most added wins to a team.