Hope you all had an excellent Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Festivus. Now that the year is almost at end, it’s time to reflect… Aw, to heck with that. I’m just going to talk about a bunch of different stuff that I’ve been meaning to get to for a while but for one reason or another haven’t. So if you notice that today’s entry is more disjointed than usual, rest assured, it’s all in your head.

More Rotation Stuff

I thought I’d take a closer look at the contestants for the #5 spot in the 2004 Padres rotation. These are the combined numbers from 2000 to 2003 for each of the three pitchers, prorated to 200 innings for easier comparison.

           IP   H HR BB  SO  ERA
Hitchcock 200 233 27 71 154 5.13
Jarvis    200 219 38 57 122 5.29
Valdes    200 221 31 57 111 4.90

   H/9 HR/9 BB/9 SO/9 SO/BB
 10.47 1.23 3.22 6.95  2.16
  9.84 1.72 2.56 5.50  2.15
  9.95 1.41 2.57 5.00  1.95

A few things stand out for me. First, Hitchcock gives up a ton of hits. The other two give up plenty, but Hitchcock really has gotten hit hard over the past four years. Second, all three of these guys are prone to the long ball, but Jarvis’ home run rate is astronomical. Good thing he’s got the best control of the bunch. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, note that Hitchock is the leader in strikeouts per nine by a wide margin. This seems a little weird when taken together with his high hit rate, but the fact that he’s still able to miss bats on occasion gives me cause for (possibly misguided) hope. More accurately, the fact that both Jarvis and Valdes fall well short of six punchouts per nine over the past four seasons gives me great cause for concern. I just don’t see either of them improving a whole lot, whereas a healthy Hitchcock just might give some quality innings at the back end of the rotation.

At any rate, I’ve probably dwelt on this aspect of the upcoming season too long already. Unless someone presents me with a compelling reason to continue the discussion, I’ll drop it until spring training, when we’ll have more information.

Mailbag: Speaking of Dead Horses

I hesitate to go where I’m about to, but the letters I received on this were pretty interesting to me and may also be to you. That’s right, it’s time to get our Gary Bennett freak on, one last time.

The first letter comes from Chris Garber, who writes:

Just read the mailbag discussion of Gary Bennett’s alleged worth, as measured by “catcher’s ERA.”

The problem with this stat, as I understand it, is that there’s no real year-to-year correlation – which is what we’d expect if it was measuring a player’s actual skill, and not just luck (or the relative crappiness of his catching partner).

I took a quick look at Bennett. Surprisingly, 2003 was his first full season where his CERA was actually better than his teammates.

If anything, Bennett proves the value of CERA – but that his 2003 (-1.03) season was a total anomaly.

YR   Team  ERA (GB CERA) Diff
2002 COL  5.33 (5.20)   +0.13
2001 COL  5.64 (5.29)   +0.35*
2001 PHI  4.41 (4.15)   +0.26*
2000 PHI  5.12 (4.77)   +0.35
1999 PHI  4.00 (4.93)   -0.93**

*2001 splits are Bennett’s; team ERAs are full-season.
**25 games.

Point? Bennett’s a prodigious out-machine, and Bochy’s fetish for limp-hitting catchers notwithstanding, GB’s not worth having – for any reason. Still better than Ausmus, though.

Dude, that is a seriously harsh indictment of Ausmus. Can’t say that I disagree with it, though. At least Bennett is relatively cheap, eh?

Less flippantly, I’d like to key in on this phrase from Chris’ letter: "If anything, Bennett proves the value of CERA – but that his 03 (-1.03) season was a total anomaly" (emphasis mine).

The reason for my emphasis is our next letter, written by Soto Rey Smith:

In response to Bennett’s CERA/Team ERA differential, that kinda intrigued me as well, so I was doing some research but to little avail. I turned to SABR to see if anyone had ever posted a 1.00+ differential; here’s an excerpt from the response I got:

To be considered a full-time catcher, a guy has to have caught 50% or more of his team’s games. This would make a full-time catcher season about 700 innings caught. If this alone is the criteria then Gary Bennett is UNIQUE (for the years 1990-2003). The next closest guy to him is Dave Nilsson in 1999 (MIL) with a differential of -.509 (CERA of 4.571 and TERA of 5.080). It must be noted that during the data period there are only 271 catcher seasons that qualify (out of the 3700+).

CERA has been found to be all but completely meaningless, but to post a differential almost double that of the highest in the last 13 years is at least interesting.

Interesting? That’s an understatement. This is downright freakish in my book. As Chris noted earlier, it’s still not a compelling reason to give Bennett material playing time. It will be interesting to see how the Brewers’ staff responds to Bennett’s presence and also how the Pads respond to Ramon Hernandez.

Speaking of which, one of my minor projects this off-season was to look at each of the big three starting pitchers and see how they did working with Bennett versus other catchers. Can you guess what’s coming next? Note that IP corresponds to the number of innings the pitcher worked in games started by a particular catcher. If, for example, Bennett came out of a game in the fifth inning and Eaton came out in the seventh, Bennett still gets credit for Eaton’s final two innings. Hey, how much time do you think I have here? Seriously, I doubt there is enough of a discrepancy to drastically alter our findings. With that disclaimer out of the way, here we go:

Adam Eaton

            IP   H HR BB SO  ERA
Bennett  145.0 135 18 50 99 3.91
others    38.0  38  2 18 47 4.74

 H/9 HR/9 BB/9  SO/9 SO/BB GB/FB  P/G AGS*
8.38 1.12 3.10  6.14  1.98  1.16 96.6 52.0
9.00 0.47 4.26 11.13  2.61  1.89 97.5 50.7

*Average game score

This is fascinating. It’s an extremely limited sample, but check this out. Although Eaton’s ERA was almost a full run higher when catchers other than Bennett were behind the dish, his peripherals are completely different. Look at the strikeout numbers. His 12-punchout effort at Wrigley April 23 came with Michael Rivera catching. The other two times Rivera caught Eaton, he got shelled, surrendering five runs each to the Pirates and Brewers.

One other bit of encouraging news, although it must be tempered by the sample size, is that some of Eaton’s best work came with Wiki Gonzalez behind the plate. That only happened twice last year, but the results were solid (2.45 ERA in 11 innings, 2.83 GB/FB ratio). I also like the fact that Eaton induced more ground balls with other catchers. With the Pads’ current outfield alignment, he’ll need to continue that trend.

Bottom line: The ERA differential looks like a fluke. Eaton’s overall numbers were not better with Bennett behind the plate.

Brian Lawrence

            IP   H HR BB SO  ERA
Bennett  154.2 137 18 38 82 3.20
others    50.0  66  9 19 27 7.02

  H/9 HR/9 BB/9 SO/9 SO/BB GB/FB  P/G AGS*
 7.97 1.05 2.21 4.77  2.16  1.72 94.8 55.7
11.88 1.62 3.42 4.86  1.42  1.31 93.0 37.3

*Average game score

Uh-oh, that’s not good. Almost four more hits and runs per game, a roughly 50% increase in homers and walks, and a weaker groundball/flyball ratio without Bennett. Check out this stretch from April 27 to May 18, when Bennett was on the DL:

G IP  H HR BB SO  ERA
5 26 37  4 12 10 8.31

Three of those five starts, including the 10-run debacle at Montreal May 8, came with Rivera catching. Bennett returns for Lawrence’s May 24 start at Arizona: complete game 2-hitter.

Lawrence allowed six or more runs in a start five times in 2004: twice with Ojeda behind the dish (May 18, vs Atl; Jul 30, at Pit), once with Gonzalez (Apr 27, at Cin), once with Rivera (May 8, at Mon), and once–which can be partially excused by Coors Field–with Bennett (Jun 19, at Col).

Bennett also caught each of Lawrence’s final 10 starts (64.1 IP, 2.66 ERA), when the latter reduced his season ERA from 4.86 to 4.19.

Bottom line: Here’s to hoping that (a) this is a small-sample fluke or (b) Lawrence is able to establish a similar rapport with Hernandez that he seemed to have with Bennett. I haven’t seen many studies on a catcher’s impact on a pitcher, but I’d be lying if I said this didn’t concern me in the least.

Jake Peavy

            IP   H HR BB  SO  ERA
Bennett  146.0 124 22 56 113 3.58
others    48.2  49 11 26  43 5.73

 H/9 HR/9 BB/9 SO/9 SO/BB GB/FB   P/G AGS*
7.64 1.36 3.45 6.97  2.02  0.94 100.8 54.4
9.06 2.03 4.81 7.95  1.65  1.07  98.2 45.9

*Average game score

Bennett caught all of Peavy’s final 20 starts. The last catcher other than Bennett to hook up with Peavy was Ojeda on June 1. Peavy allowed seven runs to Arizona in a 10-4 loss that day.

Without Bennett, Peavy allowed over two runs more per game. He was harder hit (look at the hits per nine and particularly the homers per nine) and had weaker command. Guess letting the kid work with Bennett from June on wasn’t such a bad idea.

Bottom line: Peavy is the one I would’ve expected be affected most, but the numbers don’t bear that out. Clearly he performed a lot better when Bennett was behind the dish, but I wonder what kind of impact any other veteran backstop would have had. For some reason, I’m not as concerned about Peavy as I am about Lawrence. I think it has something to do with the fact that I’d expect this out of an inexperienced young pitcher who is still learning his craft and can benefit from the calming influence of an established game caller. I don’t anticipate Peavy suffering nearly as much from the loss of Bennett as last year’s numbers might lead one to believe he would.

That’s all for now. We started out today looking at the least exciting part of the rotation and worked our way up to the most dynamic. Next time, we’ll break down Peavy’s 2003 season even further. Until then, keep warm and think baseball thoughts…