Projecting Chris Carpenter
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Going into this season, several Cardinal players
have a swirl of different projections around them. The injury histories of Matt Morris and Larry Walker
leave us with little idea of how they will perform, and the strange story of Rick Ankiel
defies prediction; Yaider Molina is
young and Reggie
Sanders is old, Mark
Grudzielanek is a former bench player, Julian Tavarez is
just crazy. But what about another
Cardinal, forgotten about in the postseason, fallen prey to a rare injury, but
heavily counted on for this season?
Chris Carpenter
started his pro career well, the Jay’s number one pick in 1993, fresh out of
high school and lighting up the radar gun. He struggled early on his call ups to the majors, but showed
flashed of brilliance over short stretches sandwiched between bouts of
inconsistency. He finally seemed
to put it all together in 2001 when he struck out 157 in 215.2 innings, with an
ERA of 4.09 and a WHIP of 1.41, playing half of his games in the Skydome, which
played as an extreme hitters park in 2001. He still walked too many (75) and gave up too many homeruns
(29), but the future was bright for the 26 year old. However, elbow surgery derailed his pitching and bought him
a ticket out of Canada. Picked up two years ago as a project
for Dave Duncan
to spend his time on, he never managed to pitch for the team in 2003. However, he looked great in spring
training last year and made the team as a top starter. He didn’t disappoint, either, striking
out 152 in 182 innings with a 3.46 and an ace-like 1.14 WHIP before his late
season injury.
However, going into this
season, most projections for him call for steps back that would make him a good
pitcher, but not great. I’ve
assembled some of the predictions I’ve found for him (plus his performance in
2001 and 2004):
|
Source |
G |
IP |
H |
BB |
SO |
ERA |
WHIP |
W |
HR |
K/9 |
K/BB |
|
2001 |
34 |
215.2 |
229 |
75 |
157 |
4.09 |
1.41 |
11 |
29 |
6.55 |
2.1 |
|
2004 |
28 |
182 |
169 |
38 |
152 |
3.46 |
1.14 |
15 |
24 |
7.52 |
4.0 |
|
PECOTA |
27 |
164 |
165 |
45 |
119 |
3.95 |
1.28 |
|
19 |
6.53 |
2.6 |
|
Sporting
News |
30 |
192 |
182 |
42 |
167 |
3.65 |
1.16 |
17 |
|
7.83 |
4.0 |
|
MLB
Yearbook |
27 |
170 |
165 |
42 |
133 |
3.86 |
1.22 |
12 |
|
7.04 |
3.2 |
|
Rotoworld.com |
|
187 |
|
|
146 |
3.85 |
1.30 |
14 |
|
7.03 |
|
|
CBS
Sportsline |
33 |
200 |
185 |
44 |
165 |
3.83 |
1.15 |
17 |
|
7.43 |
3.8 |
|
ESPN
Fantasy |
|
169 |
|
|
136 |
3.83 |
1.25 |
13 |
|
7.24 |
|
|
BP
Projections (not PECOTA) |
175 |
175 |
48 |
127 |
3.91 |
1.28 |
12 |
20 |
6.53 |
2.6 |
|
The Sporting News is the
most optimistic, predicting an increase in his strikeout rate, and keeping his
low walk rate. Only CBS Sportsline
projects a full season of pitching, giving him 33 starts, and 200 innings
pitched. The injury last season
that cost him the last month and the entire playoffs is very rare, with only
the similar injury to Brad Penny the
week before as a precedent. Reports
out of spring training so far are positive, and the low workload last season may
have reduced the stress on his rehabbed arm.
Baseball Prospectus
fantasy predictions and PECOTA are the most negative, looking for Carp to give
back not only all of the improvement that he made last season over 2001, but to
actually be worse than in his final full season with the Blue Jays. Since a 2001 AL team scored 0.24 runs
per game more than the average 2004 NL team, both predictions would be an ERA
of about 4.15-4.19 if he was still with the Jays without park adjustment, or
benefit of pitching in front of a better defense. It’s not clear if the BP fantasy projections are based on
PECOTA, but it seems probable. For
all of BP’s boasting, all PECOTA seems to do for established players is predict
that they’ll do about 10% worse in about 90% of the playing time. Why this
doesn’t bother anyone else is beyond me.
For the other systems,
they for the most part are just the average of between Carp’s 2001 and 2004
seasons, which is generally the way of most predictive tools, which rarely
predict breakouts or collapses.
Much the same as an LA
weatherman, every tomorrow is going to be 78 and sunny.
However, should be
expect a regression to the mean? Was
his 2004 a huge leap beyond what he had done previously that would lead us to believe
it was a career year and likely unrepeatable? Last season his WHIP was 1.14, which if anything says that
his ERA could decline. His career
numbers appear worse than last year’s performance, mostly from a rather poor
BB/9 of a little over 3 in his time in Toronto. His increase in K/9 last year was probably from facing
pitchers, and the decline in BAA can be attributed to simply pitching in front
of a better defense. His FIP (Fielding
Independent Pitching, a park and league adjusted stat that projects a pitchers
ERA in front of an average defense from the Hardball Times) last year was 3.87, which
is just about the same as his 2001 ERA after you adjust for league and
ballpark. This means that the lion’s
share of his ERA improvement came from pitching in front of the excellent
Cardinals defense. Like Jason Marquis
(and hopefully Mark
Mulder) he induces more groundballs than average and benefits from the
outstanding infield. Overall, the
largest intrinsic change in Carpenter was dropping his BB/9 by about 1.3,
keeping the damage from his above average number of homeruns from hurting too
much.
As long as he doesn't
start walking people again, or have another injury, he should surpass the
PECOTA and BP projections, though the effect of the new middle of the infield
on the groundball pitchers on the staff remains to be seen. The consensus
around the Cards Blog-o-sphere seems to be a slight upgrade in Grudzielanek and
a massive downgrade with the short range of Eckstein. This puts a premium on the staff’s strikeouts, which if
Carpenter can hold onto his strikeout rate won’t be crippling.
I’ve already gone on record here
predicting Carpenter’s performance as 18/160/0/3.45/1.20 (W/K/SV/ERA/WHIP), and
I challenge Nate Silver and his PECOTA automaton
to a wager over Chris Carpenter with a six pack of Mountain Dew to the victor.