It's "fewer innings." Things that can be counted are "fewer," things that can be measured more by volume are "less": less alcohol, fewer beers; less rain, fewer raindrops.

Nice analysis, by the way.

As I've noted elsewhere, any team that develops a good AAA starter with high K rates who's shown good control by age 22 or 23 almost always inserts him into their rotation. That's why good young pitchers exist---someone takes a chance on them, and understands that a 1-3, 5.40 April may not be so bad if it means the pitcher will log 180 ip against MLB hitters and be maturing into a stud.

The Cardinals, for some reason, aren't one of those teams.

They see a guy like Danny Haren---who, as a 23-yr-old, had struck out 10.5 per 9 at AAA Memphis in 2004 and had a nearly 4-to-1 K-to-BB ratio---as trade bait.

So they trade him, and Haren finished 6th in the AL in K's in 2005 and in the top 10 in K-to-BB. While Oakland got 217 innings out of a 24 year old, we got 205 ip out of his replacement, a 28 year old, and thus, the trend of our graph curve is reinforced.

I know about the counting rule for fewer versus less. But innings seem like something of a volume stat to me. You don't usually talk about 1/3 of a beer or 1/3 of a raindrop.

With the Nelson news, I dropped some discussion of Reyes. With his medical history, they need another starter. The Ponson signing seems less a reflection on Reyes to me than a vote of no-confidence on Wainwright. To a much lesser extent that's the case with Nelson as well.

Haren seems a lot more durable than Reyes. MGL has said the Cardinals' scouts didn't think much of Haren. In retrospect that speaks more to the scouts' ability than to Haren's. I'd guess the Cardinals lack confidence in their ability to cultivate young major league pitchers. That's justifiable unfortunately.

All in all, I'm OK with the Birds approach to the 2006 rotation (as I understand it): They've got the four guys back from last year, all of whom were no worse than league average, and whom they can expect to be no worse than league average in 2006.

For the fifth spot they have a promising 24-yr-old arm with great upside---probably the second best stuff on the rotation were he to be in it. He has durability issues, and just two years of pro experience, so rather than simply annointing him as the fifth starter, there's a Plan B: a potentially salvageable "project" pitcher who's been decent when healthy/sober and whose style meshes with that of the rest of the rotation. The Plan B pitcher (Ponson) wouldn't need to be "lights out"; he'd just need to throw league-average innings for 30 starts to replace what we've been getting from Matt Morris.

The hope is that one of the two pans out... if both do well, then that's just that much more depth and/or trade bait (Marquis?) with which to strengthen the team this summer....

Is Marquis' new 5.15 million dollar contract for 2006 (announced this morning) a hindrance to trading him later this year?

Just wondering, not necessarily saying I want him traded.

TSF

Excellent stuff Rob. I recall reding a Bill James piece years ago wherein he argued, fairly convincingly, that the average peak year for pitchers is at age 31. Statistically, more pitchers have had their "career year" at age 31 than at any other year. (Gibson '68 was 32, Carpenter '05 was 30, Tudor '85 was 31, Carlton '77 was 32, etc.) So, armed with that data, the strategy of loading up on guys at or very near 31 seems to make sense. If most guys peak at that age, why not get lots of guys at that age? Seems logical, which is why I am still confused at the fascination with, and admiration of, Herzog's use of younger guys.

I think it's only considered fascinating because La Russa does it so rarely. I agree that it's good to load up on guys about to hit their peaks, but is peak Ponson going to be as good as rookie Reyes in this case?

Flynn, the reason why it's tough to load up on those guys is that by the time they're 30-31, they're really expensive, typically. Look at all the mediocre middle-of-the-rotation types that got $9 million/year this winter... for $45 million you could have five mediocre innings munchers....

I'd rather have a couple guys like Dontrelle and Zambrano, guys 24 yrs old who've alreday been good and who are likely to be good (and relatively inexpensive) for a few more years...

Salvo,
Well of course everyone wants a Zambrano or a Willis on their team. No brainer. And we all want Reyes to be the guy like that on our team. That's fine.

And of course I'm well aware of how the economics of it all in today's game makes loading up with peak-year guys expensive. On that topic: it strikes me (and many others, as this is sort of obvious)as very savvy of the Cardinals to semi-cheaply acquire guys who are approaching 31 but have had perhaps a rocky road in their late 20s. - Carpenter, Kile, Ponson, etc. It's sort of like having a "delayed" pitching prospect. (I know, this is old news...)

For my own satisfaction, then, is the admiration of Herzog simply - "Since most pitchers peak later, it was unusual for him to get good performances out of pitchers younger than 30"? If so, then I say "OK, that's great and that actually would be really valuable today given the economics of it all, but how valuable was it back then when FA had not created quite the schism that exists today between the Bostons and the Kansas Citys of the league?" Basically, I'm recognizing and admiring that it happened, but wondering if, at the time, it was nothing more than an anomaly.

I understand better what you're saying---get guys who are not perceived as being great shakes (injured, coming off a bad year or two) when they're available at age 28/29, then recondition/reprogram them and have them be set mentally/phyiscally for that 30-31-32 period.... I guess that would explain Carp and Suppan last year...

I remember Whitey exploiting the fact we played half our games in gigantic Busch. That might be a pretty big factor in why any of those teams behaved statistically the way they did, simply our unusual ballpark.