16Feb/075:15 PM

How to build a rotation

By Jim McLennan

He's baaaaaack! “Pitchers and catchers report.” Finally, the long, dark winter is over, and baseball fans emerge from their hibernation, stretching, wiping their bleary eyes and sniffing the air, eager to catch the scent of new-mown grass and hot-dogs. For our local team here in Arizona, moves began on the final day of last season, with the departure of ‘franchise face’ Luis Gonzalez - and ended (so far) with the return of ‘franchise scowl’ Randy Johnson.

Some saw the moves as contradictory: if the “youth movement” in Arizona is so strong, why were we trading for a 43-year old player, just coming off back surgery? But, in reality, while Arizona does have one of the best farm systems in baseball, its fruits are not evenly distributed. Starting pitching has always been an issue for the organization: we’ve traded away some who’ve gone on to success elsewhere (Brad Penny, Chris Capuano, John Patterson), yet only one player who came up through the farm system has made twenty starts for the Diamondbacks. No prizes for guessing that it’s Brandon Webb.

This situation has been addressed, with recent drafts concentrating on arms, though it’ll be a help if we can ink last year’s first-round pick Max Scherzer, who is still unsigned. The results are promising: for example, we have Micah Owings, who went 16-2 with a 3.33 ERA last year for Tennessee and Tucson. However, they’re unproven at the highest level, and expecting our prospects to perform instantly in the major-leagues would be optimistic. And we had some rebuilding to do: from the Opening Day rotation, we’d lost Orlando Hernandez [traded to the Mets for Jorge Julio], Miguel Batista [a free agent] and Russ Ortiz [good riddance to bad rubbish].

Replacing them was, obviously, a top priority, but the free-agent market this winter was insane. Batista got a three-year, $25m contract from Seattle, an offer Arizona never even bothered trying to match - and that seemed positively cheap compared to some of the deals out there. It probably peaked with the five-year, $55m contract given to Gil Meche, a man who hasn’t had an ERA better than adjusted league average since 2000. But Ted Lilly and Jeff Suppan will also pocket $10m plus per season for the next four years, despite both having career ERAs nearer five than four.

Instead, Arizona switched to the trade market, continuing the theme they began with the swap which brought Livan Hernandez from Washington to the desert, in exchange for a couple of pitching prospects [that may seem ironic, given earlier comments, but neither Garrett Mock nor Matt Chico were highly-regarded]. Catcher Johnny Estrada was marked for sale early, and was traded to the Brewers, along with Claudio Vargas and Greg Aquino, for pitchers Doug Davis and Dana Eveland plus outfielder Dave Krynzel. Again, it may seem weird to swap a starter for a starter, but Vargas cost us effectively nothing, since we picked him up off the waiver wire after Washington dumped him.

Both these trades illustrated the Diamondbacks front-office fondness for pitchers with stamina, capable of pitching deep into games. This was a weakness in Arizona last year - here’s how long those in our rotation with more than 10 starts lasted on average:

Brandon Webb: 7.12 innings
Miguel Batista: 5.93
Enrique Gonzalez: 5.61
Claudio Vargas: 5.41
Juan Cruz: 4.87

You just can’t expect your bullpen to mop up three or four innings, almost every night: they will implode. In contrast, Livan Hernandez has a career figure of 6.83 innings, Doug Davis 6.04, and Randy Johnson 6.91. Now, this isn’t an infallible predictor of future success [Russ Ortiz was also above six before coming to Arizona], but if you’re pitching into the seventh inning on a regular basis, odds are that you aren’t sucking. And if your bullpen has only six or seven outs to get, there’s a much better chance of them not blowing it.

The other aspect which the Davis and Johnson trades showed nicely was a ‘Moneyball’ philosophy. This is named after the book by Michael Lewis, which explored the Oakland A’s ability to compete despite a small budget, by finding hidden value. In particular, they discovered on-base percentage to be a precious but under-rated skill, so concentrated on acquiring players with this ability. More generally, it’s the art of looking for players who are undervalued, and both Davis and Johnson fall into this category.

Davis was coming off a bad year in Milwaukee, which saw his ERA balloon to 4.91. However, a chunk of the problem can be traced to walking more than a batter every other innings, significantly above career average. This is often a result of a pitcher trying to “nibble” around the edges of the strike-zone, and the reason for that might be Davis’s fear about the Milwaukee defense behind him, which was a shambling nightmare. You don’t want batters to hit the ball to your team-mates, hence you pitch over-cautiously. In Arizona, things should be much better, with Gold Glove winner Orlando Hudson and Stephen Drew, who impressed enormously with his defense last year. Hopefully, as a result, Davis can reduce the free passes and get back to the form he showed in 2004 and 2005, when his ERA was below four.

Randy Johnson’s problem was simple: he was much less effective with runners in scoring position (RISP). And when I say “much”, I mean it: with the bases empty, opposing hitters batted only .206 against him; with RISP, that figure became a staggering .332. Pitching out of the stretch clearly posed problems, and it’s no stretch [hohoho!] to suggest his back issues were responsible for this chasm in results. Johnson had surgery to take care of the herniated disk in October and reports are that he now feels great - I need hardly point out that if he can keep all opposing hitters to a .206 average as a result, he’ll do very nicely. The pressure, both of New York and being a #1 starter, will also be off Johnson, which can only help too.

Both men are signed for 2008 as well (Davis is through 2009), which gives the Diamondbacks rotation a degree of stability for the two seasons upcoming. We have no shortage of candidates to fill the remaining spots: as well as Owings, Enrique and Edgar Gonzalez, Dustin Nippert and Eveland are all expected to compete this year and next; sheer weight of numbers there suggests one or more should stick, though whether any will be more than a back of the rotation guy seems less certain. Further down the pipeline, the likes of Brett Anderson, Greg Smith and Brooks Brown still develop.

For the moment, I certainly admit our pitching staff has a number of question-marks over it. Will Davis bounce back? Speaking of backs, how’s Randy’s? Can Livan Hernandez continue the fine form he showed since coming to AZ? Who’ll be the final man? Reigning Cy Young winner Brandon Webb is about the closest to a sure thing we have, and we can only get him onto the mound one day in five. But if all - or even most of it - goes well, Arizona could easily have the best rotation in the division, with Webb and Johnson leading the way, in a manner not seen since Curt Schilling stood alongside the Big Unit in a Diamondbacks uniform. And I think we all remember how well that went…

[Jim McLennan writes with near-fanatical zeal about the Diamondbacks at AZSnakePit.com, part of the SportsBlogs Nation network, and set up DiamondbacksBullpen.org, a forum for fans. He'll also be writing a weekly column on the team here at azsportshub.com. Jim lives on the wrong side of the Scottsdale tracks, with his wife Chris, two children and a large pile of unwatched DVDs.]