February 25, 2008
Rotation Evaluation, Cleveland Indians
The series looking at team pitching rotations using the Marcel the Monkey projections continues with the Cleveland Indians. Their starters posted 4.19 ERA in 2007, second in the majors and best in the American League.
Note that in figuring ERAs, I'm using Marcel's mIP and mER columns. The ERA listed in the spreadsheet uses the average of mER and bsrER. I wanted to avoid posting 1/2 runs in the table. Pitcher order is taken from the CBSSportsline depth chart.
Fausto Carmona
Photo: Icon SMI
Marcel predictions for the Cleveland Indians top five starters for 2008.
| Starter | Innings | ER | ERA |
|---|
| C.C. Sabathia | 200 | 78 | 3.51
|
| Fausto Carmona | 162 | 66 | 3.67
|
| Jake Westbrook | 157 | 76 | 4.36
|
| Paul Byrd | 174 | 90 | 4.66
|
| Aaron Laffey | 85 | 41 | 4.34
|
| Totals | 778 | 351 | 4.06
|
Cleveland starters pitched 1021 1/3 innings in 2007, the most in the majors. With these projections, they're about 200 innings short of averaging six per start. If Laffey earns the fifth slot, he'll probably see a lot more than the 85 innings projected above. Standing in the wings is Cliff Lee, coming off a very bad season but capable to absorbing needed innings for the rotation.
The person to watch, of course, is Carmona. He had a huge jump in innings from 2006 to 2007, often a sign that a pitcher is going to break down. In that case, the 162 innings projected for Fausto may be high. Luckily for Cleveland, they own a very good bullpen, so they can afford to cut back on innings from the starters and still do well.
Update: Previous posts in this series:
Love these brief state-of-the-rotation posts.
Random thoughts on this one ... Verducci put Carmona on his Year After Effect danger-zone list with good reason BUT why doesn't he look at pitch counts? Carmona, as a sinkerballer, doesn't throw a lot of pitches per inning. With IP, I'm sure the cooling down and warming up is somewhat relevant, but total pitches must have some relevance as well.
Carmona had the fewest pitches of anybody in the top 40 for innings pitched (basically everybody at 199 innings or more). And his 14.6 P/IP was the third lowest of pitchers in this category (only Tim Hudson and Brandon Webb were lower). He was also in the 9th lowest P/IP for any pitcher with over 100 innings.
I'm not saying he's safe - I'm just suggesting it may not be as bad as advertised.
red Sox destroyed Carmona and Sabbathia in the playoffs by taking pitches - will be interesting to see if that's a trend or just playoff pressure.
