In a previous post, I addressed the issue of Pirates' injuries, how they held the team back, and the fact that the club's pitchers were particularly prone to this problem. Following stories about this in the local press, I'm going to develop this theme further.
Paul Maholm apparently had the flu last June, when he started against the Minnesota Twins, and gave up seven runs on 14 hits. This, along with a couple other bad outings when injured, halted the downward (good) progress in his ERA over the previous years, leaving him with a 2009 tally of 4.44.
Amazingly, his FIP (sabermetric ERA) continued its decline, ending below 4.0 for the first time, meaning that Maholm is actually a better pitcher than his "record."
Zach Duke is another case in point. He pitched 213 innings in 2009, 12th in the National League. That's a lot for a man who had not pitched this many innings since 2006.
Duke's 2009 ERA was a very respectable 4.06. But he got there in a strange way, with a 3.26 ERA to the end of July, then a 5.80 ERA in August and September, before closing with a five-inning, five-run start in his last game in October.
That suggests that he was "tired" or even hurt during the later going, and should have been held off the mound more.
Suppose Duke had been limited to 200 innings. If you eliminated that October start, the penultimate (six-inning, five-run) game of September, and the last (three-inning, seven-run) game he pitched in August, he would have given up only 84 earned runs in 199 innings for a 3.80 ERA.
Even if someone else had pitched those five innings of the last October start, his ERA would have been 3.94 in 208 innings as of the end of September.
The Pirates have vowed to do more to protect their other starters in 2010, after having "shut down" (relative) newcomer Ross Ohlendorf after he reached a pre-determined innings limit. That's certainly laudable.
But that may or may not be in the team's best interest. Maholm's contract extends only through 2011, while the current team is structured for a 2012-2014 playoff run. The success of that run could depend on retaining veterans like Maholm and Duke.
Hence, another 2011 shellacking like that against the Twins might reduce Maholm's marketability enough to make him "retainable." And Duke developed a reputation in 2007 as the most "hittable" pitcher in the National League, that he has not fully lived down, meaning that he is a better pitcher than his reputation.
The time to "be careful" with them is in 2012 and thereafter.
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