Mining for Gold in the Dregs: A.L. Pitching Edition

Anonymous wants to know if I can:

help out the single-league players in your audience and give us five generally unowned starting pitchers from each league who have great home or road splits, but are terrible in the other split?

In shallower leagues, it might be a little easier to find some success with this exercise. In very deep leagues, however, you're often lucky to have 10 starting pitchers sitting in the free agent pool at any given moment, particularly in the A.L. If each team in a 12-team A.L.-only Rotisserie League has five starters, then 60 of the 70 possible A.L. starters are typically owned at any given moment. In the N.L., you'll have a little more luck with your standard 13-team alignment, since "only" 65 of the possible 80 starting pitchers will be owned.

In both cases, you are either scraping the bottom of the barrel or rolling the dice on a rookie pitcher who wasn't drafted in the farm or reserve phase of your auction. Since it's next to impossible to look at a pitcher like Matt Harrison's virtually empty major league resume and get a bead on his splits, I thought I'd take the five free agent starting pitchers with the most innings from the N.L. and A.L. leagues I track in my FAAB logs and see if I could divine anything from their Pre All-Star/Post All-Star splits.

Today, I'll start with the A.L. All 2008 stats are prior to Saturday's games.

1) Nate Robertson.
2008: 109 1/3 IP, 133 H, 32 BB, 70 K, 13 HR, 5.19 ERA, .304 BAA
2005-2007 Pre All-Star: 299 2/3 IP, 308 H, 111 BB, 185 K, 30 HR, 3.78 ERA, .268 BAA
2005-2007 Post All-Star: 283 1/3 IP, 299 H, 84 BB, 193 K, 49 HR, 4.92 ERA, .270 BAA

Robertson's 2007 numbers were actually better Post All-Star and the HR allowed are skewed by the 22 he gave up 2005 Post All-Star. Two things jump out at me here that have nothing to do with the Pre All-Star/Post All Star numbers. First, Robertson is a somewhat better pitcher at home (3.90 ERA, .260 BAA from 2005-2007) than he is on the road (4.80, .278). That makes sense; Comerica is a pitchers' park that is particularly kind to pitchers who are prone to the long ball. Second, Robertson is much better against lefties (539 AB, 611 OPS against, 6 HR allowed from 2005-2007) than he is against righties (1,720 AB, 810 OPS, 73 HR allowed). Don't put too much stock into the great numbers against lefties. Robertson put up a 181 BAA and a 488 OPS against them in 2006, which was simply unsustainable. He's actually getting tagged against left-handers this year, but given his history against them, I'd have to think Robertson will improve in that department. He's a guy you might want to play in leagues where you can play match-ups at home. Even then, though, he's a risky play. 2006 was definitely Robertson's outlier season.

2) Jarrod Washburn
2008: 98 1/3 IP, 117 H, 29 BB, 61 K, 12 HR, 5.03 ERA, .298 BAA
2005-2007 Pre All-Star: 329 2/3 IP, 348 H, 97 BB, 173 K, 34 HR, 3.85 ERA, .274 BAA
2005-2007 Post All-Star: 228 1/3 IP, 235 H, 76 BB, 138 K, 33 HR, 4.42 ERA, .265 BAA

Washburn's a similar pitcher to Robertson, except for the fact that he is an extreme flyball pitcher (whereas Robertson's been trending neutral) and gets slightly fewer Ks per IP. Safeco hasn't helped him out as much as you would expect, but he does have an advantage against lefties that didn't show up in his 2005 numbers but did in his 2006-2007 years. I'd say that Washburn is a guy to spot start against left-handed oriented line-ups, but he's a bigger risk than Robertson. Like Robertson, Washburn's history indicates that he could have a slight correction in the second half to the good, but his K/IP and HR/IP are weak enough that I'm not confident this correction will take place.

3) Sidney Ponson
2008: 72 2/3 IP, 90 H, 25 BB, 34 K, 6 HR, 3.96 ERA, .306 BAA
2005-2007 Pre All-Star: 214 IP, 281 H, 87 BB, 115 K, 26 HR, 5.89 ERA, .325 BAA
2005-2007 Post All-Star: 39 IP, 58 H, 14 BB, 24 K, 7 HR, 8.77 ERA, .341 BAA

Ponson's bounced around been too many teams and hasn't pitched enough in the second half to do any kind of serious analysis. He says that he's been working on improving his sinker, and his G/F this year is much better than it has ever been (2.42 G/F), but I'd be extremely wary that this is something sustainable, or that Ponson has picked up a magical skill in his Age 31 season. Keep in mind that Jose Contreras at one point had a similarly stellar G/F rate earlier this year and since then it's been dropping and dropping and dropping. Ponson's a good wins candidate as long as he's pitching for the Yankees, but he's still a pitcher I wouldn't touch.

4) R.A. Dickey
2008: 60 2/3 IP, 62 H, 26 BB, 39 K, 5 HR, 3.86 ERA, .265 BAA
2005-2007 Pre All-Star: 10 IP, 17 H, 1 BB, 5 K, 8 HR, 11.70 ERA, .378 BAA
2005-2007 Post All-Star: 23 IP, 20 H, 17 BB, 11 K, 49 HR, 6.26 ERA, .233 BAA

Dickey's Pre All-Star/Post All Star numbers are obviously worthless in terms of sample size, but digging around for his minor league numbers is also near-worthless, given his age (33) and his unique skill set (knuckleballer). Even this year's numbers aren't enough to look at to discern too much from the tea leaves. His numbers are better as a reliever than they are as a starter, but he's put up some stellar performances against the Mets and the A's since he's been in the rotation. He still seems to be a work in progress, but he's put up four quality starts in a row. Trying to figure out what Dickey's going to do going forward is a guessing game. He seems to be learning as he goes along, and he could do anything from turn into Tim Wakefield to imploding.

5) Kyle Davies
2008: 42 IP, 53 H, 19 BB, 21 K, 4 HR, 4.71 ERA, .314 BAA
2005-2007 Pre All-Star: 187 IP, 208 H, 90 BB, 133 K, 27 HR, 5.29 ERA, .280 BAA
2005-2007 Post All-Star: 100 IP, 135 H, 62 BB, 79 K, 17 HR, 8.01 ERA, .318 BAA

Davies' splits remind me of Martin Prince's great line, "I'm just as unpopular with the ladies as I am with the fellas!" Davies just hasn't gotten it done at the major league level yet. I wrote about him at length earlier this year, so I'm not going to go into another long dissertation. The sublime Royals fan blog Royals Review also goes into a brief discussion of the "Good Davies" and the "Bad Davies." He's obviously a horrible bet. He's still young, and could do an Edwin Jackson, but I suspect Davies' long-term future might be in the bullpen.

Well, we learned nothing here from Pre All-Star/Post All-Star splits. That isn't to say that season splits aren't useful, but I tend to think they're useful in limited cases, particularly with young players who are still developing. For veterans, splits often don't tell us anything, and sometimes can even be misleading. To use an A.L. hitting example, Aubrey Huff is typically a terrible fist half player. But if you shied away from him for that reason, you missed out on an awesome first half and one of the top 1B so far in the American League. Take split stats for what they are: something entertaining to look at, but often not an indicator of future performance over a specific time frame of the season.