Bad Pitchers Early

Like many of us, jasonkuo bought some starting pitchers off to a slow start, and wants to know if he should hang in there or jump ship.

I'm getting absolutely creamed in pitching in my 12-team NL-only league. I'm last in ERA/WHIP with characters like (Aaron) Harang, (John) Maine, and (Charlie) Morton (with [Brandon] Webb on the DL). Question: is it too early to think about drastic changes like switching to all middle relievers or trading away some of my hitting (which is doing pretty well, and I have a pretty significant hitting/pitching split - $65 pitching staff) to shore up my rotation? Or should I trust that the averages will normalize eventually?

 Let's start by taking a look at last year's worst slow starters. Did they recover?

Worst Major League ERA, April 2009
(minimum 20 IP)

#	Pitcher	April ERA	Non-April ERA	2009 ERA	Career ERA
1	Joe Blanton	8.41	3.55	4.05	4.21
2	Matt Harrison	7.89	5.18	6.11	5.60
3	Vicente Padilla	7.43	3.80	4.46	4.37
4	Clayton Kershaw	7.29	2.16	2.79	3.35
5	Josh Beckett	7.22	3.33	3.86	3.82
6	Adam Eaton	7.17	8.78	8.08	4.94
7	Aaron Cook	7.11	3.60	4.16	4.37
8	Kenshin Kawakami	7.06	3.34	3.86	3.93
9	David Purcey	7.01	5.24	6.19	5.81
10	Ricky Nolasco	6.92	4.75	5.06	4.40

With the exception of Eaton, everyone pitched better. Six of the pitchers on this chart put up an ERA under four from May 1 forward.

The thing that jumps out at me the most about this chart is that I wouldn't have even remembered most of these bad Aprils if I hadn't gone back and looked them up. I owned Josh Beckett in one of my leagues and didn't realize that he had had such an awful April.

My answer to jason's question, then, is that the pitchers he owns who are having terrible Aprils should bounce back and I'd hold on to them. It's not quite that simple, though. Rather than simply look at a narrow data set, I'd be more inclined to review the following before making any decisions.

1) Is the pitcher a rookie or a veteran? Generally speaking, a veteran is more likely to return to established career norms than a rookie, who still might be learning his craft/adjusting to major league hitting.

2) What do the pitcher's interiors say? Fangraphs is a wonderful resource where you can look at numbers like FIP, BABIP, LOB% and other metrics to see if your pitcher is unlucky or bad.

3) What do his LIMA numbers look like? If your pitcher is striking out three batters per nine and walking four per nine, I'd be scared...even if his LOB% and FIP are favorable. If, on the other hand, your pitcher is striking out eight per nine, I wouldn't bail so soon.

The biggest problem jason has right now is that he probably has to wait for his struggling starters to get better. Even in a 12-team N.L.-only league, the free agent pool is typically thin in April. Adding Livan Hernandez and Jamie Moyer probably isn't going to help.

But what if you can't stomach the bad results from your underperforming pitchers and feel like you have to make a move? I'll explore the best course of action in my next post.