Jarrod Washburn vs. Lucas French

So, I stood alone on the Jarrod Washburn acquisition at the trade deadline. I felt it was a latteral move at best, and I understand the whole "veteran presence" and not having a rookie's innings limits like French will have. Being very stats-based, I'm prepared to go against the grain on certain moves (like the Aubrey Huff deal, as well...). So, let's revisit it.

First off, it's pretty premature to make any comparisons. Both Lucas French and Jarrod Washburn have thrown minimal innings (22.1 for French, 25.1 for Washburn) for their new clubs, but it's worth a look.

First, the traditional surface numbers:

Jarrod Washburn:

6.04 ERA, 25.1 IP, 13 K, 6 BB, 24 H, 8 HR allowed (though 4 came in one game).

Luke French:

4.43 ERA, 22.1 IP, 15 K, 13 BB, 27 H, 3 HR allowed.

Traditional numbers are a mix. French leads in ERA, but drags behind in the K:BB ratio.

Let's move onto Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP).

Washburn:

7.21 FIP.

French:

5.33 FIP.

FIP looks at just strikeouts, walks, home runs allowed. It divides it by innings pitch and adds around a 3.2 qualifier to put it on the ERA scale. French wins this as well, mainly because of the homer's allowed. Washburn hasn't been overly good, but his 8 homers kill his FIP and that's largely due to 25% of each fly ball he's given up going for a homer thus far. That's nearly double league average.

Let's look at xFIP (from the same source as above).

Washburn:

5.17

French:

5.86

Washburn wins this because xFIP regresses the home runs allowed by a pitcher back to the league average. Luke French gets hurt here because of the walks he's allowed while not striking out a substantial amount.

However, my favorite pitching metric is currently tRA. It is essentially a better FIP number that simulates defense-independent ERA simulators. It is based on each batted ball type a pitcher gives up. If he's getting hit hard with a ton of fly balls and line drives (the two more damaging of the FB/LD/Ground Ball batted ball types), his tRA will be higher. tRA* is the regressed version of tRA and would be what xFIP is to FIP. We'll look at tRA* since regressing is better than not regressing.

Washburn:

5.01

French:

5.08

Here, it's pretty much a dead heat. To get tERA, you must divide by .92 since 92% of all runs are earned. When we do that, Washburn's tERA is 5.45 while French's is 5.52 -- again, virtual no separation. Before the trade, the tERA's for both Washburn and French were 5.86 for Washburn and 5.49 for French.

Commenter Scott pointed out that you multiply by .92 -- I don't know what i was thinking when I wrote this. So, their tERA's are 4.61 for Washburn and 4.67 for French.

StatCorner also has Wins Above Replacements, as well. Since Washburn's come over, based on a WAR sample that uses tRA, he's provided -0.3 wins above what a replacement pitcher would bring to the Tigers in the same number of innings. French has given the Mariners -0.2 wins above what a replacement level pitcher would provide given the same number of innings.

Essentially, the two have been nearly identical once you account for Washburn's bad luck with the home run ball this year.

So, then, what is the difference between the two?

Around $3.3 million dollars in salary. I'm sure you know which one is getting paid more. My opinion on the deal hasn't changed, thus far. Here's to hoping I'm proven wrong, though.

Jarrod Washburn Acquisition

So, the Tigers acquired Jarrod Washburn today in the only move they made. I've already voiced my opinion on this trade both in the chat, at Bill's site, and on Beyond the Boxscore's comment section. Let me lay this out:

Luke French: young, cost-controlled lefty with average stuff pretty much across the board. His move to Triple-A Toledo this year led to a jump in K's and in overall performance. He's pitched to the tune of a 3.87 FIP in Detroit thus far and accrued 0.6 Wins Above Replacement in just 7 games (5 starts, but we'll go with games). Lets stretch that out to a potential 12 more starts as the Tigers have 62 games. Now, with off-days and some youngsters like Rick Porcello in the rotation, there'll be re-ordering in the rotation to help preserve Porcello's inning count for the year. But, let's run with the 12 starts and assume Luke French would stay in the rotation for those 12 starts his spot would get. 0.6 WAR in 7 games stretched to another 12 games would equal a total WAR of 1.6. that's below-average production, but if you stretch it out to a full season's worth, it's above-average in the neighborhood of 2.8 WAR.

Don't think French is a true 3.87 FIP-er? Okay, knock off half a win from that war. He's giving you 1 WAR this season at 20 years old in his rookie year. Not shabby. That's nearly $5 million in value.

Jarrod Washburn has a 3.75 FIP and has accrued 2.7 WAR in 20 starts. Stretched out over another 12 starts, he's roughly on pace for 4.3 WAR, or an additional 1.6 WAR. I don't think he'll maintain his current pace, but since he's an established big leaguer, lets just say he keeps his current pace up.

So, really, he's giving us likely half a win more than Luke French would give us. That is worth about $2.65 million on the open market.

However, it wasn't a one-for-one swap, as the "cost of upgrading" to Washburn's talent level over French as Bill put it, was an additional prospect: Mauricio Robles. Robles is a lefty who can sit in the low-to-middle 90's with a good breaking ball but is inconsistent. I don't think he'll be this generation of Tigers fans' John Smoltz, but he's a high upside/incredibly low-floor guy. He wasn't rated in the Tigers Top ten by John Sickels, so I can't put a value to him.

Now, Jarrod Washburn's contract runs out this year, but he's slotted to be a potential Type-B free agent. So, we can offer arbitration and if he turns it down, pick up a compensation round pick. But, like Dave Cameron noted in his write-up, it's very plausible that mid-30's pitcher coming off of his best season in over half-a-decade, very well could accept the arbitration. Given he made $10 million this year, that'll like mean a raise and likely mean $12-15 million salary for the 2010 season.

For a team with a payroll that's apparently strapped, I don't think we added much and, at best, it's a lateral move. I don't think it's the worst trade in a decade like Dave Cameron's article paints it, but I don't think it's a win like most Tigers bloggers and fans think, either.

Lucas French Start Revisited

Well, Lucas French made his debut as a starter in the major leagues on Friday in the Metrodome -- you know, that 16 inning game that Detroit won? Before we get to the graphs, let's look at the numbers:

4.2 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 3 K, 2 BB, 1 HR allowed, 81 pitches, 50 strikes, 1 ground out, 10 fly outs.

When I grabbed the gameday data, it classified a lot of cutters and only 3 sliders. I don't know if he throws a cutter or not, but only one of them were up in the area with his fastballs, so I'm assuming that they were sliders, not fastballs.

With that correction made, here's some graphs. First, a release point graph. Click all graphs to enlarge.

I toyed around with varying symbols and colors and I think this works decently well. If not, I'm always open to suggestions. Pretty good cluster on all of his pitches. Given his lack of velocity, he cannot have multiple distinguishable release points for each of his pitches or else he'd get killed.

Now, a movement graph:


And moving on to his pitch flight graphs:

His fastball looks decent and his slider/change-up combo really have the same amounts of downward movement. They just move opposite directions, obviously. His average velocities in this game were 86.9 MPH on the fastball, 78.1 on the slider, and 79.9 on the change-up.

Really, this doesn't do anything to sway my initial impression of Luke French's flight paths where I said:

On the whole though, he seems to have a pretty generic arsenal for a left-handed pitcher. His stuff isn't overwhelming in the least, and he doesn't have some crazy amount of movement. His 2009 line in Toledo seems to be such an outlier when compared to his career norms -- especially given his stuff.

I think he maxes out as a No. 5 starter in the majors in a best case scenario. He's a lower-40% ground ball pitcher (4 of every 10 balls in play), about the same with fly balls, and a couple of hard hit balls in there, as well. He's not going to miss a lot of bats, but also keeps the walks down. I think he's more organizational filler that every team needs -- a consistent guy to take the ball every fifth day in their Triple-A affiliate, but I don't look for him to stick in the D long at all. Not impressed. Hopefully he's able to prove me wrong, though.

Lucas French Pitch Flight Graph

I just realized that I never graphed out Lucas Frenchs' two outings when he was up in mid-May for Nate Robertson's first go-round on the disabled list. We only have 50 pitches from his two outings, so to say the sample is small is being kind. As always, click the chart for a larger view.

The Fastball

It averaged 89.01 MPH in his two outings and seems to have decent tail. Remember, we're looking at a left hander, so take all that you've seen from my previous posts and reverse it since those were all right handers. A flight path that finishes closer to the bottom of the graph is closer to a left handed batter. So, his fastball's flight path is tailing from the top of the graph to the bottom. He topped out at 91.3 MPH on the heater and ranged mostly in the 88-89 range. He threw 33 heaters.

The Slider

It averaged 80.39 MPH and seems to have very little sweeping action (from bottom of the graph to the top). I am not sure if this really a slider or a curveball, but it starts on a plane that's a bit higher than the fastball (1st base view), and drops below where his average fastball cross the plate. He ranged 78.5 MPH to 82.4 with it -- essentially 79-82. He threw 13 of them.

The Change-up

It averaged 81.20 MPH, and really doesn't stay on the same plane as his heater and slider. It does stay on the same follow the same path (bird's eye view) as his fastball with some good tailing action on it. But, unlike some change-up's, it doesn't drop so much as he releases it on a more downward plane. He only threw 4 of them.

Conclusion

As always, this is an incredibly small sample and should be taken with a barrell of salt. On the whole though, he seems to have a pretty generic arsenal for a left-handed pitcher. His stuff isn't overwhelming in the least, and he doesn't have some crazy amount of movement. His 2009 line in Toledo seems to be such an outlier when compared to his career norms -- especially given his stuff. I'm only guessing, but I think that he may be the benefit of a lot of called strike three's that he wasn't getting in the past, but that is only pure speculation and there's no way to know. Either way, his numbers in Toledo have been very good thus far and he definitely deserves a look in the rotation for a couple of reasons: (1) He can't be worse then some of the other starts we've gotten out of that rotation spot and (2) his numbers indicate a look to see if he's indeed turned a corner into a Tom Glavine-type (highly unlikely).

My thoughts are that he's a Quad-A pitcher and not a big league, back-of-the-rotation starter.