2008 All Doo-Doo Team: The Pitching Staff

While many people still use wins and ERA to differentiate between good pitchers and bad, sabermetricians (who always live in their parents basements, even when working fulltime for a major league team) look deeper. After years of study, they have come up with a few basic components to look for in a good pitcher.

The trick is to try to even out the proverbial playing field by eliminating the differences in home parks and fielding, as well as the ultimate in ridiculousness, official scorers. Basically, strikeouts, walks, and home runs are the key statistics to look for. The thinking goes thusly: a pitcher who strikes people out (i.e. doesn't let opposing hitters hit the ball) can't be victimized by cheap hits, nor will he let his fielders fail to reach a ball, miss-judge a fly, or make any errors. If he doesn't walk people, then he's less likely to give up runs on cheap hits, errors, or homers. If he doesn't allow homers, he is literally making it much more difficult for an opponent to score runs against him.

To sum up, a good pitcher will strike people out (one per inning on average is very good), not walk people (usually one per three strikeouts is a good ratio), and not give up homers. The best way to avoid homers is to generate groundballs. Its very difficult for the ball to go over the wall when its rolling.

Conversely, a pitcher who doesn't strike people out, walks lots of people, and allows the more-than-occasional home run may be successful over a short period, but essentially he is living on borrowed time. He's also likely to be found on the pitching staff for the 2008 All Doo-Doo Team!

The stats cited in the parentheses are as follows: IP is innings pitched (self explanatory). K/9 is the number of strikeouts a pitcher gets per 9 innings, on average. BB/9 is the number of walks a pitcher gives up per 9 innings, on average. VORP is Value Over Replacement Player, which basically means how many runs better is a player than someone at the same position who could be plucked freely from AAA ball. VORP is a counting stat, not an average, so the more you play the more it adds up. And, yes, having a negative VORP means that player has been worse than a AAA player.

So, with that, I present to you the starting rotation for the 2008 All Doo Doo Team!

Starting rotation

Number one starter: Barry Zito, SF (28.6 IP , 3.45 K/9, 4.71 BB/9, -12.3 VORP)
- What do you do when your $126M pitcher sucks? Drop him in the bullpen, I guess. That's what the Giants have done with Zito, who is just one year in to the richest contract for a pitcher in the history of baseball ($126M over 7 years). Its hard to get people out when your walk rate is higher than your strikeout rate, but in this case, you really don't need to look deep into the numbers to see that Zito has lost it. Thats visible by watching the trail of drool from the opposing team's dugout to the batters box on days Zito pitches. The Giants are now looking at getting next to nothing from the remaining $100M+ on Zito's contract. Holy God, what a terrible, terrible deal that is.

Number two starter: Matt Morris, ex-PIT (22.3 IP, 3.63 K/9, 4.71 BB/9, -17.7 VORP)
- Exhibit 1 (of about 10,000) in the case against Dave Littlefield as a competent General Manager. After the Giants (there they are again) gave Morris an inexplicably huge deal (worth about $20M over two years), it quickly became apparent that Morris was done.

The story goes thusly: after calling around to just about every team and offering to pay the majority of Morris' deal in hopes of saving some small percentage of the cost, Giants GM Idiot McStupid (really Brian Sabean) gave up. But, surprise!, nobody wanted to pay a guy who was obviously done ten mill a year. All of a sudden the phone rings. Its Pirates GM Dave Littlefield, and he's high on meth again (I'm embellishing somewhat here). He not only wants Morris, but he's willing to pay the entirety of Morris' contract as well. Well, holy shit, Sabean goes right over to Morris' apartment, yanks him off the crapper (making a hideous mess in the process), shoves him, ass cheeks and all, into a big fedex box, writes "p-burgh" on it, and ships that mutha out. Surprisingly, the cleanliness of the air in Pittsburgh didn't improve Morris' strikeout rate, and after just about a half season of complete suckitude, the Pirates decided they'd rather pay Morris $10M to not pitch for them rather than pitch for them.

Number three starter: Jason Jennings, TEX (27.3 IP, 3.95 K/9, 5.93 BB/9, -9.8 VORP)
- Jennings had one good year about three seasons ago and was offered a big contract by the Rockies. He turned it down. He's dumb. And lousy.

Number four starter: Phil Hughes, NYY (22 IP, 5.32 K/9, 5.32 BB/9, -9.5n VORP)
- The future of the Yankees pitching staff, Hughes was too good to trade for Johan Santana this past off-season. Now he's too lousy for the Yankees rotation. He's still only 21, but for a guy who just about threw a no-hitter last year (only falling short due to injury), he's been a huge disappointment.

Number five starter: Andrew Miller, FL (25.6 IP, 6.31 K/9, 4.56 BB/9, -12.3 VORP)
- This is one of the two main bargaining chips that netted Miguel Cabrera for Detroit. Miller hasn't been as bad as his fellow members of the '08 All Doo-Doo team, but thats a backhanded complement if there ever was one. Still, like Hughes, he's young and will likely improve, or at least, not continue to suck this bad.

Bullpen

Joe Borowski, CLE (4 IP, 6.75 K/9, 9.00 BB/9, -5.8 VORP):
- Borowski normally doesn't strike people out, but thats only because he isn't a very good pitcher. Still, when he faced Manny Ramirez after having given up the two tying runs about two weeks ago, Cleveland fans were probably hoping he'd hit Manny. Instead he threw an 81 mph fastball over the heart of the plate, and Manny hit it to Canada. After that, the Indians, possibly in self defense, put Borowski on the disabled list.

Dustin Nippert, TEX (8.6 IP, 6.23 K/9, 8.31 BB/9, -5.8 VORP):
- Not known for their pitching, Texas has really screwed the proverbial pooch this season. 8.31 walks per nine innings? This isn't relief pitching unless you're trying to provide some sort of relief for the other team.

Joaquin Benoit, TEX (10.3 IP, 9.58 K/9, 10.45 BB/9, -5.4 VORP):
- 10.5 walks per nine innings? I'm guessing there must be some vision issue at play here.

Zack Miner, DET (15 IP, 6.6 K/9, 6 BB/9, -7 VORP):
- The Tigers are going to hit this year, of that theres little doubt. But if anyone on this team can pitch they haven't showed it yet. Miner may be the most egregious of the lot so far, but with any luck he'll prevent further damage to Detroit's pennant hopes by stepping on something sharp and hurting himself.