Plan on Lannan’s ERA Rising

The Washington Nationals’ pitching staff is essentially in disarray. While bailouts have become commonplace in the nation’s capital, the Nats’ rotation might need government assistance more than all other corporate entities combined. Washington’s starting corps could be considered a toxic asset; when a rapidly descending Scott Olsen may very well be your club’s best hope at cultivating an ace, something is seriously wrong.

While Washington’s compilation of semi-prospects and retreads posted a combined 4.97 starters’ ERA in 2008, there was one home-grown bright spot. John Lannan, a little-known 11th round selection out of Siena College in 2005, pieced together a solid rookie season. Lannan went from “that guy who broke Chase Utley’s hand” to one of the more effective young starters in the NL, posting a 3.91 ERA in 182 innings of work.

Never known for his overpowering stuff, Lannan mixed in five different offerings to opposing batters. He supplemented his soft 87.5 MPH fastball (thrown 60.1% of the time) with a 80.3 MPH slider (15.5%), 74.5 MPH curveball (12.4%), 80.9 MPH changeup (10.6%) and the occasional 86.5 MPH cutter (1.3%).

So, Lannan is a five-pitch lefty with a good rookie season under his belt. He should only get better, right? Well, not so fast.

Lannan did a very good job of keeping the ball on the ground (54.2 GB%), but his peripheral stats (5.79 K/9, 3.56 BB/9) do not match up with his ERA. On top of a mild K rate and ordinary control, Lannan benefitted from a .273 BABIP (11th-lowest among qualified starters).

He experienced unusually poor luck on flyballs (his HR/FB% of 15.2 was 3-4% higher than average), but we can use Expected Fielding Independent ERA (XFIP) from The Hardball Times to better gauge Lannan’s abilities. XFIP uses strikeouts, walks and a normalized HR/FB rate (rooting out Lannan’s poor luck on flyballs) to give us a more accurate account of a pitcher’s controllable skills. Lannan’s XFIP was 4.47. That’s actually slightly below the NL average ERA of 4.43 for starting pitchers.

One might look at John Lannan and see a 24 year-old southpaw who just posted a sub-4 ERA season, and therefore might expect better things in 2009. However, Lannan’s finesse style and just average ability to paint the corners (his career minor league BB/9 is 3.51) portend to a good deal of regression in 2009. Lannan could use his eclectic repertoire and groundball tendencies to post an ERA somewhere in the mid-four’s, but he’s more mid-rotation material than future ace.