Archive for Dave Bush

We’ve seen the move enough over the last two years that the math is clear: Struggling young fly-ball pitcher from a tough American League division + trade to Arizona = Fantasy relevance! So will that math magic work for Armando Galarraga?

Not so fast. The first difference is immediately obvious upon looking at the player cards of the respective trio. Galarraga has a career 5.7 strikeout rate with a peak of 6.35 in 2008 – Dan Hudson showed a 6.75 K/9 in Chicago and was consistently over one per inning in the minor league leagues, and Ian Kennedy had a 6.49 K/9 in New York and also had a strikeout rate over one per inning in the minors.

But, say you believe in Galarraga’s peak strikeout rate despite its precipitous drop (to 4.61 K/9 last year), there’s still the matter of his ground-ball rate. All of the three are fly-ballers (not fly ballers), but here Galarraga (40.4% ground balls career) comes out (incredibly) ahead of the pack when compared to Hudson (34.2% ground balls career) and Kennedy (36.9% ground balls career). So… he strikes out a few less but gets a few more grounders, maybe he should be included in the trio as interesting late-round picks in upcoming drafts?

Thta’s still a negative, Ghostrider. It’s a matter of age and proximity to their minor league records. When Hudson made the leap to Arizona, he’d only accrued 34 1/3 major-league innings and 23 years on this earth – Kennedy 59 2/3 and 25 respectively. Galarraga is 28 years old and has pitched 475 1/3 major league innings. He’s no lapsed prospect that hasn’t gotten the chance to perform – he’s a journeyman just trying to hang on.

The bounce back won’t look like Hudson’s or Kennedy’s for Galarraga, who has pitched to a 5.17 FIP over his career, but could it look okay anyway? Take his career strikeout rate (5.7), strikeout-to-walk ratio (1.62) and ground-ball rate (40.4%) and look for comparative qualified starters in the National League last year, and it’s not pretty. Being as good as Randy Wolf (5.93 K/9, 1.63 K/BB, 39.4% GB) and his 4.17 ERA (4.85 FIP) would be a success story for Galarraga. Other close comps are Dave Bush (5.52 K/9, 1.64 K/BB, 39.5% GB, 4.54 ERA, 5.13 FIP) and Rodrigo Lopez (5.22 K/9, 2.07 K/BB, 37.6% GB, 5.00 ERA, 5.21 FIP) so he’s not in happy territory.

Galarraga may take the fifth starter role in Arizona next year, and he may pitch better than his terrible 2010 season (imPerfect game notwithstanding), and he may even have some superficial similarities to other AL starters that have made the same move recently – all of these things may be true, but he’s still probably not a good pick in your next draft.

Here is the latest update to Week 25 two-start pitchers. Again this list is subject to change going forward.

Pitchers not listed on last update

HOU – Rodriguez
DET – Jackson
CHC – Wells
TEX – Millwood
CIN – Cueto
ARI – Davis
BOS – Wakefield
MIL – Bush
TEX – McCarthy
CHW – Carrasco

Pitchers no longer scheduled for two starts

BOS – Beckett
CHC – Marquis
CHW – Floyd
CLE – Laffey
TEX – Nippert
ARI – Buckner

Rodriguez has two home starts against pitchers coming off injury/illness this week. Perhaps no elite pitcher has a bigger home/road split than Rodriguez. In Minute Maid Park, he is 8-2 with a 1.58 ERA and a 0.979 WHIP. In road starts Rodriguez is 5-8 with a 4.03 ERA and a 1.440 WHIP.

Jackson has allowed five earned runs in back-to-back starts. In his last five games he has a 6.03 ERA yet has gone 2-2 in that stretch.

Wells has also given up five runs in back-to-back starts but in the former outing, four of those were unearned. In his last eight starts, Wells has allowed five-or-more runs four times. He is 2-5 in those eight outings but his ERA is a respectable 3.83 in that stretch.

Millwood is 10-10 this season. Since 2004, he is exactly 63-63. This year the average ERA in the American League is 4.45 and since 2004 Millwood checks in with a 4.38 mark. Despite that average-ness, Millwood is enjoying a fortunate season in 2009. His 4.91 FIP is a career high while his 78.5 percent strand rate is the second-highest of his career.

Cueto had his start last week pushed back due to the flu and is now scheduled to go Tuesday against the Pirates. He finally broke a six-game losing streak on the last day of August and in his last three games before getting ill, Cueto had a 2.76 ERA with 17 strikeouts in 16.1 innings.

Davis has received two runs or less of support in 12 of his 31 games, which helps explain his 7-13 record despite a 4.01 ERA. He has five Quality Starts in his last seven games, yet is 0-3 in that stretch.

Wakefield is scheduled for two starts this week in his first action since receiving a cortisone injection in his spine on September 10th. The veteran knuckleball pitcher had been experiencing weakness in both his back and legs the past few weeks.

Bush is tied with Cueto for the major league lead with 14 HBP. It is even more impressive when you consider that Bush missed over two months with a torn triceps muscle. He does not even have enough innings to show up on the FanGraphs leader boards. Five times this season, Bush has hit multiple batters in a game, including plunking three hitters in an April game versus Pittsburgh.

McCarthy has been unimpressive in three starts since recovering from a stress fracture in his right shoulder. He has limited batters to a .203 average in those three games but has a 5.17 ERA. Two starts ago it was the long ball which did McCarthy in, as he gave up two homers in 6.1 innings against Cleveland. In his last outing he allowed seven baserunners in three innings against Oakland.

Carrasco has just one start this season for the White Sox, but is 5-1 with a 3.24 ERA as a reliever. His primary pitch is a cutter, although he also throws a four-seam fastball and a slider. Carrasco is not a good pickup for his two starts, as he has not exceeded four innings nor 67 pitches in an outing this season.

Would you believe that 2008 was Dave Bush’s worst season?

On the surface, this might not seem so. After all, Bush posted the best ERA of his career – 4.18 in 185 innings – along with a nice 1.18 WHIP and 109 strikeouts. Certainly not the numbers of a fantasy ace, but well worth having on your team (considering that you probably got him for free from the waiver wire).

However, Bush was worse last year than he had been in the past, even though he had posted higher ERAs in the past. Let me explain.

Before 2008, Bush posted ERAs of 4.49, 4.41, and 5.12 from 2005-2007. However, his FIP was better than his ERA in 2006 and 2007, and Bush looked like the type of player who was primed for a breakout – although he didn’t punch many batters out, he limited his walks and got a fair share of grounders. Bush was hampered by a high HR/FB rate, a high BABIP (.327 in 2007) and a low LOB%.

And then, in 2008, the breakout came. Of course, it wasn’t really a “breakout” in the sense of Bush becoming a frontline starter, but rather Bush becoming a decent starter – a breakout for him. But even though Bush posted solid numbers in 2008, it appears that his “breakout” is actually more luck – just good luck, this time.

Dave Bush’s .245 BABIP was the lowest of any pitcher who pitched at least 150 innings this year. For those of you who are still skeptical of a pitcher’s inability to control BABIP, Bush is a perfect example: his BABIP was .327 just a year ago, and he had some people wondering whether he was simply more “hittable” because he didn’t have great stuff. And yet this year, he had the lowest BABIP of any starter in the game.

Needless to say, this BABIP will almost certainly regress in 2009, and Bush will allow more hits as a result.

However, the other factors that caused optimism about Bush – namely, his ground ball rate and his walk rate – got worse in 2008. Bush allowed more than 40% of his balls in play to be fly balls for the first time in his career (excluding his short stint in 2004). Fly balls left the yard at approximately a league average rate (12% of his fly balls became homers), but Bush allowed a whopping 23 homers in only 168 innings due to the sheer number of fly balls that he surrendered.

Furthermore, his control, which had been one of his biggest strengths, declined. After walking 1.91, 1.63, and 2.13 hitters per nine innings from 2005 through 2007, Bush allowed 2.38 walks in 2008. This may not seem like a big increase, but it’s a big deal for a guy like Bush, who doesn’t get many strikeouts and relies on his defense. The more free passes a low-strikeout pitcher allows, the worse he is going to be.

Finally, using some of the handy stats over at Stat Corner, we can see that Bush induced fewer swinging strikes in 2008 (7.5%) than he did in 06 and 07 (8.7% and 9.1%, respectively). This is not a good sign in and of itself, but it’s even worse when coupled with a rise in his walks. Additionally, Bush threw far more balls in 2008 (36.2% of his pitches were out of the strike zone) than he did in 06 and 07 (33.4% and 34.1%, respectively). That doesn’t bode well at all.

Dave Bush is likely to be worse – perhaps a lot worse – next season than he was in 2008. Let someone else make the mistake of overvaluing him on draft day.