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2K11: Madison Bumgarner

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  • 2K11: Madison Bumgarner

    Discussion around this time last year centered around Bumgarner's loss of velocity in 2009 and whether or not he was hiding a shoulder injury. He didn't help his case by struggling in spring training and losing the 5th rotation spot to Todd Wellemeyer before heading to Fresno and giving up 21 hits in his first 2 starts combined.

    Then... something clicked. I haven't heard an explanation beyond some vagueries from Brian Sabean about how he had "personal issues to work out", but whatever it was that changed Bumgarner's velocity came with it and everything fell into place after that. He was clocked at 93 in a dominant late April start followed by a 0.94 ERA in 38.1 May innings and the rest was history. 131.2 big league IP (2.87 ERA, 104 K, 31 BB) capped off by 8 shutout innings in Game 4 of the World Series. And in stark contrast to 2009, Pitch f/x data appears to show him gaining velocity from his late June debut until the end of the season.

    Unfortunately the dominant playoff performance pretty much ruins any chance of him being underrated coming in to 2011. MDC has him as the 36th SP off the board around the same range as Marcum, Floyd, and Tim Hudson. That's a hefty investment on a kid that will be 21 years old for the majority of 2011.

    FIP: 3.66
    xFIP: 4.03
    SIERA: 3.88

    The DIPS-related metrics aren't buying all the way in to last year's 3.00 ERA, but none of those numbers portend any sort of disastrous regression to the mean. The other factor of course has been discussed ad naseum on FanGraphs recently, but Giants pitchers do seem to constantly outperform their xFIP. I also think it might be real judging by the quality of hitters than Bumgarner faced last year. Look at this:

    Opp OPS for Bumgarner: .733
    Opp OPS for Zito/Lincecum/Sanchez/Cain: .707

    For one reason or another, Bumgarner faced more difficult lineups last year than his fellow Giant arms and in fact he led the entire NL in Opponent OPS for pitchers who threw more than 100 innings. The guy who pulled that feat in 2009? Mike Pelfrey, who saw a 35-point drop in oOPS from 2009 to 2010 and an ERA dip from 5.03 to 3.66.

    Projections
    James: 188 IP, 3.54 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 137 K
    Marcel: 113 IP, 3.54 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, 95 K
    ZiPS: 165 IP, 3.93 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 107 K

    All told, I think there's a number of interesting factors in play here and while I don't necessarily have a prediction for MadBum in 2011, my gut feeling is to try to buy moving forward.
    Last edited by ; 02-17-2011, 03:32 PM.
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