Monday, January 19, 2009

Pedro Martinez 2009

The numbers don't look good for Pedro Martinez. In fact, his strikeout rate has dropped off so sharply, that it would be obvious that he's been pitching with an injury, even if we didn't have any other reason to think so. From 2004 to 2007 his K/9 ranged from 9.5 to 9.8. During the same period his BB/9 was always between 2.1 and 2.9. In 2008 his K/9 was 6.8 and BB/9 was 3.5. There's just now way that can be random variance, and from what's been reported in the media, it doesn't sound especially likely that his arm is going to heal itself. His groundball rate has risen slightly, presumably because he's changed his mechanics or approach to compensate for his decreasing ability, but 41.0% is still not good enough to make up for his other shortcomings. The best that can be said about the 2008 version of Pedro Martinez is that he certainly pitched better than his 5.61 ERA would indicate. If he pitches the same in 2009, an ERA in the mid-to-high 4s would be reasonable, but with his health issues there are few riskier pitchers. I wouldn't take him in a traditional league under any circumstances. In leagues like Rotohog, Snapdraft, FantasySportsLive, and Draftbug I would keep an eye out for the slight chance of a sharp rebound in his strikeout rate (let's say to something above 8 after his third or fourth start).

1 comment:

Goose Joak said...

Agreed. I think he's a guy you have to watch pitch this Spring to get a sense of whether you want to take a flier on him or not. Because last year he just LOOKED awful. Anything in the zone was getting smacked around. Pedro's never had a high H/IP rate but he certainly did last year.