http://tinyurl.com/4ckk63v
This is one of those good news/bad news things, so let’s start with the good
news: Jack Morris, David Cone and Dave Stewart are just three All-Stars who
endured seasons as bad as Josh Beckett [stats]’s woeful 2010. So the
erstwhile Red Sox [team stats] ace at least shares solid company.
Better prepare yourself for the bad news, though, because it’s a doozy:
Virtually every pitcher to struggle like Beckett did last season not only was
never the same, but almost to a man failed to produce a single, solitary
above-average season thereafter.
The results are actually kind of staggering. And while they have no bearing
on whether Beckett will bounce back in 2011, they should at least give Red
Sox fans pause following last year’s 6-6, 5.78 ERA disaster that can only
partially be chalked up to injuries.
So what are we talking about? Thanks to the magic of baseball-reference.com,
it was easy to sort for pitchers in their 30s who posted ERAs above 5.75
while pitching at least 125 innings.
The search returned 69 such seasons by 66 different pitchers. Jaime Navarro
appeared on the list three straight times (which helps explain why the White
Sox were so mediocre in the late 1990s), while Tim Belcher made it twice.
Of those 66 pitchers, only three managed to regain something even remotely
approximating their form, at least as starters.
Before his death in 2002, Cardinals starter Darryl Kile rebounded from an
8-13, 6.61 season with the Rockies in 1999 at age 30 to lead the NL in wins
and go 20-9 with a 3.91 ERA for the Cardinals in 2000.
He’s probably Beckett’s best hope at a comparable because he had another
outstanding season in 2001 (16-11, 3.09) and was off to a good start in 2002
(5-4, 3.72) before dying of natural causes in his hotel room.
But extenuating circumstances clearly surround Kile’s return to form, the
most obvious being that the two worst seasons of his career took place in the
noted launching pad of Coors Field. Once he escaped the Rockies, he was an
All-Star again.
Next on the list is Belcher, and even he is hard to label a success story. He
went 7-15, 5.89 with the Tigers at age 32 in 1994. Two years later he won 15
games for the Royals with a 3.92 ERA, but that season was the outsider in an
otherwise miserable run of seven poor years to end his career.
Then there’s Livan Hernandez, who came out of nowhere to post decent 10-12,
3.66 numbers with the Nationals last year. He had compiled a 5.28 ERA over
the previous four seasons and would anyone really be surprised if he returns
to that level in 2011?
And that’s literally it. Sure, pitchers like Darren Oliver and Jeff Fassero
remade themselves into relievers with some degree of success, but the Red Sox
aren’t paying Beckett $63 million over the next four seasons to become a
latter-day Ramiro Mendoza.
They’re paying him to anchor their rotation.The same was once said of lots
of good pitchers, like Morris, Cone and Stewart. Or Al Leiter, Pat Dobson,
Ramon Martinez and Rick Sutcliffe.
Then they had seasons like Beckett’s 2010 and their careers were over. It’s
hard to fathom that Beckett could experience a similar fate, but for whatever
it’s worth, the game’s entire history is working against him.
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