Now that THE trade has come to pass, lets revisit this topic

[Mephistopheles]

After adjusting for league (both league difficulty factor and pitchers faced in the National League), defense and park factors. I am getting a difference of about +9 runs for Jake Peavy. I haven't put them on the Cubbies yet, but given Jake's tendency to get the ball on the ground a bit higher rate than Santana, and one of the things Peavy is hurt by more (walks) is actually helped for pitchers at Wrigley, we're probably talking about Peavy squeezing out 3 runs or so there putting him down by about 6 runs. He's a very good hitting pitcher, and while Santana has done quite well in his 30 ABs there's a pretty damn good chance that the six run lead evaporates with the bats, ever so slightly going into Peavy's favor.

 

How'd I do this. Basically I derived factors for Peavy and Santana using their home parks. Petco Park shows no statistically significant park effect on Jake Peavy. I did however, use a method of scaling park factors for a regression to the mean kind of way. I completely took out pitchers ABs and did some adjustment for league in a similar manner, although using pitchers converting leagues of course. I used the last three seasons of data weighted 11, 8, 5. We would expect Peavy's opponents to hit about .234/.297/.383 in MLB average settings and Johan's to hit about .221/.266/.380. So really the only differences are about .013 BA, .018 BB/PA, and -.010 IsP. Over the course of a full season that comes out to approximately 14 singles, 10 walks, and 8 singles becoming doubles (helping peavy). There's also a slight expected increase in double plays added for Peavy. This is because the main difference in BA (okay the only difference in BA) is the difference of .013 in BABIP (.283 Peavy, .270 Santana). That BABIP may be a little low on Santana, given Wrigley's tendencies however. Either way the higher BABIP is a direct result of groundballs being more prevalent for Peavy. Wrigley's only going to increase GB outs for Peavy. Either way in a nuetral setting there's 2 or 3 more GIDPs that Peavy gets (that's 2 or 3 extra outs). Jake Peavy is also a better defender by Santana, going by PMR we're talking about a difference of about 3 singles that Peavy would have snagged and converted into outs. Finally summing all of this up and converting them to runs of course, we get Santana being +8.7 runs over a full season without adjusting for Peavy being a better fit for the Cubs and Peavy being a likely better hitter by a half a dozen runs. Either way it's either a slight favor to Peavy or a tie. It's hard to make a great case for Santana being a better fit for the Cubs than Peavy.

 

Santana's also at greater risk for an injury if coming to the Cubs. His pitch count has always hovered near 100 - rarely going over 110. This may sound like he does not have a lot of wear and tear on his arm, but the 220+ seasons he has really means more than the PC (screw you BP). Peavy's really not that much a risk for wear and tear. He throws about 105, going 110 every now and then. Keep in mind that pitchers tend to increase their PC coming to the NL (i know it's backwards). They also tend to increase their walk rates (which I actually did NOT take into account oh there's more reason to like Peavy).

 

Not only all of this, but there's another adjustment to be made: Handedness. With the notable exceptions of Prince Fielder and Adam Dunn (for now) most of the best hitters in the National League Central are right handed (and relatively speaking there's a higher RH percentage in this division than in others and one of the biggest park effects in baseball is Enron's RH HR factor, helping Peavy there). Now, Santana gets righties and lefties out at the same rate but Peavy is nails against right handed hitters. So there's that other factor I did not include in this analysis. All of this probably pushes to Peavy being around +5-10 for the Cubs. Other clubs value Santana more than Peavy (and rightfully so), so Peavy's production is a bigger bang for less money.

 

There's certainly no question that the given a choice between Peavy and Santana, the Cubs gotta go with Peavy.

[imb]

hasn't peavy, because of his delivery, always been considered a risk for injury? Or is he out of the red-zone by now?

[Rob]

I don't care for Latinos either. Good call, Meph.

[Mephistopheles]

hasn't peavy, because of his delivery, always been considered a risk for injury? Or is he out of the red-zone by now?

 

people always call "different" mechanics ones that hurt your arm. I think Cubs fans should know that we (everyone marshall included) dont know a damn thing about mechanics of pitching.

 

as far i can tell the most important thing is velo. other than that there's no other thing that really makes a big injury difference. sure it may look unhealthy and it may be but it doesnt really mean he's more of a risk. hes had shoulder stiffness before, then again every pitcher who has ever thrown a baseball overhand has had that ... just as much as he has.

 

really in injury risk theres a relationship between velo and injuries (higher velo = higher injury risk). outside of that know one knows a damn thing. ditto for pitch counts.