(No, Adam Wainwright is not Jacob, but some hot August nights when he pitched a complete game 1-hitter… it did feel like it.)
With the potentially devastating news from Cardinals camp that Adam Wainwright has a “serious” elbow injury; the next thoughts are always about replacements whether externally or internally. In the Cardinals case, they said right now that they will try to replace Wainwright internally and that’s where we come in. Let’s take a look at who can step up internally from the minor leagues from the preseason projections and some scouting reports.
Lance Lynn – ZiPS projects Lance Lynn with an ERA+ of 82 for 157 innings over 29 starts. For you traditionalists, that would give Lynn a 9-12 record and a 4.87 ERA. Those numbers do not thrill me up, but there is some value there. Also, ZiPS projects him to have a better K/BB but around the same ERA+ as Kyle Lohse. Keith Law also said on Twitter that Lance Lynn could be a solid #4-#5 starter. Additionally, besides Bryan Augenstein, ZiPS indicated Lynn as the next best option to start for the Cardinals by ERA+. Lynn also is projected to have the most strikeouts besides Wainwright and Carpenter. All of that information put together means that Lynn should be considered the next man up for the Cardinals and considering how much of Spring Training is left, he should get a good opportunity to earn the spot this spring.
Adam Ottavino – Replace Adam with Adam, nobody will know the difference, right? Well… Ottavino got a few spot starts last season before ending the season early due to injury. ZiPS gives him a 5.28 ERA and a 75 ERA+ over 20 starts and 104 innings. Marcel looks a tiny bit more friendly to Ottavino while projecting only 57 innings with a 4.89 ERA and 4.31 FIP. Both projection systems see him striking out more than he walks. Without knowing if Ottavino is back to 100% after last season’s injury, it is hard to project him to the starting rotation at this point. But, one would imagine that he will be one of the candidates if healthy.
Bryan Augenstein – Augenstein is already on the 40 man roster, which is a huge advantage for him and is favored by both ZiPS and Marcel. Augenstein is projected to have a 4.26 ERA (Marcel) and a 4.35 ERA (ZiPS) with a 91 ERA+ (ZiPS) and a 4.13 FIP (Marcel). Augenstein was beset by bad luck last year in AAA with the Diamondbacks with a FIP of 3.86 and an ERA of 6.56(!). If the Cardinals think he can approach these projections, they will include him in the candidates for the rotation as well.
PJ Walters – Walters is projected to strike people out (107 in 139 innings for ZiPS) and 7.88 K/9 for Bill James projection and 7.44 K/9 for Marcel. However, James and Marcel project only 32 and 52 innings respectively. We have seen PJ Walters in the majors and he is all together too hittable and should be a candidate for the rotation, but not very high on the list.
Brandon Dickson – Dickson is projected by ZiPS to have the same ERA+ as Ottavino at 75, but with only about 4.5 K/9 over 150 innings for an ERA of 5.28. He looks to be even more hittable than PJ Walters and should be left out of the list of candidates for the rotation while he gets some more work in Memphis.
Mitch Boggs – Boggs was left in the bullpen by ZiPS, so I left him there as well.
Raul Valdes and Ian Snell – I took a look at Snell here and Valdes here, but without improved performances from these two, they are probably not in play.
Here’s the numbers I used: ZiPS and Bill James and Marcel from Fangraphs player pages.
Entries (RSS)
Here’s hoping Ottavino gets a real chance – he showed flashes of something good last summer and if he’s healthy, I think he can contribute. Lynn needs more time; I don’t think I need to see anything else from Walters
I think that kyle McClellan should be given a shot. The Cardinals have depth at right-handed relief.
They have stretched McClellan out the last couple of years and have read they are doing the same this year, especially now with the Wainwright situation. Im fine with stretching him out, which has helped him be a very valuable cog in the bullpen as he has been able to pitch in so many rolls from closing, setting up, and even pitching some long relief. For that reason, I see him as very valuable in that roll and think it would set the bullpen back some if he switched to starting. If it were me, would look hardest first at Lynn and some of the others, but if they just dont seem ready or arent getting the job done, then McClellan may make sense to try starting then give Sanchez or someone else a chance in the bullpen, though would like to keep Sanchez in AAA just a little longer if at all possible.
“They have stretched McClellan out the last couple of years…” Say what? He hasn’t gone three innings in an appearance since 2008.
pretty sure that’s in reference to the off-season and the beginning of spring training … which is correct from everything i’ve read.
Your correct in that he hasnt gone more than 3 innings in the regular season, was referring more to spring training and offseason they have been stretching him out for a shot at starting, or atleast in case they need him to, sorry if i was unclear on that
I think that’s a case of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. We take one of our top 3 relievers out of the bullpen, creating a hole there as well. Right-handed relief might be more of a system strength though with Salas, Sanchez and Reifer waiting in the wings for Miguel Batista to break down.
Honestly, I hope it’s McClellan. Would love to see him get a shot, but I think it will come down to both him and Lynn. If they think Lynn is ready and impresses at least as well as McClellan does this Spring, he’ll probably get the spot.
Personally, I’d rather see Lynn. At least he’s been starting and going multiple innings, and that humongous body looks made for the starting-pitcher role. K-Mac has value in the role he’s been playing, obviously not as much as an innings-eating starter would, but still value. Grossly upping his work load would risk, well, breaking him.
i think it i bad baseball economics to not find out if kmac can be an effective starter
I totally agree with you that it would be good baseball economics to try KMac as a starter. I’m not sure if this is good math or will make any sense, but I would like to try to find out if it is good economics or not to try KMac out as a starter.
1 WAR is worth about $2.3 million dollars according to fangraphs. KMac’s FIP last year was 4.07 in 75 innings, which earned him a grand total of 0.1 WAR, and his salary was $425k. So, even at a very low salary, he was paid about twice his value (worth about $230K). But let’s say KMac was to make about 25 starts, pitches about 150 innings to the tune of a 4.5 FIP. Then his he would have about a 1.2 WAR (looked at John Lannan last year for a comp). In this situation he would be worth roughly $2.75 million dollars on a salary of $1.375 million. I’m not sure what KMac’s starter projections are, but it looks to me like him putting up a very average FIP would exponentially increase his value. I also think that based on his performance last spring he could be a very serviceable starter. Also, right-handed relievers are a dime a dozen, so I think he could be easily replace in the bullpen.
Someone please respond and tell me how badly I butchered all of this.
Nicely done sir. However, I do believe there’s a huge flaw with WAR and relievers. Everyone who watches baseball realizes a reliever is much more valuable than his war proves him, closer or not.
As for McClellan, I can see him being a positive in a pitching staff. Unfortunately, I also see him tiring out his first year as well, which still does not bode well for this season. None-the-less, I say try him anyways. 4 strong pitches were never suited for a reliever.
“Tiring out”? You’re on the right track, but try “completely screwing up his arm when he gets to the point where he has pitched twice as many innings as he ever has before in a season.” By now the dangers of grossly ramping up a pitcher’s work load suddenly are well known. K-Mac is a prime candidate for those dangers if he starts.
I simply cannot approve this idea.
Did McClellan not throw more innings in the minors? Has he had surgery in the past?
TJ surgery in 2005. His highest inning total in the minors was 128 in 2004. This is not coincidence.
Thanks.
I’m with you on Lynn.
Keep McClellan in the pen and see what Lynn can do.
I’m comfortable with either K-Mac or Lynn, though what I like about Lynn is that he pitched 163 innings last year. Thus we could have some expectation that he might last most of the year as a starter. With K-Mac, who knows, though I was surprised a few years ago when Looper was able to pitch as many innings as he did as a starter.
A difference, though, is that Looper was quite a bit older when he made the return transition (he’d been a starter in the low minors). That matters, because of the by now well documented tendency of pitchers to be more susceptible to injury until they’re on the far side of 25 years old. K-Mac qualifies, but not by much.
Call me old school, but I’m in the school of thought that it’s less of a burden on your arm to pitch fifty warm up pitches and 100 pitches every five to six days instead of 30 pitches to warm up and twenty pitches in an inning every other day. Not saying it’s an injury concern to have McClellan start pitching, but it’s a possibility it’d be alright. Thus me saying he’d tire out. I severely doubt the pitching staff would send McClellan out there late in the season if he were exhausted and over his total pitch count in previous years by a lot, seeing how reliant they seem to be on pitch counts throughout the org.
Let’s say McClellan starts 25 games with a 150 total pitches (Starting and warm-ups). This would equal 25 X 150 = 3750 Pitches.
Now let’s compare to an estimated total of 50 pitches (20 during the game, 30 to warm up). He threw 70 innings last year making it 50 X 70 = 3500 pitches.
I agree this is a little far fetched, seeing how each style of pitching puts different types of stress on a pitchers arm and the number’s aren’t exact, but this is kind of how I see it when it comes to converting relievers to starters. Duncan proved us wrong with Looper and he’s been in love with McClellan for years. You never know.
Although, I’d rather have Wainwright.
A reasonable way of thinking, but with two flaws. First, he didn’t throw as many as 20 pitches per inning on average. No successful pitcher (and K-Mac was definitely “successful” last year) does. Second, and much more important, a very small percentage of the warm-up pitches, probably as few as 25%, are thrown with full intensity, and full strain on the arm and body. I don’t think warm-up pitches should be counted against total work load, except under unusual circumstances.
Looking at it from a similar perspective but using a different metric, last year K-Mac faced 307 batters. Even if he went only 5 innings per start (and that would be a very disappointing outcome), with a normal WHIP, he’d face that many in about 15 starts. Going 6 innings per start, which is clearly what you’d like to see as a minimum, he’d get there in about 12 starts. Anything more than that would be work load to which he is unaccustomed. “Significantly” more than that, say facing another 150 batters (which would only push him to about 18 6-inning starts), would take terrible risks with his arm.
I don’t think it’s necessarily “old school” to think that fewer, longer outings are easier on the arm than more, shorter ones. However, it depends on the pitcher’s very individual body. K-Mac might be a pitcher who’d do well with the “old school” way of handling arms. He might not. What risks are you willing to take for the sake of having him start rather than Lynn, if getting it wrong breaks a very useful pitcher?
I appreciate your concerns, and I don’t advocate for handing KMac the job, but I think it would be irresponsible not to include him in a spring training competition, along with Lynn, Ottavino, Snell, and Augenstein.
Who knows? Maybe Lynn keeps flashing the sickness he showed late last year. Maybe Ottavino shows adequate control. Or maybe Duncan pulls a Snell-colored diamond out of his ass.
If KMac proves to be the best option out of the bunch, then he needs to be given the opportunity, an opportunity which I’m fairly certain he wants pretty badly. If he doesn’t look like the best option, then case closed. But, I believe he provides the best chance at winning this year and at least needs a shot.
Agree that it would be foolish to hand the job to anyone on Feb. 24th. They do have to put it up for grabs and it doesn’t hurt anything to let KMac try to prove he’s the guy. Still I’d hope that Lynn proves he belongs so that we can keep Mac in the bullpen. If not then we need to hope that Sanchez or Reifer can progress quickly to help out the pen.
Kyle will get the job. He has been in the majors for a few years and knows the deal. Mr. TLR will be risk averse and want to go with the proven vet, McClellan.
Who will replace him in the bullpen especially if Batista doesn’t have it this year?
Salas, Sanchez, Reifer, Dickson. We have enough guys.