My Kingdom for a Horse

[Camden_yardbird]

Shoot, at this point give me a Scott Erikson.  200 innings, 3.00 to 4.50 ERA, 3-5 WAR.

[Frobby]

56 minutes ago, Camden_yardbird said:

Shoot, at this point give me a Scott Erikson.  200 innings, 3.00 to 4.50 ERA, 3-5 WAR.

He was in the 20+ category.    Great to have one of those as your no. 2/3 starter.

[tntoriole]

10 hours ago, Frobby said:

From another thread:

 

So how rare is it to have a Horse, anyway?    And exactly who qualifies?

 

I had a look at every pitcher who debuted from 1990 forward.   You can break them down this way:

 

1990-2009 Debuts – most of these pitchers are retired now, and those who are active (rWAR marked with an *) have pretty much defined their careers by now.

60+ WAR – 9 pitchers.    These are your Hall of Famers, or near misses.   They include Pedro Martinez (83.9 rWAR), Mike Mussina (82.9), Zack Greinke (71.7*), Justin Verlander (70.9*), Clayton Kershaw (68.0*), Roy Halladay (64.3), C.C. Sabathia (63.0), Max Scherzer (60.3*) and Andy Pettitte (60.2).

50+ WAR – 7 pitchers, one of whom has a real good shot at graduating to the 60+ category.   They include Cole Hamels (59.6*), Mark Buehrle (59.2), Tim Hudson (58.1), Mariano Rivera (56.2), Johan Santana (51.7), Roy Oswalt (50.1) and Felix Hernandez (50.1*).    To state the obvious, only 6 of these were starting pitchers.

40+ WAR – 7 pitchers, one of whom has a solid shot at the 50+ category.    They include Bartolo Colon (46.1), Javier Vazquez (45.7), Jon Lester (45.5*), Brad Radke (45.2), Carlos Zambrano (43.9), Cliff Lee (43.5) and Adam Wainwright (40.2*)

30+ WAR – There were 18 of these, two of whom might move into the 40+ category.    I won’t list them all here, but the active ones who debuted in this period are David Price (39.7*), Madison Bumgarner (37.1*) and Johnny Cueto (32.3*).   

20+ WAR – There were 55 of these, plus one more right on the cusp.    The active ones who debuted in this period are  Gio Gonzalez (29.2*), Anibal Sanchez (26.7*), Ervin Santana (25.9*), J.A. Happ (21.8*), Clay Buchholz (21.8*), Jordan Zimmermann (21.3*), Ubaldo Jimenez (21.0*), Carlos Carrasco (20.7*) and Jhoulys Chacin (20.0*).   Oh yeah, I put Ubaldo in the “active” category!     The “cusp” player is Rick Porcello, who is at 19.9 and young enough where he seems pretty likely to finish above 20 WAR.    This category includes 5 pitchers who were primarily relievers, and one hybrid (Darren Oliver, who had a substantial career as a starter before switching to relief).  

 

I’ll pause here for a second.    That’s a total of 97 pitchers (if you include Porcello) in 20 years who reached 20+ WAR, 41 who reached 30+, 24 who reached 40+, 16 who reached 50+, 9 who reached 60+.     You can look at the names and decide for yourself where you want to draw the line as to who was (or is) a Horse.    The only two who are really associated with the Orioles are Mike Mussina (who, it should be noted, had the second highest WAR total on the entire list) and Jake Arrieta (25.5 rWAR, almost entirely with other teams).   

 

One way to look at this is that about one 40+ WAR pitcher comes along per year (23 in 20 years, plus two others who might get there).    A typical year might see one 40+, another 30+, and three additional 20+ guys.

 

2010-14 Debuts – virtually all of the pitchers from this era are still active and may have several good years in front of them.     But here are the ones who have already cracked the 20+ WAR threshold:

40+ WAR – Chris Sale (45.3).    Hard to tell how much he has left in the tank after last year, but he’s only 31 and so I’d say he has a good chance to join the 50+ club and still a shot at 60+ too.

30+ WAR – Jake deGrom (34.9), Stephen Strasburg (33.9) and Corey Kluber (33.1).    deGrom is 32 but at the peak of his performance, so 50+ seems quite possible and 40+ a near certainty.    Strasburg is 31 and I’d probably say the same of him.   Kluber is 34 and coming off injury.   I’d put his odds of cracking 40+ WAR at less than 50/50.

20+ WAR – Jake Arrieta (25.5), Jose Quintana (24.6), Gerrit Cole (24.0), Lance Lynn (22.2), Yu Darvish (21.8), Dallas Keuchel (20.3) and Julio Teheran (20.2).     Cole seems like a good bet to wind up in the 40+ range.     It’s uncertain whether any of the others listed will exceed 30+, though some could.    I count 16 other pitchers who debuted in this era who have a decent shot at 20+ WAR, though I am sure that some of those won’t make it and that some I am not thinking of will make it.

 

So, from that five year period, I’d say you have four probable 40+ guys (Sale, deGrom, Strasburg, Cole) and another who could get there in Kluber, though I wouldn’t count on it.   But there aren’t many other likely candidates from this period for 30+.   

 

Nobody who has debuted in 2015 or later has reached 20 WAR yet, and it would be very speculative to guess who will.   

 

Let’s hope that if we revisit this thread in 10 years, there will be some new Orioles pitchers on the list.  It's been quite a dry spell.

Fantastic post...glad my little rant got you started!!  lol.   The amazing thing is perhaps not so much that we only have the few years of Mussina, , but that we have had nobody else on your lists even at the lower WAR totals.  That is the true evidence of poor pitching drafts and development

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

2 hours ago, Camden_yardbird said:

Shoot, at this point give me a Scott Erikson.  200 innings, 3.00 to 4.50 ERA, 3-5 WAR.

That will get a pitcher $25M per season in free agency now. 

[backwardsk]

I could see Patrick Corbin with an outside chance of getting to 40.

[Frobby]

1 minute ago, backwardsk said:

I could see Patrick Corbin with an outside chance of getting to 40.

Could happen.   He’s a bit younger than I realized (30 this season, 17.5 rWAR to date).    

[DrungoHazewood]

10 hours ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

That will get a pitcher $25M per season in free agency now. 

I don't think so.  Erickson had one season with the Orioles with an ERA under 4.00.  And quickly declined under heavy workload.  From 1993-96, when he would have been hitting free agency, he had an ERA+ of 93 (real ERA of about 5.00).

He might have gotten a large contract if he'd been a free agent right after one of his really good years, but more likely he'd have gotten something like Ubaldo in the 4/50 range.  And in 2020 the analytics guys would be pretty skeptical of that 4.8 K/9 and 4.50ish FIP.

[DrungoHazewood]

45 minutes ago, backwardsk said:

I could see Patrick Corbin with an outside chance of getting to 40.

He has about 17 wins through age 29.  There are 183 pitchers (through 2015) who had between 15 and 20 wins through 29.  12 of them (6.5%) ended up with more than 40 wins in their careers, led by Curt Schilling at 83.  

The median career total is about 20 wins.  Think about that a minute... if you were worth 15-20 wins through 29, your most likely career value is 20 or 21 wins.    Typical example is Scott McGregor: 18.7 wins in his 20s, 1.5 in his 30s.  Jamie Navarro was worth just over 15 wins in his 20s, -5.3 in his 30s; that was 183rd on the list.

So going solely by historical precedent Corbin probably has one or two good years left in him.

[Frobby]

3 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I don't think so.  Erickson had one season with the Orioles with an ERA under 4.00.  And quickly declined under heavy workload.  From 1993-96, when he would have been hitting free agency, he had an ERA+ of 93 (real ERA of about 5.00).

He might have gotten a large contract if he'd been a free agent right after one of his really good years, but more likely he'd have gotten something like Ubaldo in the 4/50 range.  And in 2020 the analytics guys would be pretty skeptical of that 4.8 K/9 and 4.50ish FIP.

Well, we know he did get 5/$30 mm going into the 1999 season.   I’d guess that would be 5/$75 mm today.    Unfortunately Erickson was quite unproductive after that.    The O’s definitely have had very bad luck with big-dollar contracts for pitchers, other than Mussina’s last contract with us, which was ridiculously good.    

[OsEatAlEast]

One thing that we have going for us. The law of averages says producing a TOR starter will happen sooner than later. Blind dumb luck be it good or bad can only last for so long. I do have more confidence with Elias running the show now also.

[Redskins Rick]

35 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Well, we know he did get 5/$30 mm going into the 1999 season.   I’d guess that would be 5/$75 mm today.    Unfortunately Erickson was quite unproductive after that.    The O’s definitely have had very bad luck with big-dollar contracts for pitchers, other than Mussina’s last contract with us, which was ridiculously good.    

Yet not good enough for ownership. GRRRR %^$^$%^%&^&((*&*&&%^$^$^%

[makoman]

12 minutes ago, Redskins Rick said:

Yet not good enough for ownership. GRRRR %^$^$%^%&^&((*&*&&%^$^$^%

I think they were fine with that contract. They just expected a hometown discount forever. 

[DrungoHazewood]

5 hours ago, Frobby said:

Well, we know he did get 5/$30 mm going into the 1999 season.   I’d guess that would be 5/$75 mm today.    Unfortunately Erickson was quite unproductive after that.  

27-40, 5.77 from '99 to the end of his career. Ubaldo only had a 5.22 with the Orioles.

[scOtt]

We have a drove/string/stud/team of horses coming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only noun I could search/find. A gaggle of geese, pride of lions...

[fansince1988]

The castle is too small. Move the walls back, please.