There's a lot of "I told you so experts" smiling from ear to ear as they predicted a down year for the 28 year old right hander Jake Peavy. That said, nobody could have envisioned the absolutely dreadful start that Peavy has had to the start the 2010 season – a 7.66 ERA and 1.84 WHIP after four starts. Could it be this bad? I mean, we're talking a Cy Young winner and one of the most dominating pitchers this decade. Let's take a look…
To start, Peavy's underlying stats are supporting the bad start. He's averaging a 6.0 K/9 rate and an almost unbelievable 6.0 BB/9 rate. His Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) is .320, which is near league average. His home run rate is also not out of line at 1.2 per nine. The only underlying stat that shows a bit of bad luck is his 58% strand rate. If you add it all up, Peavy's expected ERA (xERA) is 6.05, which is better than his ERA, but not by a lot.
Secondly, if we dig deeper into the stats, we see some disturbing trends in Peavy's velocity and movement of his pitches. In 2007, Peavy's fastball was averaging 93.9 MPH with a movement of 8.0 inches. In 2010, his velocity averaged 90.6 with movement of 6.5 inches. A drop of this magnitude is clearly concerning and could either mean mechanical problems, an injury, or the innings that Peavy's magical right arm has accumulated have caught up to him. While I'm not a pitching coach or a doctor, his eroding velocity and movement is not sudden and has been occurring little by little each year. That points more to an older arm than an injury or a temporary mechanical pitching problem.
Finally, the external factors of competition and ball park factors need to explored. First, three of Peavy's first four games were against, Cleveland (twice) and Toronto. While his fourth game was against a very good Tampa Bay offense, overall, you'd have to say that Peavy has faced fairly easy competitors. In looking at weather and ball park factors, two of his first four starts were in Chicago where the average temperature was 44.5 degrees. The third game was in Cleveland where the game time temperature was 44 while the fourth game was indoors in Toronto. The bottom line is that Peavy has pitched in pitcher-friendly weather and has still pitched poorly. It's scary to think what will happen when the wind switches in the summer in the band box of U.S. Cellular Field.
In looking for positives in the first four starts for Jake Peavy, I've not found any. His underlying stats are bad, his velocity is down, and he's pitched in pitcher-friendly weather. Am I worried, absolutely! Will things get better? Time will tell, but Peavy is getting to a point in his career that he's going to need to change how pitches. He can't blow batters away with that mid 90's fastball anymore. As his velocity has diminished, the separation between his off speed pitches and his fastball is getting smaller and that also spells trouble.
At this point, fantasy owners must bench Jake Peavy and hope that things can change. Unfortunately, Jake Peavy has got to change and that's going to be a lot harder than waiting for his luck to improve or the doormats of the league to come to town. Can he change? Time will tell.
