The 2013 AL Central thread

[Robo-Chachi]

Just the 3rd that time the Royals have had a winning April in the last 22 years. 4.5 games out of first place and what looks to be a weak year for the division. If these guys can hold it together (especially the starting pitchers) until the prospects start arriving, there is a slim chance they could contend for the AL Central. Eric Hosmer is batting .407 in Triple AAA. In 4 starts innings Danny Duffy has a 0.90 ERA with 24 K's. Mike Montgomery has 23 K's and a 2.67 ERA. Clint Robinson has 7 HR's in 22 games.

[Broncobama]

Hey cool, just the third time for the Rays they've had a winning record in April, too.

[Robo-Chachi]

Tough schedule this month: Yankees, Angels, Rangers (twice), Cardinals.

Team really need Jeff Francis and Hochevar to get their shit together and to get rid of Kyle Davies all together.

[derek]

just make a baseball subforum with threads for every team

wheres the yankees thread??

[derek]

sorry, didn't mean to hijack the royals thread with YANKEES 3 posts in ^__^;;

[mchamartin]

Oh shit we have a Royals thread now. Anyway I still think this team is going to be terrible by the end of this year, but the entire AL Central looks real bad (except the Indians, but they're playing above their talent level at the moment) so I guess nothing is totally out of the question. The Twins and White Sox are already ten fucking games out of first place which is pretty astounding. I'm mostly just hoping Alex Gordon doesn't regress and Billy Butler develops a little more home run power. If the team loses 100 games but those two dudes look good, I won't really mind. It'd also be cool if Luke Hochevar were actually serviceable but I'm not holding my breath on that.

[dcm]

how's alcides been doing for you guys?

[5% Tint]

I can't believe Jeffress has been a serviceable-to-solid reliever for you, he was wallowing away in the Brewers minor league system getting caught with weed

[Robo-Chachi]

how's alcides been doing for you guys?

Not doing anything with his bat, but he is earning himself a Gold Glove in the field. He pretty much has at least one amazing defensive play a game.

[Robo-Chachi]

Kyle Davies needs to go. Hopefully in a month or so he will be replaced with Danny Duffy.

[mchamartin]

Davies has pretty much always been terrible, not sure why he's still around at all

[Robo-Chachi]

Because currently our starting pitching depth gets us the likes of Sean O'Sullivan, who happens to be doing much better than Davies.

[hiddenicon]

finally, a sports thread that i can drink myself to death to.

[Al Barlick]

good luck to your royals, chach

[macseries]

just make a baseball subforum with threads for every team

wheres the yankees thread??

mlb 2011.

[south pacific]

How's our local star Kila Kaaihue doing?

[Wayne Chrebet]

Davies has pretty much always been terrible, not sure why he's still around at all

He just might be the worst starting pitcher of all time.

Kyle Davies Is Historically Awful

I’ll probably take some grief for this, but even after Monday’s start, I haven’t been happy with the performance of Kyle Davies this year. Hell, I haven’t been happy with his performance for most of the time since he joined the Royals. I started looking at his career numbers. They aren’t pretty.

142 G, 135 GS, 726.2 IP, 822 H, 476 R, 349 BB, 511 SO, 93 HR

Broken down into rates:

10.2 H/9, 4.3 BB/9, 6.3 SO/9, 1.61 WHIP

And factoring in earned runs:

5.54 ERA, 78 ERA+

Those numbers are dreadful. Just frighteningly horrible.

To determine exactly how bad Davies has been throughout his career, we need to find some historical perspective. For help, I turned to the Baseball Reference Play Index. The great thing about the Play Index is you can set parameters… Things like innings pitched, number of starts, etc.

For this exercise, I’ll examine all pitchers who started at least 90% of all their appearances (Davies has made a start in 95% of his appearances) and pitched at least 700 innings. Notice those numbers don’t match Davies career totals exactly. Casting a wider net allows some latitude for Davies… It should make it easier to find a pitcher who has been worse than him over roughly the same amount of work.

To begin, let’s start with the basics – ERA. Here is the list of starting pitchers who have posted an ERA greater than 5.40.

Kyle Davies

Yep. That’s right. Going all the way back to 1901, no starting pitcher (remember this is for pitchers who started at least 90% of their games) has thrown more than 700 innings with a worse ERA than Davies. In fact, only five pitchers in the history of the game meet the workload criteria and have an ERA greater than 5:

Kyle Davies – 5.54
Jason Bere – 5.14
Daniel Cabrera – 5.10
Mike Maroth – 5.05
Sidney Ponson – 5.03

Jeez… That’s just dreadful. Davies is lapping the field like Secretariat at the Belmont.


OK, let’s move on. Longtime readers know I like dealing with WHIP since that essentially measures the number of baserunners allowed per inning of work. Again, using the same workload parameters, here’s the list of pitchers who’s career WHIP tops 1.58:

Kyle Davies

Uh-oh. I begin to sense a pattern…

If I expand the net to include pitchers with a WHIP of greater than 1.5, we find a total of nine pitchers. Here are the five worst:

Kyle Davies – 1.611
Daniel Cabrera – 1.573
Bobby Witt – 1.569
Pat Rapp – 1.550
Jason Bere – 1.549

Again, Davies blows away the rest of the field. Remember, even though all the name on the previous lists are fairly contemporary, the search at Baseball Reference goes all the way back to 1901. Cabrera was always thought of as an awful pitcher… But he’s no Kyle Davies.

Davies performs a little better when we narrow the search and examine only the walks. A total of 21 pitchers in our group have posted a walk rate of greater than 4.0 BB/9. Davies and his 4.32 BB/9 ranks at number 10. Four pitchers have actually topped 5 BB/9.

Daniel Cabrera – 5.24
Oliver Perez – 5.08
Jason Bere – 5.07
Bobby Witt – 5.02

Finally, there is ERA+. Here is the list of starters who have thrown at least 700 innings who possess an ERA+ of less than 82.

Kyle Davies

Sigh.

A couple more… How about starters ranked by percentage of quality starts.

Eddie Lopat – 28.9%
Kyle Davies – 32.6%
Vic Raschi – 35.7%
Daniel Cabrera – 41.3%
Jason Bere – 42.4%

***Note: As several commenters pointed out, the QS% for Lopat (and Raschi) is incorrect. This is the report I ran at B-Ref. Click the link and you will see what I used. Apologies for the discrepancy. Although the Davies QS% is all too real.

And finally by WAR:

Mal Eason – -2.7
Chappie McFarland – -2.7
Kyle Davies – -1.9
Scott Olsen – -0.2
Jason Bere – 0.3

That’s right… Only four starting pitchers in the history of the game have thrown 700 or more innings as a starter and posted negative WAR. And our Davies is one of them. By the way, Eason and McFarland pitched around the turn of the 20th century. So let’s just say that in the last 100 years, there hasn’t been a starting pitcher quite as horrible as Davies.

Make no mistake. It is quite possible that every time Kyle Davies takes the mound we are witnessing the worst starting pitcher in the history of the game. Never before has a pitcher so awful been given so many chances. Sure, he’s capable of throwing a “gem” like he did on Monday where he went six scoreless innings. Unfortunately, those performances are extremely rare.

Sadly, to bring this up at this point is a little like shutting the barn door after the livestock have escaped. Davies is in his final year under club control and will be a free agent following this season. He’ll be a distant memory when the Royals are ready to contend. That Davies is still on the club and has been given so many opportunities points out how deep Dayton Moore’s Atlanta ties run and how flawed The Process has been to this point. Just plucking a random pitcher out of Triple-A would likely yield better results than what Davies has been providing.

Normally, a pitcher as bad as Davies has been ends up either in the bullpen or out of baseball altogether well before he’s allowed to throw 700 innings as a starter. Sadly, the Royals haven’t reached the point where they feel they can move him out of the rotation. To be fair, Davies made a third of his starts for the Braves. The good news is, he’s improved since his time with Atlanta. The bad news is, he hasn’t improved enough to be even an average major league starter. His 0.5 WAR is the worst among all starters since Davies joined the Royals.

While the 2011 season has started on a positive note, there are still one or two reminders that GMDM struggled with his own Process in his first couple of seasons. Thankfully, the minors are stocked and we won’t have to endure starts from pitchers of Davies’ ability for much longer. Oh well… If you’re going to make a mistake, you may as well make one king size.

Honestly, I didn’t set out to do a hatchet job on Davies. I knew he was awful, but I figured there had to be starters who has been worse. I was kind of caught off guard at his complete and thorough grip on horribleness. And it’s not like this is some small sample size. This covers six years and more than 700 innings over 135 starts. This exercise yields an undeniable result…

Kyle Davies is the worst starting pitcher in the history of the game.

[Robo-Chachi]

How's our local star Kila Kaaihue doing?

He is sucking terribly while Eric Hosmer is batting .422 in AAA. If he doesn't pick it up over the next couple of series, I think his days as a Royal will be over.

[Ankh]

the entire AL Central looks real bad (except the Indians, but they're playing above their talent level at the moment)

fuck u

[pissydan]

i read the royals thread.

[Robo-Chachi]

In 27 games, Jeff Francoeur is batting .308 with 6 HR's and 21 RBI's.

[mchamartin]

In 27 games, Jeff Francoeur is batting .308 with 6 HR's and 21 RBI's.

He may be playing well so far but I am not very comfortable with Francoeur having his own fan club

[hiddenicon]

i'm so used to having my heart ripped out...

regardless, i've already bought my tickets for the red sox series.

[Robo-Chachi]

The Red Sox? Those guys suck!

[hiddenicon]

i hope dice k is still around by then.

[MrDecember]

i've got tickets to see the Royals on May 11th against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium and on May 16th against the Indians at Kauffman.

haven't been back to Kauffman since the latest renovation, so i'm pumped. hope they can at least win one of them.

[Robo-Chachi]

Another HR for Jeff Francouer!

Fun Fact: The Royals are the only team with 3 or more players having 20+ RBI's.

[macseries]

lol fangraphs had a "bold prediction" in the preseason that people would talk prematurely about "the return of jeff francoeur"

[qwerty]

inspired me to pull up this little gem again

[hiddenicon]

another win delivered up by a Francoeur walk off.