Is it All About the Innings?

One of the big reasons the Yankees signed Pettitte was that he was a reliable 200 innings. All that the Yankees needed was another guy in the rotation to give the Yankees innings, nothing more nothing less, just innings that wouldn't go to Sidney Fatson and Razzle Dazzle Rasner. Pettitte is a special case because in his 200 innings he's still very effective, but the point is it has now been mentioned in a lot of cases that teams should take the inning machine over the oft injured pitcher. Fangraphs had a nice little piece to put an end to this talk.

The aftermath of the Jon Garland signing by Arizona brought this idea out. What happened was Arizona figured one year of Garland and his mediocre 200 innings was more valuable than Randy Johnson's non reliable potential injury risk innings, illustrated when they didn't offer RJ a contract they deemed worthy to Garland. That clearly is not the case. In 2007 Johnson pitched only 56 innings, yet he was worth 1.6 wins. Last year Garland pitched 196.2 innings and was worth 1.9 wins. Johnson is an injury risk, but expecting him to only give 56 innings is highly unlikely, meaning the absolute worst case scenario for Johnson pitching a mere 60 innings is about as valuable as Garland pitching 200 innings like he did last year.

What's this all mean? Well one of the oft-injured pitchers that Fangraphs uses to illustrate their point, Ben Sheets, is still available as a free agent.

"Granted, we never know what would have happened if the injured pitchers lasted
the entire season. Still, do you really believe Johnson and Sheets would have
declined so rapidly that their statistics would drop them into the average
category? When pitchers with half of a season or so of statistics are evaluated,
the most common reaction is to think they could not possibly be as productive as
innings-eaters who stay on the field. This simply is not a universal truth. 106
IP of Ben Sheets in 2006 (+4 wins) + 105 IP of Replacement Level pitching (+0 wins) is equal to, or greater than, 211 IP of Jon Garland (+3.9 wins)."

If teams continue to prefer inning eaters like Garland over potential injury/potential dominant starters like Sheets, their price tags may come down even lower than they are now and some team is going to find themselves with a gigantic bargain. Take the New York Mets, they're in talks with Oliver Perez who although is not consistently effective he consistently takes the mound. He'll require a multi year deal because of that, and Ben Sheets is waiting here possibly only looking for an incentive laden one year deal where if he pitches half the innings as Perez he can be just as effective.

This doesn't mean to say that innings aren't valuable, it's just that we shouldn't forget how effective those innings are. C.C. Sabathia and Roy Halladay throw more innings than anyone else in baseball but do it across so many innings it makes them among the most valuable pitchers in the game. Guys like Jake Peavy who may be slightly more effective in their 180 innings still don't match output that Sabathia or Halladay put out. So, innings are obviously a huge commodity it's just that when valuing them don't put your blinders on to the effective 100 inning guys who when coupled with a replacement player is just as valuable, and in many cases cheaper.