What a difference a year makes?

From 1-10 to 6-5. .500 baseball. Huzzah!

Not to rain on everyone's parade, but this year's start puts last year's in perspective:

          Runs Scored     Runs Allowed
2009         54              75
2010         53              66

The difference in runs allowed would actually only add up to about half a win.

QMAX is a system from the old Big Bad Baseball Annuals of adding some 'granularity' to the Quality Start, showing that some Quality Starts are better than others. 2009:
2010:

Click on the images to make them bigger. The blue area marks the 'Success Square' outings, where the combination of hits allowed and walks surrendered is good enough to mean you should win half the time. The red zone shows the 'Hit Hard' starts, games one is unlikely to win. There's not a whole lot of difference between this year and last: one fewer hit hard and an elite quality start, and that was Livo!'s of yesterday. That one also probably skewed our runs allowed statistic.

The 2009 edition of the Nationals underperformed badly. The 2010 one has overperformed slightly. You could put it down to Mr Rizzo's choice of 'winners' versus Bowden's 'lollygaggers'. You could put it down to a firmer hand on the tiller than last season, when Mr Acta seemed to be on borrowed time from the autumn, and MLB wouldn't let Mr Rizzo shed the 'interim' tag. You could put it down to luck. I know which one I think. How about you?

Jordan Zimmermann's QMAX Prospectus

Jordan Zimmermann is being treated to a particularly narrow strike zone by home plate umpire Mike Reilly in today's game. Even before that, though, his Quality Matrix readings were somewhat deflating for any view that he might be the second coming of Alvin Crowder or somebody. The question is whether this would be par performance for a prospect of his age. Let's look first at Zimmermann's ratings prior to today:

Date          Stuff,Command     QMAX
                ratings         Category
Apr 20            4,3           Success Square
Apr 26            5,4           --
May  1            6,3           Hit Hard
May  7            4,4           --
May 12            5,3           --

Zimmermann's shown a lot of promise if you watch him pitch, with impressive movement, but he's not really putting up great results here. The problem is he's not doing particularly well either with his 'Stuff' (preventing hits) or his Command (preventing walks).

But who to compare him with? Baseball Prospectus' 'deadly accurate' PECOTA player-projection system uses minor-league and major-league statistics to locate players showing similar statistical profiles. In the 2009 edition, they show four players as comparables for Zimmermann — Bobby Jones, Erik Hanson, Terry Taylor and John Maine. Taylor only pitched one game in the majors, but the others have all had reasonable careers. Let's look at the first five starts of each of them in turn, in chronological order.

Erik Hanson (1988)

Start         Stuff,Command     QMAX
                ratings         Category
1                  3,2          Success Square
2                  1,3          Success Square
3                  4,1          Success Square
4                  2,3          Success Square
5                  4,4          --

Well, he was pretty good, much better than Zimmermann, yet didn't pitch well past his age-30 season.

Bobby Jones (1993)

Start         Stuff,Command     QMAX
                ratings         Category
1                  5,3          --
2                  7,3          Hit Hard
3                  5,3          --
4                  3,3          Success Square
5                  2,1          Elite Square

That's more Zimmermann-like, almost identical command numbers, but he shows an improving arc, not Zimmermann's decline. Jones wasn't particularly effective past his age-28 season. However, like Hanson, Jones started his career in September, so maybe he had the advantage of facing a lot of cup-of-coffee scrubs.

John Maine (2004-5)

Start         Stuff,Command     QMAX
                ratings         Category
1                  6,5          Hit Hard
2                  2,4          Success Square
3                  3,5          Power Precipice
4                  4,3          Success Square
5                  5,4          --

Maine was a little better at hit prevention than Zimmermann, and a little more wild. He's still pitching, and doing well enough, although he's not an elite starter.

On the whole, I'd say Zimmermann's record as of today is about par; maybe just below par, but nothing to worry about. However, based on the story so far, and the absence of any seriously good pitchers in his comparables, I can't help but wonder if Zimmermann's over-hyped. He's got good stuff, but he's not dominating opposing hitters yet. I'll watch the rest of his season with interest, though. And I'm rooting for him to prove me wrong.

Daniel Cabrera to the QMAX

Using the old QMAX method of the Big Bad Baseball Annual, we get the following for Daniel Cabrera before tonight's start:

Apr 08 5,3 -- 4.45 ERA
Apr 13 5,4 -- 5.69 ERA
Apr 19 2,5 Power Precipice 2.92 ERA 
Apr 25 6,5 Hit Hard 10.46 ERA
Apr 30 2,5 Power Precipice 2.92 ERA
May 06 5,5 -- 7.42 ERA

Sadly, he's winless in spite of two good outings.

EDIT: Last night (May 11) Cabrera was hit really hard, 6,7 for a 17.78 ERA, his worst outing of the season. I think the Washington Times wants him gone. The Post is down on him, too. I don't know, I think I'd give him a little more rope. I believe he's scheduled to pitch Saturday. (04h02, 13 May, BST)