…I’d rather have Kawakami for the rotation.

I think Kawakami is a plausible acquisition, if we decide that we want him. He was supposedly most interested in Boston, but now that they have Penny, they’re probably settled for pitching. The only real offer he has on the table is Baltimore, and from the reports I’ve seen that was mostly incentives, with a relatively low base salary. If we gave him something like three years at $8M per, he’d probably sign right then and there.

1) “Zach Duke may be the worst pitcher in all MLB.”

Wrong. The worst pitcher in all MLB isn’t going to be someone who made 30+ starts last year. It’s going to be a scrubby middle reliever who put up a 6-ish ERA (or worse) during mopup duty in blowouts. A guy who goes to bed every night sweating about whether he’s going to have a job tomorrow, or next week, or next month. If we released Duke, he’d have a new team in a matter of hours.

Honestly, Duke wasn’t even close to being the worst pitcher on the Pirates last year. JVB was, and if you restrict it to Pirates with 100+ IP, then Gorzelanny’s your guy.

2) “A quick loot at his stats reveals that every hitter that comes to the plate against him immediately becomes the NL’s leading hitter.”

Wrong. Opposing batters hit .304/.348/.464 against Duke last year. The NL’s batting title went to Larry Jones, who hit .364. The OPS title went to Albert Pujols, who hit .357/.462/.653. Neither is particularly close to Duke’s line. No pitcher with 100+ IP was bad enough to approach Pujols’s line. The worst by BA, Livan Hernandez, surrendered a .342 BAA. The worst by OPS, Brandon Backe, allowed opponents to hit .302/.376/.544, including 86 extra-base hits (36 of which were HR). Duke was not in the bottom ten of either category, and of course, you could find many pitchers who were even worse by dropping from a minimum of 100 IP to a lower number, which would open the field up for relievers.

3) “You could put this guy on the Rays and the only difference would be that he was the worst pitcher in the AL instead of the NL.”

Wrong. If you put Duke on the Rays, he’d be pitching in front of the team with the best defensive efficiency in the majors (.710) instead of the 28th-best (.675). Just as a quick-and-dirty estimate of the difference: At about 650 BIP, that’s a difference of 20-25 hits per year, more than 10% of Duke’s season total.

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I don’t know why you have this bizarre issue with Duke, but you need to get over it, or else nobody will take your other opinions any more seriously than they take your criticism of Duke. He’s a perfectly adequate bottom-of-the-rotation starter whose value is heavily influenced by the quality of the defense behind him. Full stop.

Might not be bad if it did, for that matter. I’d feel better if he had at least another half season of AAA time, though, to let him consolidate his gains.

It’s not like they didn’t have more obvious roster kipple to drop, if they needed a spot.

Sure, there’s a good chance that Duke will turn out to be a below average pitcher over his career, but I think it is way too early to pronounce the certainty of that. He’ll be 26 this season…that may not be “young” but there is certainly room for growth. Many pitchers — especially finesse pitchers - in fact reach their “prime” in their late 20s, and I think Duke showed enough progress last year to indicate that there’s the chance he still has an upside, even if the upside is only “average.” “Average” is underrated - if Duke can develop into an actually average pitcher then he really has value, either as a backend starter or as trade material when our “prospects” show that they are ready.

zach duke: 4/19/83
daniel mccutchen: 9/26/82

HE IS OLDER THAN ZACH DUKE.

mccutchen had worse numbers at age 25 in AAA than duke did at age 22.

do some basic research dude.

A pitcher’s HR rate is a function of his FB rate – typically about 10% of a pitcher’s FB will become HR in the modern game. If a pitcher throws meatballs, he’ll give up more fly balls, and therefore more HR. This is pretty common sense stuff.

The problem with Duke’s rookie year is that his HR/FB was a little over 5, about half of what it should have been. Ergo, he had a whole bunch of fly balls that, due to luck, were hit into headwinds or to deep parts of the park or whatever, and as a result he gave up about half as many HR as he “should” have. This rate regressed back toward 10 in subsequent seasons, as it does for all pitchers, and as a result his numbers declined.

If he was throwing more meatballs in later seasons, he would allow more total fly balls, and his HR rate would experience an additional increase tracking with the flyball rate. But that’s not connected to the “luck” thing, where a regression was going to happen whether he started grooving more pitches or not.

I think that McCutchen has a higher ceiling than Duke, and I like him a lot. But he had his own issues with home runs after coming over in the trade (12 in only 48 innings at Indy), and as such I don’t think that he should be handed anything just yet. If he can prove that he deserves it in spring training, all well and good.

We do give up some upside with Duke, but there’s also a fairly high floor on his performance compared to the other options, and with so many spots going to guys who are unproven, rehabbing, or trying to rebound, I kind of like being able to pencil his innings in on the roster.

There are always a few Moyers and such. But I do think that it’s at least fairly likely that he’s a more-or-less finished product at this point (with the caveat that his BABIP is going to continue to be a function of team defense, which is out of his control and could get better (or worse, God forbid)).

That said, if he’s a guy who can give us 180 innings with a 4.75 ERA (and he probably is), then I think he belongs in our rotation at the start of the year. We’re probably going to need at least seven or eight starters at various points of the season, with injuries and trades and random ineffectiveness and such, so our newfound depth is a good thing.

Both will be getting similar defensive support, so they’ll have a similar BABIP, and McCutchen’s higher K rate will account for the rest of the outs. That said, McCutchen will probably also have higher BB and HR rates than Duke, so he could easily end up with a lower BAA and a higher ERA.

I don’t understand why so many people are fixated on BAA as the ultimate measure of a pitcher. It matters, but it’s only a part of the equation, and to get anything of value from it you need to split it into K rate and BABIP.

i didn’t mean to imply you made an age comparison. mccutchen hasn’t reached the majors yet despite being a year older than duke. age relative to level does matter, no matter when a pitcher got his start. mccutchen was a college pitcher. those years count too. i don’t think we’ve seen the peak of mccutchen yet either, but i’d rather not find out at the major league level that we in fact have. even if we haven’t, all that potential is not going mean a thing if mccutchen’s on the mound against, say, the cubs lineup.

mccutchen needs some time at aaa and i think he’ll get it, no matter what his spring numbers look like. i don’t think i even need to make the case that spring numbers can be misleading, but i’ll throw out the spring numbers of sean burnett (who a few springs ago was way over his head) and gorzo’s (who a few springs ago was, well, gorzo of last year) from a few years ago. mccutchen hasn’t shown enough at aaa to warrant major league consideration. there are still things for him to learn there, which there aren’t for duke. duke mastered that level at age 22. mccutchen will get his shot, but he’s got to show he’s ready for the level before he’s thrown to the wolves.

and what of duke? look, i’m not saying zach duke is a world beater or anything. the only way he’s going to find real success with that strikeout rate is to have a solid defense behind him and turn in some brad-radke-like walk numbers, neither of which he’s had in his career. at 25, he’s still too young to completely give up on, despite many peoples’ desires. he might find success in the bullpen, such as one of his comps jiim gott did or if he could even slightly improve his strikeout numbers he’d be jamie moyer. moyer is a great comp for duke and i’d love to see (or perhaps do myself if i can find the time) a comparison of moyer’s performance relative to the defense behind him, particularly his age 23-25 seasons with the cubs, as a comparison with duke. still, jamie moyer is probably the sunniest of sunny day predictions for duke. at this point in his career, he’s not an ace. but what better option do we have?