As promised, we will now take a look at Clay Davenport’s Peak Translations for pitchers. This gets into a little more precarious ground, as pitcher projections are much hazier then projecting hitters, as pitchers can be pretty volatile lot.

For review, here is Davenport’s definition of peak translations:

Peak Translation: Applies a typical aging pattern to the regular translation, to try and assess how good the player will be at his peak. Peak generally means somewhere around age 27; however, since the components of offense don’t age at the same rates (speed decays earlier than power, for instance), and since players don’t have the same mix of those components, the actual peak age has some variability, as early as 25 for pure speedsters and as late as 30 for sluggers. The adjustments for pitchers are considerably more sketchy; the very idea of a typical aging curve relies on predictable, steady changes in performance, while pitchers tendencies are dominated by essentially unpredictable point impacts, most commonly either injuries or developing a new pitch. All in all, though, the peak translation is an important tool for me to assess prospect status.

Emphasis mine. When looking at the Davenport translations, there are a horde of different numbers he has equivalents for, such as translated hits per 9 innings, K/9, BB/9, HR/9, DERA, NERA, PERA and STUFF. There’s a lot of bits and pieces they put in all these numbers, to say the least, and BP is kind of vague with some of their definitions, and they ask us to take some of their numbers some times on faith. Or other times, they will give some 10,000-word essay on how they come up with their numbers, which can really put a strain on the brain. That’s fine and all sometimes, but I figure why go through the trouble of trying to explain some of the terms I don’t fully understand when I can easily just take the translated numbers and crank out their FIP? (The definition of FIP “is fielding independent pitching. FIP is an estimate of a pitcher’s ERA that considers all things that fielders cannot influence-strikeouts, walks, and home runs. Most pitchers’ ability to influence balls in play is relatively weak, so FIP or DIPS are more useful estimates of a pitcher’s ability than ERA. FIP is calculated FIP = ((HR*13 + (BB+HBP) * 3 – SO * 2) / IP ) + ~3.2.” That is a pretty easy formula to understand, if you ask me.)

My numbers aren’t perfect as I forgot to factor in HBP, which aren’t projected anyway. So just round a few percentage points in your head and you should be OK. One last thing to consider before we jump in here-Recondite Baseball did the legwork on finding the average FIP for NL starting rotations, pitchers 1 through 5.

League Average FIP 4.61
# 1 starter- 3.69
# 2- 4.25
# 3- 4.69
# 4- 4.98
# 5- 5.82 (Yuck. # 5’s are a grizzly lot.)

Pretty nifty stuff, this helps us predict based on the projections on whether we have an ace in our system or whether we have a back of the rotation type. Of course, there’s a big fat ginormous “grain of salt” warning label that goes into all of this, and you will see why when we look at the top performers.

Projected Top of rotation starters:

Tyler Herron. Peak Translated FIP 3.89
P.J. Walters. 3.91 (between all three levels)
Adam Ottavino 4.05
Jaime Garcia 4.13

No true #1’s here, but pretty close.

Projected LAIMs (League Average Inning Munchers):

Eddie Degerman 4.48
Blake King 4.50
Tyler Norrick 4.63
Mitch Boggs 4.69
Cory Rauschenberger 4.69 (Surprise!)

Back of rotation types:

Mike Parisi 4.74
Clay Mortenson 4.77
Brad Furnish 5.05
Blake Hawksworth 5.18

How do these numbers sit with you? Some of them sit a little funny with me, too. Walters is always attached to the caveat “he’ll have to perform at every level”, which so far he has. It’s just hard for me to envision a guy with an 85 MPH fastball at the top of any big league team’s rotation. His uncanny control would really have to carry over into the bigs. The rest at the top are a little more believable considering they represent the cream of the crop in the system, in fact the numbers are even downright encouraging. But when you read some scouting reports and you will find they aren’t quite in agreement with these numbers, as some have gone to say Ott and Herron or more like # 3 or # 4 type of starters, not # 2’s. That’s ok; these are called peak projections for a reason.

Degerman and King are another couple of pitchers I have a hard time accepting they will be middle of the rotation types. They are more like bullpen types. Boggs, Norrick, Parisi, Hawksworth and Furnish are all about where I expected to see them, although Furnish’s numbers are skewed because of a poor performance in Palm Beach due to injury issues. Parisi has his believers, and the numbers believe as well. I think there’s a decent chance we see him in St. Louis mid-summer. Mortensen’s numbers come as a bit of a disappointment but he comes with a sample size warning. Rauschenberger is the most surprising, but we forget he really did bounce back well after getting ripped the first few months of the season. In a recent chat at BA they said they liked him as a sleeper, and I might too. Plus I like making fun of his name like they made of fun of that kid’s name in that hokie movie Rookie of the Year…Runnamucker, Rabblerouser…Rushenwrecker.

All in all though, it’s pretty entertaining to look at these and see where the numbers forecast our pitching prospects. A lot of things could change. Jaime Garcia could need Tommy John. Blake Hawksworth’s surgically repaired shoulder could short-circuit what’s left of what looks like a short career. Mitch Boggs could master a dynamite change up and move to ace status. Yaneverknow.