With Jurrjens Back, How Will He Perform?
January 30, 2012 at 5:29 pm by Ben Duronio under Atlanta Braves, Pitching
I was under the impression that Jair Jurrjens would be traded from the moment the season ended last year — actually, probably even before that. He was starting to get expensive, the team has ample pitchers similar to him in quality, and the farm system could use a real boost in the position player department. Jurrjens or Tommy Hanson looked at least somewhat expendable, with Jurrjens being a bit more so due to his service time and lower upside.
In the end, it seems as though the Braves could either not get a deal that they felt was fair or had worries about Tim Hudson’s, and maybe even Hanson’s, health. With there being no sure bet on the roster to throw 200 innings, it does make sense that the Braves would want to keep Jurrjens around. The likely would have been willing to deal him even with a slightly injured staff, but his own injuries later in the year hurt his trade value. I expect him staying was a combination of both problems, with more weight being on the fact that Hudson’s age and back may lead to disabled list stints throughout 2012.
So now that Jurrjens is staying — it is easier to expect that given the innings incentives he has in his contract — how well will he produce? We looked at ZiPS projections a few weeks back, and noticed how similar they expected Jurrjens to be to Julio Teheran.
Jurrjens: 156 IP, 3.81 ERA, 11-8, 15 HR, 105 K, 51 BB, 103 ERA+
Teheran: 152 IP, 3.85 ERA, 11-9, 13 HR, 121 K, 58 BB, 102 ERA+
As you can see, ZiPS does not have much faith in Jurrjens performing to the same level as last season. The innings total is a product of injuries over the past three seasons, and most projection systems have Jurrjens at a similar number. Below are Jurrjens’ projections along with an average of the projections taken from a number different outlets.
| Jurrjens’ Projections | IP | K/9 | BB/9 | HR | ERA | FIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bill James | 181 | 6.22 | 2.88 | 16 | 3.68 | 3.88 |
| RotoChamp | 175 | 5.81 | 2.83 | 16 | 3.50 | 3.99 |
| Fans | 162 | 6.22 | 2.94 | 17 | 3.73 | 4.16 |
| ZiPS | 156 | 6.06 | 2.94 | 15 | 3.81 | 4.08 |
| CAIRO | 115 | 6.18 | 2.97 | 11 | 3.46 | 3.92 |
| Average | 158 | 6.10 | 2.91 | 15 | 3.64 | 4.01 |
The collective average seems relatively accurate to me. ZiPS is the most bearish of all the projections, and it is also the system I prefer most, while RotoChamp and Bill James are the most favorable toward Jurrjens.
The expectancy for him to throw 200 innings simply is not there, and that will hurt his overall value next season. Jurrjens has been worth an average of 4.4 rWAR in a 162 game season and 202 innings pitched. With his innings expected to be close to 160, an expected rWAR of 3.5 is more likely. In 152 innings last year, Jurrjens totaled 3.8 WAR. When adding eight more innings and expecting a higher ERA, a 3.5 WAR over 160 innings seems reasonable for Jurrjens’ talents.
The forecasts all expect there to be an ERA-FIP split, as has been somewhat common in Jurrjens’ career. I do not know that he has thrown enough innings to say for certain that he is the type of pitcher that will receive better results than his peripherals suggest, but his career ERA of 3.40 and career FIP of 3.88 provide an ample spread that projection systems will expect until it begins to close.
Although a spread is expected, as each system projects, none anticipate last year’s fifth best -1.03 ERA-FIP spread to repeat. So, even if you are of the opinion that Jurrjens is a pitcher that defensive independent pitching stats misjudge, projection systems believe that there was at least some luck in Jair’s favor last year. I can understand expecting Jurrjens to receive better results compared to his FIP, but expecting him to maintain a spread so wide makes much less sense. Simply put, he will have to pitch much better in 2012 if he wants to maintain results that resemble last year’s.
None of the systems expect that to occur. However, a 3.64 ERA is certainly useful. If Jurrjens is able to provide that type of production over 160 innings, that is certainly welcome. Depth will likely be the biggest asset for the Braves’ rotation this year. As I said, no starters are expected to throw 200 innings, with Mike Minor probably being the best bet to reach that mark, so a season similar to Jair’s rookie year — in which he pitched to a 3.68 ERA over 188 innings — will be fine.
While Jurrjens has no definitive plus quality in his arm and no pitch that sticks out, he has shown in his Atlanta tenure that he can be a quality pitcher when healthy. Maintaining his health will be vital for his overall value to the team, but as long as he performs well on the mound the Braves are in good shape to mimic his production if he is forced to the disabled list. The Braves lack the top tier arms that the Phillies and Angels have, but they make up for their lack of upside with extremely impressive depth and quality arms throughout the rotation and minor leagues. Jurrjens is just another pitcher who fits right into that group, not a star but a very useful pitcher in an very respectable rotation.
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I will be interesting to see how the innings are broken down this year with starters. I think it will go Hanson, Minor, Beachy, Hudson, Jurrjens, Tehron, Delgado (greatest to least IP). Beachy seems like the most durable but doesn’t go that deep into games.
Until Beachy can stop throwing 5/6 pitches per batter (that may be off but I can’t double check at the moment) he won’t hit 200 innings. With Huddy and Roger Mac there to help these young guys with the nuances of pitch selection and ways to get weak contact early in the count, I do expect him to reach it in the next year or 2.
If Jurrjens has a solid first half I think he could still bring at least some position prospects. Guys with his career marks are still valuable commodities even with injury concerns. The braves are in a very fortunate situation with the wealth of talent they have (I swear, I’m not trying to be captain obvious).
You can look at someone like Jeremy Hellickson and say that his shiny ERA mostly came because he was bailed out by spectacular defenders. That’s certainly not the case with Jurrjens. His career ERA easily beats the projectors because he allows weaker contact and has a lower Babip than expected. It’s true that none of his pitches are standout, but none of his pitches are ineffective. I like his trend of having a higher outside the zone contact percentage which would still mean having an ERA right around his career average.
Beachy averaged 4.09 pitches per batter faced.
The rest of the rotation was as follows:
Jurrjens: 3.48
Hudson: 3.62
Hanson: 4.01
Minor: 3.81
Lowe: 3.89
Is it bad that I found myself typing in Jair Maddux on fangraphs to check out JJ’s career numbers? Jokes aside, I am still hoping for a great start from JJ so we can finally get some interest for him on the trade market.
Honestly, I am torn by FIP. I completely believe it a valuable tool at looking at quality pitchers. I believe that it does tell who has been unlucky and who has been overly lucky.
What bothers me about this statistic is Jurrjens and Derek Lowe. Lowe’s numbers this past season said he should have been better because of his FIP. Jurrjens’ numbers says that he should be worse according to his FIP.
I watched Lowe pitch a lot last season. Watching him pitch made me think that he could/should have been worse. There were not many games when I thought that he was better than the results on the score board.
The biggest obstacle for Jurrjens is his injuries. Otherwise I think he is a smart enough pitcher to put up solid numbers and prove the projections wrong. I know he doesn’t strike out a lot of batters, but he has proven, when healthy, that he is capable of being successful.
FIP be damn.
Even if we don’t have the durability of most other clubs our bull pen will fill the gap. If Beachy is able to get the strikeouts like last year, and Jair is able to find his rhythm then we will be fine with our bull pen sealing the deal.
Look, I am not an expert in all of these peripheral statistics, although I do think I understand how they are relevant. With that being said, I am not sold that they are perfectly accurate predictors of performance, and the optimistic side of me is hopeful that jurrjens is that rare type of pitcher that might just have the propensity to outperform his peripherals. In ’09, he pitched a full season to a 2.60 ERA, and last year, when he was healthy, he was below 2.00. He obviously had some questionable periods outside of that, which may or may not be related to health difficulties, but I’m not completely sold by the sabremetric predictions that he is due for a serious decline. I might be guilty of cherry picking, but if you look at his last 300 innings of “healthy” pitching, he has numbers that, despite his peripherals, rank amongst the best starters in the league. As much as I hate myself for saying this, maybe he really does have intangibles which compensate for his lack of peripherals…
Projections aren’t predictions, they are a point you set their expected production to be. There is no way to predict exactly what will happen in a season, nobody will try and do that — all you can look for and try to measure what the average of a number of seasons would be.
Everyone including this writer seem to be forgetting about Kris Medlen. He is going to be key for the pitching staff. either in relief or starting!!! I think he needs to be a starter.
Who is forgetting about him or not including him? I see no reason to expect anything but very good pitching from Medlen. He was very impressive before his surgery, specifically in the bullpen. He has a career 2.72 FIP from the bullpen. He is actually another reason I felt Jurrjens should be traded — I could 100 solid innings from Medlen between starting and relief pitching if given the opportunity to start a few games.
With all this talent and rotation potential I can’t help but think that there is experience that some of these guys will be missing. All 8 guys would be top 4 starters on teams. Too many guys not enough starts. With the risk of injury from high innings, how far out is it to venture into the six man rotation territory? Hanson, JJ, Huddy would benifet from rest. Minor, Teheran, Delgado would all gain experience. Only think at risk are personal numbers.
I think FIP is just a useful tool as everything else. In general, I will believe in ERA a bit more than anything else because it is just simple and cover a lot of aspects of pitcher’s game. There are more and more people focusing on WAR or FIP but to be honest, those are new and really not mature system yet. People can understand how it can be achieved but not a lot of peple can actually work it out why the number is looking like that. Lets be honest, if you cannot work the number out, you can hardly know how it truly works. By the way, the more complex the equation, the larger sample size it requires. If you want to judge someone’s season, the easiest way to look at ERA and W-L and it is actually more accurate than you think.
I think Jair could be a big upside for the Braves this year simply because he should have confidence from last year. If nothing else being able to split time between the 6+ starters the Braves have this year will hopefully save soem injuries, and maybe if a starter gets hot throw him more often. It will be interesting to see.
Ben,
I know you don’t like to project trades, but let’s say JJ had stayed healthy in the 2nd half of 2011. What do you think his trade value would have been, or could you compare him to another pitcher that was traded recently?
@richneih
Not to be rude, but no. ERA and especially W-L are extremely flawed. You will see no analysis using w/l on this website.
Sorry Ben, i’m not sure i understand your point because a projection is “a prediction based on known evidence and observations.” you can use the two words interchangeably really.
the only point i was making is that maybe we should use other evidence, i.e., his tremendous success when apparently healthy, as proof of his likelihood to significantly outperform peripheral statistics. innings pitched are difficult to predict because no one can predict health, but i’m going to say that i expect him to have an ERA in the high 2′s to low 3′s because he’s established that he can do that in a high enough sample size.
@BrianB
He could have netted a package of a solid prospect and a couple mid-level guys, I would assume. The better prospect would probably have to be further away, but the farm system could have been improved if he was never injured and subsequently traded. It really depends on how he would have pitched, and I highly doubt he would have sustained the type of performance he had in the first half even if he remained healthy the whole year.
@17
No, he has not established that in a high enough sample size. Teams understand what Jurrjens is, and if they thought he was a pitcher of that quality they would have targeted him this offseason when he was known to be available.
He is simply not nearly at that level.
As for the projection concept, nobody is trying to accurately predict that he will throw for a 3.64 ERA. What they are doing is projecting that over a number of random samples at this particular age and having had his history of performance, that the average performance would be somewhere around a 3.64 ERA and so forth.
He could land an entire standard deviation away from that and post a 2.80 ERA or a 4.50 ERA — I haven’t calculated what a normal standard deviation would be — but the projections look for an average performance of around 3.64.
The trade value for Jurrjens seem lower than ideal, healthy or not. I understand that trading Jurrjens could do well to replenish the farm system; however, most of the floated trades that appeared this offseason (involving Prado and Jurrjens) seemed aimed at getting a MLB ready player that could fill an obvious hole. In addition, based on the projections here, Jurrjens can still be a valuable contributor to a playoff caliber team this year and next while the prospects he would fetch may or may not ever be material contributors to the MLB team. If he is too expensive after 2013 (and given his apparent low trade value, I am not sure he will be), the Braves can let him walk and replace him with younger talent.
Given this, why aren’t the Braves exploring trading Minor, Beachy, Delgado, Medlen, etc for the coveted outfield production the team appears to need? Why doesn’t Wren simply say “Any or all pitchers are availble for solid position player production under with team control, make an offer?” I feel like the Braves are one or two moves away from making serious noise in the playoffs and aren’t using their most valuable commodity.
@20, my thinking is that the Braves are hoping/expecting Heyward and Prado to bounce back in terms of production. Having young, effective, cost-controlled pitching is so important to the Braves’ future–I don’t think they’re going to let one of those guys go unless they’re really bowled over.
There has been some discussion about how FIP may undervalue sinkerball pitchers. However, if the sample size gets big enough, the numbers tend to end up around 20% or so from career ERA. Some guys do always do better than their FIP, but they are rare. JJ has shown this ability,and thank goodness he hasn’t had serious arm probs. But, I’m not willing to think that his first half of 2011 is the norm. I don’t think the 2nd half is either. But , I see him as a 3.5-3.9 ERA guy who will give you 180-200 innings if healthy.
The problem is, he has had a hard time staying healthy!
Let’s all hope he can recreate 2011′s first half and become uber valuable at the deadline.
Will he perform? Based off of last year’s numbers ughhhh, yeah. The Braves pitching assembly is amazing compared to the majority of the National League.
Say, what u want guys and gals but when Jurrgens has been healthy he’s been our best pitcher. Look at the stats from 3 years ago by far our best pitcher the first half of last year our best pitcher. Everyone keeps telking about Hanson’s potential but Jurrgens has been better. The Lowe trade I loved even with us eating some of the contract but a healthy Jurrgens is better than at least 6 of the pitcher we have.
I love all these fancy metrics and stuff, but being a fan that watches/listens to literally 125+ games a year, I have to agree with MikeL, Jurrgens is absolutely one of the best pitchers on the staff when healthy. And i dont see how you feel his first half success is sustainable? He pitches to contact, and i love that. The Jair of now compared to his first couple years is exactly that. Ive seen him light up the rader gun, he CAN throw 95+ but he CHOOSES to highlight accuracy and movement over power. He’s incredibly smart for a young pitcher. Ive watched his pitch selection, seen how he’s setting up batters, and even tho the braves defense wasnt spectacular as a whole last year (tho it was very good, esp up the middle) he got hitters to hit the ball where he needed it hit. He was a first pitch strike machine, and he did a good job of keeping his pitches low in the zone. Ijs…metrics and stats and stuff are impressive and mostly accurate, but the Braves did an excellent job of keeping him. Jurrgens if he can stay healthy gives you a chance to win EVERY time out, even on his off days his style of pitching allows him to struggle and get away with it. Those nights Tommy was struggling….if you watched those games, he wasnt getting away with anything. Beachy after the 6 inning when he got tired….wasnt getting away with much. We lost 3 games i remember where we had the lead in the 5th/6th simply bc Beachy couldnt get out of the inning and Freddy didnt pull him. Starts like that i think is where Medlen and Delgado will be most valuable, as that 5-7 inning guy to bridge the gap to the bullpen heavies. My two cent.