When longtime Angel-ace John Lackey left Southern California for the greener dollars of Boston following the 2009 season, many fans wondered what the club would do to replace the number #1 guy in their rotation. Although Lackey failed to impress his new teammates on the Red Sox, during his eight seasons in Anaheim, Lackey averaged 13 wins per year while maintaining a career ERA under 4.00. Lackey also was ace-like in his ability to stay off of the disabled list. With the exception of tricep problems coming out of spring training during the 2008 and 2009 seasons, Lackey averaged 29 starts per season and regularly pitched 200+ innings.
With Lackey gone and no viable free-agent options, many thought the time was right for 27 year-old Jered Weaver to step forward and assume the leadership role on the Angels' pitching staff. After all, Weaver was coming off of a season where he compiled career highs in the traditional stats such as wins, innings pitched, and strike outs, while also seeing him maintain or improve such stats as K/9, BB/9, FIP, and WAR which are the sort of advanced metrics the saber-community look up to.
During spring training prior to the 2010 season, Weaver once again began working on a two-seam, sinking fastball looking to reduce the number of fly-balls and to induce a few more groundouts. Back in March 2010, Mike DiGiovanna of the LA Times wrote that Weaver had experimented with the same two-seam fastball grip used by Angel newcomer Joel Pineiro, but decided to go back to his original grip. From the March 16th LA Times article:
Jered Weaver, an extreme fly-ball pitcher in his four big league seasons, began throwing a two-seam, sinking fastball in the playoffs in 2008, and he threw it occasionally in 2009, hoping to get a few more early-count, ground-ball outs.
Hoping to refine his two-seamer, Weaver threw it "80% of the time" in Tuesday's 4-3 exhibition win over the San Diego Padres on Tuesday, a game in which the Angels right-hander threw 67 pitches in 3 1/3 innings...
...Weaver, who had a 50% fly-ball percentage last season, meaning half of the balls put in play against him were fly balls in play, is not about to give up on the pitch.
"My pitch count can run up there," Weaver said. "I'm a fly-ball pitcher. If I can get some more ground balls, it will help a lot."
And it looked like it worked. In 2009, Weaver's groundball percentage was 30.9%, the lowest percentage of all major league starters who qualified for the ERA title. By the end of 2010, Weaver's GB% had increased to 36% which resulted in the lowest number of home runs allowed per 9 innings in his career. Obviously any increase in a pitcher's groundball rate will also be reflected in reduced line-drives and fly-balls, and this is exactly what Weaver saw last season. Although his fly-ball percentage only declined slightly (from 50.4% to 48.2%), Weaver reduced his line-drive rate by almost three percent. A reduction in line-drives typically goes a long way in a pitcher's success as line-drives tend to turn into base hits.
Another sign of Weaver's improvements were his strikeouts. Weaver led the major leagues with 233 K's, beating out Seattle's Felix Hernandez by one and the Giant's two-time Cy Young award winner Tim Lincecum by two. Throughout his career, Weaver has consistently been above average in the number of batters he strikes out per nine innings, but he stepped up his K/9 rate in 2010 by besting the league average by more than 2 batters per 9 innings while increasing his personal rate from 7.42 batters in 2009 to 9.35 last season.
One of the reasons Weaver may have been able to increase his strikeout rate by such a significant amount was by inducing more swings at pitches outside the strike zone. The number of Weaver's pitches batters swung at outside of the strike increased by a whopping 8.3% to 33.5% (the same percentage as Roy Halladay), ranking him 7th in the majors. This could be attributed to the improved two-seam fastball mentioned above or possibly because of the increased number of breaking balls thrown. Weaver threw his curveball almost 5% more often than in 2009, and over twice as often as in 2008. With the ability to get batters to chase pitches, Weaver was less likely to have to rely on his fastball which he threw the lowest percentage of the time in his career. The movement Weaver is getting on his pitches may also be the reason he is ranked #1 in swing-and-miss percentage on pitches inside the strike zone. Overall, Weaver's pitches were the 5th hardest pitcher to make contact with, ranking just behind Lincecum.
If not for lack of run support, there may be more Cy Young talk involving Weaver following his brilliant 2010 season. The Angels inability to give Weaver some run support is the main reason for his low win total (13), and everyone knows the main-stream media loves those win totals. In 12 of his 34 starts the Angels failed to score more than 2 runs and at one point were shutout three consecutive times when Weaver was on the mound.
2010 wasn't a "breakout" year for Weaver as he's been consistently building on his successes. However, 2010 was the season he became the Angels' ace.
0 recs | 11 comments
There is a CY Young award for a Weaver
and it is not Jeff
DAD OF VLAD - October 28, 2010
Should Arte "show Boras the money" now and lock Weaver up to a long term deal?
mustard_man - October 28, 2010
i saw on another angels fan site the other day that ninja and carpino...
were spotted at javier’s in newport coast dining with boras. this could all be b.s. but if they were meeting they could have been laying the foundation for a weav or kendry extension. they couldn’t talk about impending free agents and the fact that arte wasn’t there could be a good sign since arte would probably smash a tequila bottle over the head of boras. like i said it could be b.s. but if it not it’s pretty interesting.
thejd - October 28, 2010
they were probably
cougar hunting
2pintsofbooze - October 28, 2010
touche! the cougs never go hungry in newport
thejd - October 28, 2010
There is a lot of talk about Arte spending more money
but little talk of trying to lock up Jared Weaver.
Instead of using the money on Carl Crawford I much rather see the money used on Weaver. He is one of the soon to be Angels free agents that I don’t want to see in another uniform. I understand not signing K-Rod, Vlad, Figgins, Lackey, etc. But I would be thoroughly depressed in Weaver is not an Angel for a majority if not all of his career.
Trott - October 28, 2010
+1
dulciusXasperis - October 28, 2010
But what does it take to be considered truly an ace?
This is the question I had after reading WiHaloFan’s article. How does Weaver’s performance compare to Ervin Santana’s brilliant 2010 and newly acquired Dan Haren who was the ace of the Diamondback’s staff? This is not definitive but here is what I found on a short search. A pitcher to be considered an ace should have these qualities:
1. Wins more than 15 games. Santana won the most with 17, Weaver won 13, and Haren 12.
2. Pitches most innings on the staff. Haren pitched the most (two teams) with 235. Weaver 224.1, and Santana 222.2.
3. Low ERA. Weaver had the lowest ERA in 2010 sitting at 3.01. Haren 3.91 edging out Santana’s 3.92. Pineiro’s was 3.84.
4. Stellar K/BB ratio. 3 is considered good and 5 is considered very good. Haren had the best K/BB ratio of the three with a 4.4. Weaver follows with a 4.31, and Santana 2.32.
5. An ace always makes his start in the rotation and goes deep into games. For the most part all three pitchers pitched quality starts. Haren pitched 35 games in 2010, Weaver pitched 34, and Santana 33. Haren and Weaver had two games each where they pitched fewer than 5.0 innings while Santana had only one. Santana pitched four complete games, Haren two CG’s, and Weaver had none while he did pitch four CG’s in 2009.
6. An ace assumes the leadership role on the team and shares his expertise willingly with other pitchers on the staff. We all know Weaver has been handed this role from numerous stories in the press and interviews with Weaver himself. We have to assume this is true but still wonder how much it has to do with seniority or just that Weaver was the most likely candidate once Lackey headed to Boston*.
I don’t know if I answered the question for myself if we have a true ace on the team or more likely we have three aces on the team if you consider the similarity in the statistics between our top three starters and what is considered to be the minimum standard for being an ace on a major league baseball team. There are a lot of other factors that play in to this and I just picked these few to compare Santana and Haren to our established ace, Jered Weaver and share what I found with the other fan members.
44FAN - October 28, 2010
I see it as...
If you had to win one game who would you pitch?
I think the consensus would be to pitch Jered Weaver even though Haren and Santana could be viable options as well. its pretty simple to me.
angelsownredsux - October 28, 2010
It's a good problem to have
Not a lot of teams have 3-4 guys in their rotation that can dominate on any given day. I can only name a few: Angels, Phillies, Giants, Braves, Athletics, and Cardinals.
Slyintine - October 29, 2010
An ace with no run support is a .500 pitcher .
nuff said .
Ed@northridge - October 29, 2010
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