What To Expect From Pedro

The Phillies signed Pedro, and in a few weeks he will be at the big league level, what can we expect from him?

Last season for the first time in his career he finished with a record under .500, at 5-6, and had an ERA of 5.61, the worst for him ever. He has said he was pitching hurt all of last year, but in 2007 was he? Well he has similar stats. In 2007 he was 3-1, and in 2006 he was 9-8, both years he spent time injured, so when he started to get hurt he started to decline.

The following graphs I am about to show you are from http://fangraphs.com/ .

As you can see, it shows his line drive, groundball, and fly ball percentage from every year in his career, and it shows that his fly ball percentage actually went down the last two seasons. and that his groundball percentage has gone up, which for an old pitcher who is trying to figure out how to pitch more precisely and play to contact, and not for the strike out is a good thing no? So why did Pedro get hammered? There was a slight raise in his line drive percentage, and those tend to be base hits, but it is not a substantial raise, and it definitely is not the answer to why he was so ineffective last year.

(Note: the blue line in the graph is league average)Next I want to look at his ratio statistics, his K/BB ratio in 2005, his last completed effective season was 4.43, which led the league, and is

great, but in 2006 it fell to 3.51, and in 07 which was a small sample size it was 4.57, so because of the small sample size it does not mean much, and in 08 it was 1.98, which is bad for a pitcher who allows 21% of his balls put in play to be line drives, which unless are right at a fielder, are not likely to be caught. As you can see it was great, at times, it was literally off the charts, but in

2008 it came crashing down to league average, which

means more balls in play, so more line drives...

So with more balls in play being line drive, one very important pitching stat is bound to go up, BABIP, his career BABIP was .282, in 2007 it was .384 and in 08 it was .327, which is a benefit of the increased amount of line drives. This means that the high BABIP is not because of him getting unlucky because of a bad defense, it is because of the fact more balls were being put in play, and more line drives. He will be pitching in Citizens Bank Park, with a Ballpark Factor of .999 for runs, for HR it has a 1.064, and his fly ball percentage is 35 percent, so with those 35 percent that are on the warning track at Shea, or Citifield, are gone at Citizens Bank.

So expect Pedro to be ineffective, more so than in 08 and 07.