Let’s Make a Deal
John Williams

The 2006 Mets are thinking big. They are putting themselves in good position in terms of making the playoffs but with another starter they could really have a dominant team. But who? Two lefties are theoretical answers, Barry Zito and Dontrelle Willis. Imagining for the moment that both of them are available for an equal price of talent through trade, I think it’s worth trying to evaluate which of the two would be a superior pickup. Opinions of good pitchers among baseball circles tend to vary depending on what kind of year said pitcher is having. This has led many a team to sign a good pitcher to great pitcher money. Now if the Mets listen to me, maybe they won’t trade the farm for the wrong guy.

It is important to look at the peripheral stats for good pitchers over their careers, because these numbers will stay more constant than eras or wins (which will range from excellent to average for good pitchers in any specific year). Such swings in the so-called “sexy” pitching stats can lead a guy like Barry Zito to be labeled an ace one year and overrated the next year. Zito accomplished his ace label by winning the Cy Young in 2002 and has seemingly pitched himself into being labeled overrated since then. These are just a few examples of sites considering the Zito is overrated argument.
Zito=Overrated?
Zito is likely #2 starter at best (then watch as his opinion magically turns a 180 through the season)
Zito is Neato … But Overrated
Now here is proof of how a good pitcher can convince the easily swayed. These are Barry Zito’s stats for two select years of his career:

	Innings	Hits	Homers	Walks	Strikeouts	G/F
Year A	229.1	182	24	78	182	0.74
Year B	228.1	185	26	89	171	1.05

Which one of those years would you rather have? It’s a pretty tough call, slightly worse K/BB ratio in Year B, but that should be compensated by many more ground balls. Year A of course is Zito’s Cy Young winning 23-5, 2.75 ERA 2002 season while Year B is Zito’s 14-13, 3.86 ERA 2005 season. Is Zito a Cy Young worthy pitcher? Not really most years with those K-rates. Is he now unfairly labeled as overrated due to those sparkling 2002 stats? Yes I would say so. So what is Zito really worth? Well his career WHIP is 1.22 and career OBA against is 0.227. He has been pretty consistent too, only once having an OBA against over 0.230.

For comparison, here is a table of those career numbers for some well-respected active aces in baseball (also included Rich Harden, who is labeled by most as the A’s true ace):

Pitcher	WHIP	OBA
Roy Oswalt	1.18	0.253
Johan Santana	1.13	0.223
Pedro Martinez	1.02	0.208
John Smoltz	1.17	0.233
Jake Peavy	1.21	0.237
Curt Schilling	1.13	0.239
Randy Johnson	1.16	0.216
Rich Harden	1.26	0.229
Barry Zito	1.22	0.227

Zito compares pretty favorably to these guys, he probably walks too many to be in company with them, but his stuff is just as good, as shown by his career OBA against. He might not be an elite pitcher, but he is a very good to great pitcher. At least he shouldn’t necessarily be looked at as a subordinate to Harden, who hasn’t established really established himself yet. Zito would be a welcome addition to any starting rotation in baseball, especially since he is just now moving into his prime years. Overrated? No, I don’t think so, not unless you expect 23-5 Pedro-esque years from him every year. Very valuable and very durable? Yes, absolutely.

Just to mention park effects briefly, Florida and Oakland are both usually thought of as pitcher’s parks (Florida more so the last 5 years), so if anything both pitchers are helped a little by where they play. Thrown into a bandbox like Houston would make them both look worse, but since the Mets play in a pitcher’s park of their own neither pitcher should deviate much once traded there. Speaking of deviations though, Willis has been up and down quite a bit in his brief career. Since he’s just 24 though, anyone acquiring him would in the best case scenario hope that he would duplicate his breakout year last year over and over as he matures.

D-train in his breakout year delivered the following line: 22-10, 2.63 ERA. Included in that were 7 complete games and 5 shutouts, when he was on he was really on. Even in his breakout year though his peripheral stats aren’t all that amazing. Here are his 2005 pitching stats versus an average season from Zito.

	H/IP	WHIP	K/9	K/BB
Zito AVG	0.84	1.22	7.02	2.04
D-Train 2005	0.90	1.13	6.48	3.09

Essentially Zito walks a bunch more guys than Willis but considering that is D-Train’s breakout year and nothing in his career came close to it beforehand, there’s not a lot here that makes me think Willis is a better bet. And this is all disregarding the fact that Willis has been awful so far this year while Zito keeps doing what he always does (1.12 WHIP, 0.205 OBA so far in 2006).

Willis is 4 years younger so who knows he could become consistently dominant, he certainly has the potential. But if you were the Mets, and you thought you had a good chance to win it all this year and for the next couple years, Zito has got to be the better option. He’s only 28 so it’s not like he’s only got a few years left, and his stats show that he’s consistently been a very good pitcher in his career, despite the changing opinions of him. And for postseason considerations, he’s only allowed 23 hits in 32 2/3 postseason innings to go along with 32 K’s (many of those against the Yankee lineups). The Mets could possibly do better with Willis in the very long run but why risk anything for a guy as inconsistent as Willis when the still young Zito has proven over and over that he is money in the bank?