Angels Dust

While the Angels overall are doing pretty good right now, checking in at number 2 (CBS, FoxSports) or number 3 (ESPN) in most current power rankings, there are still some not so bright spots that could use some improvement (or replacement) on the team. Measured by batting runs above average (BRAA - a stat that apparently can also be calculated for pitchers), the worst player on the Halos is neither Shea Hillenbrand or Garret Anderson but - yes, you have guessed it from the title - Hector Carrasco with -12.42. For comparison, Vlad leads the team with 27.24, Lackey is the best pitcher at 19.51 and Speier the best reliever with 9.84. Hillenbrand (-10.50) edges out GA (-10.18) for the worst bat, while Santana (-4.74) takes the honor of being the worst starter. In the pen, only mispurchase Darren Oliver (-4.90), Mr. 3 IP Greg Jones (-3.31) and Chris Bootcheck (-0.24 BRAA and 4.56 ERA despite a 1.05 WHIP) have a negative BRAA. But you don’t have to look at fancy modern stats to see that Carrasco has sucked so far this season. Just pick your favorite indicator from the following more (or less) traditional stats: 6.34 ERA, 67 ERA+, 9.92 H/9, 6.06 BB/9, 1.78 WHIP, .504 slugging against, 1.92 HR/9. Simply awful. On the plus side, he is striking out 7.71 batters per nine, which is actually a career high. That raises the question: Is Carrasco really that bad (and maybe done) or has he just been pretty unlucky so far?
Batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and fielding independant pitching (FIP) are usually good indicators for bad luck, but neither suggest that Carrasco has been treated too miserly by Fortuna. His BABIP of .311 is a little higher than the league average, but that may just be him putting the balls where they can be hit more easily. His FIP of 6.30 is nearly the same as his ERA, so it is not like the defense is letting him down, too. Carrasco’s demise can more easily be attributed to the fact that balls hit of him are going into the air more than ever before. He is allowing a very high percentage of line drives (21.3 %), but more more noticeably, his ground ball rate is down to 38.9 % from a career average of 45.8 %. That is a dramatical increase, especially if those flyballs do not stay in the infield and have the tendency to leave the park.
The high K-rate shows that Carrasco probably still has his pure stuff, but it looks like he has lost the ability to control his pitches so that he issues more walks and leaves pitches over the plate where they are hit hard.
So is he done? At the age of 37, he obviously might be, but the high K-rate leaves me with hope that his problems are just mechanical and that they can be fixed. Lets see what Mike Butcher can do then. But even if Carrasco gets his act together, I doubt that the Angels are going to pick up his $3M option for 2008.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Carrasco, Angels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.