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November 26, 2007
Livan Hernandez: Is That Guy Any Good?
Going into the offseason this year, the Mets had three positions they needed to address: catcher, second base, and another starting pitcher. So, the Mets just acquired a starting catcher from the Brewers for Guillermo Mota and a colorful piece of yarn. With the extremely capable, if creaky, Ramon Castro as backup, and second base taken care of for the next four years (somebody get that man some glucosamine!), the last step is trying to come up with a replacement for Tom Glavine’s 200+ innings in the rotation. Sadly, the free agent market for pitching is a little thin this year (Really, when is the pitching market ever not thin? Have you ever heard anybody say, “Wow, look at all the quality pitchers in free agency. We should have no trouble picking up a quality number 1 or 2 starter at a reasonable salary”? Yeah, me neither.), but the advantage of signing a free agent pitcher over, say, trading for Johan Santana or Joe Blanton is that free agents only cost money—of which the Mets have a lot—instead of prospects—of which the Mets don’t have many. Carlos Silva and Livan Hernandez have been getting a lot of attention as being good fits for the Mets, especially Hernandez. El Duque and his younger half-brother have made it known that they’d like to pitch on the same team, and Hernandez is a workhorse who’s averaged 237 innings and 33 starts per year since his first full season in 1998. But is that guy any good?  Unhappily, I’m going to have to say no, that guy is no damn good. At least, not any more. Above, you can see a graph showing Livan’s peripheral rates (K/9, HR/9, etc, which are often better predictors of future success than ERA’s or win-loss records) for his entire career, and what amounts to a disturbing trend. His strikeout rate has dropped every year from a high of 6.9 K/9 in 2003 to a terrible 4.0 K/9 in 2007. Meanwhile, Hernandez’s walk rate has gone up every year during the same period, from a career-low 2.2 to 3.5 BB/9, his highest walk rate since his first full year as a starter in 1998. In 2007 Hernandez basically had a one-to-one strikeout-to-walk ratio, which, as they say, is not sustainable. I hear you cry, Livan’s true value lies in the fact that he’s an innings-eater. True, every inning pitched by Hungry Hungry Hernandez in 2008 would be one less inning pitched by the shallow end of the bullpen. But take a look at this:  Those are the innings pitched by Livan since his first full year in 1998, and since peaking with 255 IP in 2004 they’ve gone down every year. Livan will be 33 on Opening Day next spring; those gaudy innings pitched totals are not coming back. In fact, they’re almost certain to come down further in 2008 and beyond, especially if he continues to allow more than three base runners every two innings—last year, Hernandez had a 1.595 WHIP, ahead of only Kip Wells (1.623) and Scott Olsen (1.760) among qualified NL starters. So, should the Mets try to sign him? Well, I don’t know. You’ve got a below league-average pitcher, whose strikeout, home run, and walk rates have all gotten worse over each of the past four years, is on the wrong side of 30, and whose main asset—no pun intended—is a giant butt that allows him to throw 150 pitches per start. Of course, even below-average pitching is actually pretty valuable, so I guess it all comes down to two questions.
First, how much is it going to cost the Mets to get him? If Hernandez could exactly repeat his results from last year in 2008, basically league-average or maybe a little worse, he’d be worth around $7 or $8 million. That’s a lot of money. I know; it’s not the high price of stars, it’s the high price of mediocrity. Any more than that and he’s not worth it, and that’s if he’s able to produce at the same level next year. Which brings us to two: how likely is Livan Hernandez to produce a reasonable facsimile of his past performance going into the future? And I gotta say, I don’t like his odds. He was lucky to have an ERA under 5.00 last year—his FIP was 5.78. The Mets already have several options on the roster who can pitch at that level, and they don’t cost a dime. Livan is a guy who allows WAY too many base runners because he doesn’t strike anybody out any more, and he danced his way through the raindrops last year. I don’t like his chances of doing it again. Thanks to the Hardball Times and Baseball-Reference for making my inaccurate and uninformative writing possible. Jeff Mathews is a staff writer for MetsGeek whose writing can also be found at The Power of Hoodoo. 17 Responses to “Livan Hernandez: Is That Guy Any Good?”Leave a ReplyYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
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Really nice and revealing article. I hope Omar is listening. I wonder if Omar and other GM’s have stat people that present them with revealing and important information as to what is presented here. I wonder if Omar abandons the stats often, and simply goes with who he liked 10 or 15 years ago.
Free agent signings result in the loss of important draft picks which years later, result in the need for more free agent signings - a vicious cycle. Maybe its a good strategy if you have a lot of money and perform for an audience that demands winning consistently, and don’t have good talent scouts, but I would much rather see the culturing homegrown talent.
I am getting this increasingly uncomfortable feeling that Jose Reyes is going to be part of a package to get a frontline pitcher. Don’t do it Omar!! Yeah, he had two pretty poor months, but he is going to be an allstar for the next dozen years or so.
hey Dave from Spain, a belated happy birthday.
Thanks Eli!
Don´t worry, I don´t think Omar´ll trade Jose. Heilman and Milledge perhaps, but not Jose.
If he trades Jose it will be for something like Bedard and Tejada from the Orioles. I could live with that.
Well thought article, thanks!
However, one caveat:
Do we believe that’s his true age?
I tend to doubt it, making him even more risky.
Please pass, Omar, and go get Dan Haren!
Bravo. Excellent job of analyzing why Hernandez the Fat is a bad fit for this team.
this is a great analysis of livan hernandez, but it’s couched in a questionable analysis of the mets’ roster in general. the mets didn’t need another secondbaseman after re-signing easley, and they didn’t need a “starting” catcher after re-signing castro. similarly, they don’t need another starting pitcher. what nl teams have a better rotation than we do? the dodgers. maybe the padres, braves, brewers, diamondbacks. maybe. we have four starters who are significantly better than league average and three cheap young pitchers who aren’t terrible to round things out. and we’ve got a great bullpen, despite what happened at the end of last year; we could stand to add another reliever as insurance, but we’re not in desperate need of an innings-eater-type starter to bail our bullpen out.
a good trade (or signing) for a starter would be welcomed, but we don’t need to deal from desperation. if we could get garza for gomez, or santana for gomez and pelfrey, i would do it, but i would also happily tell minnesota (or oakland or whoever) to screw off if they wanted much more than that for santana (or haren or whoever) and go into 2008 with what we’ve got.
No Livian for the Mets!!! Our Hernandez quota is full!!
#4
Who cares about his age. He’s a bad pitcher.
Livan Hernandez 2007: 204IP, 90K 79BB
Steve Trachsel 2006: 164IP, 79K, 78BB.
He sucks
One thing I want to point out about Livan though. He has consistently outperformed his FIP and xFIP.
From THT, FIP-ERA, last 5 years: 0.20, 0.14, -0.36, 0.77, 0.85. Positive means that he has been “lucky”.
His career FIP is 4.51, career ERA is 4.25.
His strand rate, the rate at which he strands baserunners, has also been consistently above average. Major league average for strand rate is around 70%. Livan’s career average is 73%. Last 5 years from 2003: 78.7%, 76.4%, 75.5%, 70.6%, 75.9%. Above average means that he has been “lucky”.
Note, I’m not saying he is a good pitcher. I’m not saying that I want him. I’m saying that he has a history of being somewhat “lucky”.
I guess the 40 extra innings that Livan provided over Trachsel mean nothing? That is around more than 1 inning a start–and in case people forgot–that is a vAlubale commodity on a staff like ours where the only 200 IP pitcher left to Atlanta.
#9
I didn’t say it means nothing. If he can duplicate his 2007 performance, sure he’s useful, below average, around a 4th starter.
I don’t believe that he can. He appears to have some ability at controlling balls in play, yes. But, the fact is his Ks dropped through the floor this year, whether due to a decline in skills or an injury.
Clearly this guy has fallen far in the past few years, specifically after his first year in Washington, but I do think there is some oil in that well. I think it’s odd that the guy had such a decline at age 30 (insert age joke here) so that gives us some hope that there is room to work on his mechanics. I think we need an extra arm. I think if he gives us a break in salary to play with his brother it’s a move we need to make to sure up the rotation. I think he can stand NY, which is more than a lot of pitchers can stay. This guy seems to statistically “outperform” his numbers, which is a good sign that he knows how to pitch. I think in looking at Livian we need to consider the market I don’t see a lot of options. What are peoples thoughts on Garcia, Colon, or Armas?
It’s pretty easy to prove that Livan Hernandez is clearly not a pitching ace. But it’s harder to prove what the best option the Mets can take for their SP rotation next year. I see them with the following options -
A. Do Nothing
B. Big Trade
C. Free Agent Signing
D. Small Trade
As, I don’t like option A. and from what I’ve read in most trade rumors I don’t like option B. either, so that doesn’t leave alot of options. I like option D., but I don’t know if it is a viable option or not? So with all that being said, option C is looking more and more like one of the only realistic options, and with a decent contract ($8-9M a year) I don’t think Livan would be so bad as a back of the rotation starter for the Mets who can eat innings.
super t,
why don’t you like option a? as currently constructed, we’ve got one of the best pitching staffs in baseball. why shouldn’t we stick with it?
Because epoc, we need innings. We lost our only 200 IP pitcher to Atlanta, we have a rotation with two talented veterans who have serious injury issues and might not pitch 300 innings together (Pedro and el Duque) and we have two young pups (Humber and Pelfrey)with a combined 150-160 or so innings of ML baseball under thier belts. Assuming that Pedro and el Duque stay healthy for the year (which is a HUGE maybe)–they won’t go over 200 innings. Assuming that Hum-rey combine to pitch around 300 IP of productive baseball and that Maine as well as Perez produce around what they accoplished in 07′–we still need the innings we lost with Glavine. Who’s going to replace those innings? At least Livan is guaranteed throughout his career to pitch over 200 innings and have a winning record. I would pay him 8-10 million for 2 seasons just for this until we can get the young kids enough experience for them to carry the staff into the future.
i don’t think your math adds up, firewillie. it’s true that we can’t count on pedro or hernandez, but it seems like 250 innings between them is a reasonable estimate. if we can get (like you say) 300 innings from pelfrey/humber and 360 innings from maine/perez, that’s 910 innings. that’s great. y do we need 200 mediocre to terrible innings from livan (or whoever else)? mulvey will be ready to throw the missing 90 innings or so by midseason, and all the projection systems seem to really like him as a valuable contributor this year, so what’s the problem? if we need a pitcher (which we don’t), it would actually make more sense to sign someone like colon or jennings to a one year deal; they may only pitch 100 innings, but they’d be better innings than you’d get from livan or silva, and we don’t really need any more than that.
You’re right , I exaggerated my case–but your plan for 2008 is to expect 300 IP from two young pitchers who have around 103 IP (94 for Pelfrey and 9 for Humber) of MLB experience in their short CAREERS in the past two seasons is a bit much. Counting on Mulvey top be ready by midseason with no contingency plan is also too optimistic and you don’t know how he will adjust to AAA pitching based off his 1 start for us there in 2007. Livan’s 200 innings maybe the only thing we can reasonably expect from anyone in ou rotation outside of Maine and Perez–and that’s if everyobe outside of el Duque and Pedro are healthy (which is also not a given at all).
So basically, you are admitting to expecting 390 innings from three young pitchers with less than a full season of MLB starts between the 3 of them (18 starts-17 for Pelfrey, 1 for Humber, and 0 for Mulvey). Just to put this into perspective, Livan started 33 games last year and pitched 204.3 innings on what many here argue was a season in the midst of a steady career decline. Moreover, there is little guarantee that these three will put up better than the “mediocre to terrible innings” pitched by Hernandez. During this 204 inning season Livan pitched to an ERA+ of around 95 and that is probably comparable to the ERA+ of what we will get from Mulhumfrey. Insurance and contingency is the name of the game with a staff like ours which has a weird mix of declining veterans (el Duque and Pedro), starters hitting their peak years (Maine and Perez) and young inexperienced but talented kids (Pelfrey and Humber). At least with Livan Hernandez around we have some backup in case someone gets hurt, regresses, or isn’t ready to carry the load.
firewillie, in my scenario, mulvey is the contingency plan. if we need more contingencies, we have vargas also. how many contingencies do we need? almost everything would have to fall apart for us not to get 1000 innings out of pedro, hernandez, maine, perez, pelfrey and humber, and if they do fall apart, we’ve got mulvey and (heaven forbid) vargas. if all that stuff falls apart, livan hernandez won’t save 2008 for us. santana won’t either.
if (as you say) the production we’re likely to get from livan is the same as what we’re likely to get from humber, pelfrey and mulvey (combined), why bother paying for him? my point is that there’s no reason we need a bunch of innings from any one source, since we’ve got a bunch of pitchers whose sum contributions will be plenty adequate.