Hot Stove Analysis: Kerry Wood (Cleveland Indians)

Kerry Wood will be forever linked to Mark Prior in the department of “Oh, what could have been” for the Chicago Cubs. People will remember him for his short stretch of dominance, including the particularly sick performance against the Astros in 1998. However, it is impossible to have a discussion about Kerry Wood without mentioning the litany of arm injuries he’s experienced over the years.

His advanced stats proved that his ERA and WHIP were no fluke, either - his FIP was 2.32 while his xFIP was 3.12. He did have a low amount of HR/FB coming in at 4.6%, so we should expect that to regress in 2009 somewhat - but on the same hand, the Cubs defense was pretty poor behind him.

Despite Kerry Wood’s great stats, he only posted a 0.82 WPA and 1.17 WPA/LI on the season. Take a look at this list - everyone on it (and more) contributed more meaningfully to their respective team’s success than Kerry Wood. The predictive value of WPA is debatable, but it’s interesting to note that he didn’t rack up the WPA - mainly due to his high -WPA score.

However, if that was the only analysis we did about Kerry Wood, we wouldn’t be Driveline Mechanics, now would we? The truth is that the Indians’ should be worried not only about whether or not he can outperform expectations to simply justify his salary, but whether or not he will even pitch two full years…