When did the Royals get starting pitching?

I have a five-page paper due tomorrow that I have yet to begin working on, but I’d prefer to put it off another half-hour, so after Meche’s quasi-gem today, I’d like to talk about a much more pleasant topic: the Royals’ rotation. Four of these five guys are Dayton Moore acquisitions, which means I’m still firmly in the Moore4Prez campaign. Anyway, I wanted to look at two of the starters who have been, to me at least, surprises. Both have been surpassing my expectations pretty strongly. Let’s check them out…

Gil Meche

Now, this is scary. Dayton Moore announces an $11 million per year, five year deal for a guy who, up to this point in his career, has been ehh. People nationally and people locally suffer from dropjaw syndrome. He constantly cites guys like Chris Carpenter and Jason Schmidt in terms of who Meche compares to, and how they expect Meche to recover from his injuries and turn on the burners later in his career like those two did. People are unimpressed with the reasoning. But, so far this year, Moore has been very right.

Now I understand the sample size on this thing in 2007 is smaller than Angel Berroa’s chances of making the Hall of Fame, but I want you to take a look at this FanGraphs graph, comparing the ERAs of Schmidt, Carpenter, and Meche by age:

Wow. Looking particularly at the ages 27 through 30 zone, it looks like they guessed right. Even if Meche regresses to the mean this season (a near-certainty), he’ll still be following that trend. Dayton Moore is a prophet.

Okay, enough fawning. Here are some specifics: In the AL, Meche ranks second in ERA, second in innings pitched, second in hits allowed, and second in adjusted ERA+ (with a total of 209).

There is a bit of turmoil in where his balls are going. His line drives have been steadily dropping (they are 16.0% for this year, 18.5% last year). But he is inducing many, many more groundballs and many fewer fly balls:

2005—38.9% ground balls, 40.1% fly balls
2006—43.1% ground balls, 38.4% fly balls
2007—56.5% ground balls, 27.5% fly balls

Now I don’t presume to know much about Safeco Park, or really even Kauffman Stadium, but Meche went from a pitcher’s park (95 park factor in 2006) to a hitter’s park (106 PF in 2007 so far, 106 PF last year). Maybe he knows his old fly ball routine won’t work in the new park and has re-dedicated himself to becoming a ground ball pitcher? I don’t really know what’s behind this, be it a conscious decision to throw balls lower, be it a change in delivery, or be it luck. I just hope that it’s here to stay—it’s obviously working.

Here’s rooting for Meche to continue his dominant ways. Today, facing a potent Angels lineup, he looked Aceish again. From Bob Dutton:

Meche, 3-1, produced his sixth quality start in seven outings by limiting the Angels to two runs and two hits in seven innings. He retired 19 of 20 hitters after allowing Vladimir Guerrero’s two-run homer in the first inning.

Jorge de la Rosa

Now here’s an interesting case. de la Rosa was signed by the D’backs in 1998 as an amateur free agent, then sold to a Mexican team, then sold to the Red Sox, then traded back to the Diamondbacks with three other players for Curt Schilling, then traded to Milwaukee (in a pretty huge trade involving Chris Capuano, Craig Counsell, Lyle Overbay, Junior Spivey and Richie Sexson). Finally, he was traded to the Royals for Tony Graffanino.

All along the way, de la Rosa’s pitching has been somewhere between bad and awful. Even despite his great start in 2006, his career MLB ERA has been 5.33. Not awful but, for a reliever, not great.

This year, however, de la Rosa has been doing phenominally well for a back-of-the-rotation guy: 6 starts (3-2 record), 40 IP, 18 R, 5 HR, 7 BB, 23 K, 3.38 ERA, 135 ERA+, 1.150 WHIP. He’s not going to any All-Star Games with those numbers, but that is excellent production from a 4- or 5-pitcher. And it doesn’t look too much like a fluke: His line drive numbers are way down from his career stuff (14.8% of his balls are line drives, down from 20.4% last year) and he’s getting many more fly balls (44.4% compared to 38.8% last year and 27.8% the year before that). His FIP (an ERA estimate based on fielding-independent pitching, things like strikeouts and walks, etc.) is 4.20, which means his ERA doesn’t look too lucky.

Frankly, this could be a big fluke start for de la Rosa. But if it is, I can’t find where he’s getting lucky.

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Time to start on the paper… no worries—were there an Olympics in rambling on incoherently for five pages, I’d probably take a bronze or silver.