Season in Review: Jeff Samardzija

In Commentary And Analysis by berselius70 Comments

Now that Jeff Samardzija's season is over, let's take a moment to look back and express amazement that for about half the season Samardzija was the guy you most wanted to see on the mound for the Cubs. Well, assuming you weren't rooting for the Cubs reverse standings position. Here's his final numbers on the season.

 

Player GS IP H K BB HR BABIP ERA FIP xFIP fWAR bWAR
Shark 28 174.2 157 180 56 20 .296 3.81 3.55 3.38 3.4 1.8

 

This sure was a nice surprise for the Cubs this year.

Here's another Cubs pitcher we recently enjoyed who seemed to suddenly turn things around.

 

Player GS IP H K BB HR BABIP ERA FIP xFIP fWAR bWAR
Rich Hill (2007) 32 195 170 183 63 27 .271 3.92 4.32 4.00 3.1 3.2

 

I had remembered that Hill had a big problem with walks, but he was actually quite stingy with them across all levels as he shot up the minors. He walked 17 batters in 23 innings or so during his cup of coffee in 05, and posted a solid 3.53 BB/9 in 100 innings in 2007 but was most famous for shooting his mouth off after the Barret-Pierzynski fight. He followed that up with a 3.1 fWAR, 2.91 BB/9 season in 2007 after which the Cubs declared him to be one of The Untouchables. We all know what happened after that. He hurt his back, couldn't find the plate, and the rest was history (see also: 2011-2012 Randy Wells). Even if you believe in TRANSFORMATION, there's always the lurking fact that evolution did not select the throw 98 mph fastballs trait.

Samardzija has done a lot to improve his stock, but the projection systems have mixed opinions. Here is The Hardball Times's updated forecast ($) for the next five years for F7, as well as their final estimate of his current true talent level.

Year IP ERA K/9 BB/9 HR/9 WAR
current   4.43 8.4 4.2 1.1  
2013 137 4.47 8.5 4.1 1.1 0.2
2014 137 4.54 8.5 4.1 1.1 0.1
2015 145 4.55 8.6 4.0 1.1 0.1
2016 140 4.60 8.5 3.9 1.1 0.0
2017 141 4.67 8.4 3.8 1.2 -0.2

ZiPS is a much bigger believer in Samardzija, pegging his current true talent level at a 3.83 FIP. However, it has been suggested that ZiPS weights current season projections too heavily. I don't have a BP subscription so I don't know what Samardzija's updated PECOTA is, but it's certainly better than the ~5.5 FIP as a reliever that it had projected going into the season.

Not surprisingly, Samardzija is a weird guy to project. I'd be interested to see what player comps PECOTA spits out. It's pretty unusual to see a guy be a shitty reliever for several seasons, then suddenly turn into a credible starter. Another Cubs pitcher that was being thrown around as a comparison earlier in the year was Ryan Dempster, but that's only a cursory comparison. Dempster had past history of being a solid starter, was injured, and then had some success as a closer before being turned into a starter. Samardzija, on the other hand had been so terrible that he probably would have been non-tendered in the offseason if the Cubs actually had a rotation with a shot at pitching the Cubs into respectability.

One of the worries that has been expressed by some around here is that the Cubs will sign Samardzija to an extension. I'm one of the Samardzija Transformation believers, so I'm not too worried that the Cubs would get burned by the deal. At least, relative to signing a contract with any player. But I think that Thoyer will wait. What's the hurry? Samardzija is only reaching his first year of arbitration. He'll be a little more expensive than most first time arb elgibles due to the deal the Cubs had to give him to sign him away from football, but he won't be that expensive. They can take a wait and see approach, and if he's still kicking ass and taking names next year, then they can drop some money on him to keep him around. Given the Cubs current payroll constraints over the next few years, it's not like this is a situation where they really need to take on some risk to save enough money to sign the next Xavier Nady.

Share this Post

Comments

  3. josh

    @ Mish:
    He’s right about Dimaggio/Williams, I think, but dead wrong about Cabrera. But yeah, what else are those guys going to say? “Eh, Miggy’s all right, but that Trout kid is a total player! And look how fat, Miggy is!”

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  4. mb21

    I wouldn’t say Rich HIll was stingy with walks. HIs walk rate was horrible in 2002 (small sample) through 2004. It improved in 2005 and then went back to shit in 2008.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  5. mb21

    I believe Samardzija is better than I thought, but I don’t believe he’s as good as he pitched this season and most baseball research would agree with that. I wouldn’t sign him to an extension in part because of that, but also because he’s a pitcher in his prime with 3 years of club control left. Sure, it will be a little pricier than you’d like considering his salary pre-arbitration, but he turns 28 in January. He’s under club control at a discount through his age 30 season. I suppose a modest 3-year deal would be OK, but anything longer than that would be silly in my opinion. Especially when you factor in that it’s based on one good season.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  10. mb21

    @ Berselius:
    I had this argument with GM several years ago. He was a big Rich Hill fan and obviously you had to love the strikeout rate, but the walk rate always bothered me. I was always just waiting for his walk rate to fall back to earth. He also hit a shitload of batters before 2005 and threw a bunch of wild pitches. He had control worse than Carlos Marmol and then suddenly it was good and it stayed good for awhile, but I never bought it. I don’t believe players just suddenly improve. I know it happens. It happens a lot, but more often than not it’s not real improvement and just better numbers.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  13. WaLi

    mb21 wrote:

    I believe Samardzija is better than I thought

    I would say so. Here is what you said about him before the season:
    mb21 wrote:

    I agree it makes it relatively simple: Garza, Dempster, Maholm, Wells, Volstad with Wood as the 6th starter, McNutt as the 7th starter, followed by a bunch of other guys and then Alvin Yellon as the next to last starter and Samardzija as the last starter.
    Last year we applauded the Cubs front office and Mike Quade for saying he wouldn’t start again. He did nothing in relief that makes one think he’s any different a pitcher than he was before that. Personally, I think this is about Sveum and Thoyer falling in love with a mid 90s fastball and being unable to see what others before them already learned. I can’t think of anything else to explain it and I’m not sure it matters what the explanation is. Samardzija is going to get rocked as a starting pitcher. He’ll probably get rocked as a reliever.

    (dying laughing)

    /reads every word

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  15. mb21

    @ WaLi:
    To be completely honest, I don’t feel much different than that. I’d push Volstad and Alvin Yellon behind F7, but I still don’t think he’s very good. He’s probably a replacement level starter, but I’ve been wrong about him before.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  17. Author
    Berselius

    @ mb21:

    Going into his appearances in 06 and 07 I’d probably agree with you, but after the 2007 season that was three years of a good walk rate, half of it in the majors. I think his falling back to earth had more to do with a back injury fucking up his mechanics than the mirage being pierced.

    I have no idea what his SIERA was in his last two months of 2006 though, so I can’t really say it would have gone either way (dying laughing).

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  19. Mish

    @ GBTS:
    I was 100% going to go if the games were relevant to the Rays…I don’t see that happening. I might go if the weather is nice but I’m not positive.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  20. mb21

    @ Berselius:
    I always thought blaming the mechanics was a weak argument. He had the same mechanics he always had. It was only after the control problems that they altered the mechanics. Hill is just a guy who has had poor control throughout his career with the exception of a couple seasons. I don’t think there’s anything that’s surprising about this. Even a guy with poor control can “figure it out” for a couple seasons.

    It’s really not much different than Carlos Zambrano who also had very poor control with the exception of 2 consecutive seasons (430 innings). Z’s control didn’t suddenly improve. He just had better results and we saw after 2005 that it returned to being poor. There were no mechanical issues or arm injuries that caused his control to be bad again and as best as I can remember, nobody ever claimed that.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  22. WaLi

    @ mb21:
    Replacement level isn’t bad in this rotation though (dying laughing)

    I was actually just looking for the past community projections for Samardzija and came across that quote which I found humorous.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  24. mb21

    @ WaLi:
    I was wrong on Samardzija. He’s good enough to be in a rotation, especially one this poor. I won’t be the least bit surprised if or when he does regress toward his career numbers though.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  29. Author
    Berselius

    RC, you can just type “www.obstructedview.net” in the address bar to go to this website. You don’t have to get here by searching for “derek lee butt pics” on google, as you presumably have done twice today.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  38. Rice Cube

    Cubs home record before today’s game is 36-38. They could still win five of the last seven to finish with a winning record at home, but the fact that they’re only a half-game on the Rockies for the #2 pick trumps that small victory…

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  59. josh

    Sveum had some pretty harsh words for Valbuerror. But his point was that the guy is being evaluated constantly for a job, and he can’t afford to make mistakes like that, for his own career’s sake.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0

Leave a Comment