Monday, June 16, 2008
Fractured Wang
Well, the news is in on Chien-Ming Wang's injury, and it's not good for Yankee fans. I will resist the temptation to bash the insipid inter-league play that led to this injury. Instead, let's look at the impact of this injury.The Yankees have 92 games left this year. Divide by five and you get 18 starts for each slot in the rotation. For all intents and purposes, I'm going to assume that Wang is done for the year. First, let's look at what a healthy Wang would be expected to do over his remaining starts, using his 2008 projection weighed at 70% and his 2008 actual performance weighed at 30%. For the numbers that follow, I am assuming a replacement level pitcher would put up an ERA of 5.58.
| Healthy Wang | ERA | G | IP/G | IP | ER | RAR | WAR |
| Wang | 3.90 | 18 | 6.70 | 121 | 52 | 23 | 2.3 |
Wang's revised projection was for a 3.90 ERA. He's averaging 6.7 innings per game this year, so I assumed that is what he would have done over the rest of the season. So in 18 starts, Wang would give the team 121 innings and save 23 runs above a replacement level pitcher (RAR). Divide that by 10 to get the wins above replacement (2.3 WAR).
So those 18 starts and 121 innings have to go somewhere. Let's assume they're split over Dan Giese, IPK, and Phil Hughes.
| G/K/H/R | ERA | G | IP/G | IP | ER | RAR | WAR |
| Giese | 4.21 | 8 | 5.00 | 40 | 19 | 6 | 0.6 |
| Kennedy | 5.35 | 7 | 5.00 | 35 | 21 | 1 | 0.1 |
| Hughes | 5.42 | 3 | 5.00 | 15 | 9 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Repl Level P | 5.58 | 31 | 1.00 | 31 | 19 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Total | 5.04 | ---- | ---- | 121 | 68 | 7 | 0.7 |
Giese's MLE and projection are probably overly optimistic, but this is supposed to be objective. I'm assuming here that none of this trio will be able to average more than 5 innings a start. Kennedy and Hughes both projected better coming into 2008 but at this point I'm going to assume they will be about a hair better than replacement level. So there's a shortfall of 31 innings that I am going to estimate will be picked up by a replacement level reliever, although it's possible one of the kids on the farm could improve on that. So in this case, the Yankees lose about 1.6 wins by going from Wang to this group of pitchers.
If Giese is replacement level, then the Yankees are basically down the 2.3 wins that Wang would have given them.
Lastly, since we'll be hearing and reading about it for the next few weeks, here's what C.C. Sabathia would be projected to do.
| Scenario 1 | ERA | G | IP/G | IP | ER | RAR | WAR |
| Sabathia | 3.70 | 18 | 6.90 | 124 | 51 | 26 | 2.6 |
Sabathia's a little more durable than Wang on a per game basis, so he'd be a slight upgrade if he was acquired.
So yeah, this sucks, but it's probably not as dire as it may seem right now.
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