Astros fans spent all winter hoping for a spring turnaround from Jose Lima. Adopting Hideo Nomo’s tornado wind-up isn’t likely what they had in mind. Lima fell from 21-10 in 1999 to 7-16 with a league-worst 6.65 ERA and 48 home runs allowed in 2000. Even his teammates think Lima is a yo-yo. Does that mean he can bounce back from his hideous performance?
Lima’s collapse wasn’t the worst in baseball history or even the worst in 2000. But he still fell a long way. Only 10 pitchers since the expansion era began in 1961 have endured a greater year-to-year inflation in ERA (minimum 100 innings pitched in each season):
Pitcher Years ERA1 ERA2 Dif ---------------------------------------------- Jim Abbott 1995-1996 3.70 7.48 +3.78 Brian Bohanon 1998-1999 2.67 6.20 +3.53 David Cone 1999-2000 3.44 6.91 +3.46 Jason Bere 1994-1995 3.81 7.91 +3.38 Andy Hassler 1974-1975 2.61 5.94 +3.33 Steve Hargan 1970-1971 2.90 6.19 +3.29 Jim O'Toole 1964-1965 2.66 5.92 +3.26 Terry Mulholland 1993-1994 3.25 6.49 +3.24 Jeff Fassero 1998-1999 3.97 7.20 +3.23 Darren Oliver 1999-2000 4.26 7.42 +3.15 Jose Lima 1999-2000 3.58 6.65 +3.07
Some of those pitchers went from the National League to the designated-hitting American League. Others, like Lima, went from pitcher-friendly ballparks to bandboxes. Astros fans should apparently utter a collective “Thanks, Gerry!” to General Manager Gerry Hunsicker for failing to sign Darren Oliver, who was a free agent last offseason. As much as Lima cost the Astros, Oliver would have made things worse.
On the bright side, six of the pitchers on that list improved the seasons following their meltdowns. Of the other five, Abbott retired, Bere is 27-22 with an unimpressive 5.77 ERA since his implosion, and Cone, Oliver, and Lima await their fates.
Pitchers as a group tend to recover from such wild swings in performance. Since 1961, 114 pitchers have seen their ERA rise by at least two earned runs in consecutive years (again, minimum 100 innings pitched in each season). That group as a whole went from 3.13 in year one to 5.43 in year two. In year three, the group posted a collective 4.23 ERA, an improvement of 1.20 earned runs.
Of the 57 of those pitchers who threw at least 100 innings in year three, 21 percent improved their ERA by at least two earned runs, and 65 percent by at least one earned run. Fully 90 percent experienced some improvement after their year of collapse. In other words, precedent is on Lima’s side.
Crucial to Lima’s future is not only how he learns to cope with his nemesis, Enron Field. Lima suffered a severe decline on the road as well:
Year W L GS CG IP ERA H/9 HR/9 BB/9 SO/9 SO/BB ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1998 7 5 16 1 108.0 4.33 9.58 1.42 1.25 5.83 4.67 1999 12 5 20 2 133.3 4.66 9.99 1.55 1.62 5.81 3.58 2000 2 8 15 0 88.3 6.32 11.42 2.14 2.85 5.10 1.79
Lima surrendered home runs on the road in 2000 at a much higher rate than he did the previous two seasons. Indeed, his road home runs per nine innings were only 5 percent lower than his home performance: Enron wasn’t the problem, Jose Lima was.
Moreover, in 1998 Lima was second in the league in both walks per nine innings and strikeout/walk ratio on the road. In 1999 he was third and sixth, respectively, in those categories. He didn’t make the lists at all in 2000. Lima thrived on control and a modest strikeout rate in 1998 and 1999. Last season, for whatever reason, he lost that key to his game away from as well as at Enron.
A decline in control was a problem for the pitching staff as a whole. In 1999 the Astros tied a National League record by drawing 250 more walks than they allowed. In 2000 they drew 75 more walks than they allowed, still good for fourth in the league but nowhere near as impressive as the previous season.
The pitching staff was sixth in the league in fewest walks allowed, seventh in that category at home and ninth on the road. Just like Lima, for the entire team the decline in control wasn’t confined to Enron.
A popular theory is that Lima suffered at Enron in particular because he’s a flyball pitcher. While Lima allowed more flyballs than groundballs in 2000, this was not the case when Lima pitched half his games in the Astrodome:
Year GB FB GB/FB ----------------------- 1998 309 284 1.09 1999 350 264 1.33 2000 265 288 0.92
In other words, it’s not that the Astrodome protected Lima’s flyball tendencies. In 1998 and 1999, Lima was a groundball pitcher. He became a flyball pitcher in 2000. The combined pitching staff suffered a similar shift:
Year GB FB GB/FB ----------------------- 1998 2159 1449 1.49 1999 2098 1365 1.55 2000 1961 1806 1.09
Perhaps the conditions in Enron are more conducive to flyballs. Maybe the pitchers simply failed to keep the ball down or the batters swung for the fences more often. Mike Hampton’s trade and Shane Reynolds’ half-season absence from the rotation surely didn’t help matters.
Not that a low groundball/flyball ratio is imperative to a pitcher’s success: at a career 0.79 Scott Elarton is a consistent and fairly drastic flyball pitcher being tagged as ace of the staff. On the other hand, at a career 2.00, Chris Holt is an extreme groundball pitcher, which was useful enough to get him traded to Detroit.
The evidence indicates that Lima has greater success when he induces more groundballs than flyballs. This should come as no surprise for a pitcher who set the National League record for home runs allowed and makes his home in a park that was baseball’s second-best for circuit clouts.
Lima gets a bad rap for his antics on the mound. His attitude is especially annoying when he can’t back it up with pitching success. Nonetheless, Lima is generous and kind with fans at home and on the road, climbing into the stands to chat with the audience, play with children, and sign autographs. Lima deserves better than to suffer another 2000-style catastrophe, and so do the Astros.
If he can keep his head in the game, learn from the humiliation he endured, reclaim some of his previous control at home and on the road, and keep the ball down like he did in 1998 and 1999, then Lima Time won’t be tee time for other teams like it was so often in 2000.
That’s admittedly a pretty big if.
OPS Again
A couple of readers of the column two weeks ago wondered how two variations of OPS — OBP times 1.4 plus slugging average and OBP times slugging average — correlate with runs per game. The answer is that these modified forms correlate slightly better with runs per game for all major-league teams since 1955 than does plain old OPS:
Statistic Correlation ----------------------------------------- OBP Times 1.4 Plus Slugging Average .964 OBP Times Slugging Average .963 OBP Plus Slugging Average .961 Slugging Average .926 On-Base Percentage .901
Recall that the closer to 1.00, the stronger the correlation. While the modified versions of OPS yield a rise in correlation, the increase likely isn’t big enough to justify the extra math involved.