My (Updated) Starting Rotation
While everyone else was Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving, I was writing about what I expected the Royals rotation to look like in 2005. Things like projected starting rotations tend to change in two months’ worth of offseason signings and acquisitions, and the Royals definitely aren’t any exception this year. At the time, I assumed that they’d give Jeremy Affeldt another opportunity as a starter, but he’s definitely going to start the season as the closer. Jose Lima’s pushed Mike Wood to be one of the seven or eight guys fighting for two spots, and if you believe Dick Kaegel’s latest article on kcroyals.com, the only three guys who’re practically guaranteed jobs are Lima, Zack Greinke, and Runelvys Hernandez.
Believing things that Kaegel writes, however, is a very difficult thing for me to do. I thought it was extremely strange that it was Hernandez and not Brian Anderson expected to be the no. 3 starter, especially considering the uncertainty surrounding Elvys following his elbow surgery. By all accounts, his velocity and quality of stuff have been nothing but impressive in side sessions and at mini-camp, but the fact remains he’s a 26-year-old with a surgically repaired elbow. That makes him a question mark, and PECOTA definitely doesn’t expect him to pitch well; it has him pegged for a 5.01 ERA in 95 1/3 innings. Regardless of how poorly Anderson pitched last year, I think he has to be considered a favorite to make the rotation. The Royals aren’t going to let him suck up $3.25 million of salary while pitching long relief, so the only solutions are trading him (which the article indicates could happen) or hoping he reverts back to his pre-2004 performance.
Now that I have access to Baseball Prospectus’ awesome 2005 VORP projections, here’s an updated version of my ideal Royals rotation. I’ve gone ahead and put Hernandez in as the no. 5 starter. I think he has a decent chance to out-perform his PECOTA this year, and I just don’t like the other options such Jimmy Gobble (who needs far more swings-and-misses to pitch in the majors) and Denny Bautista (who needs time to develop further in Omaha):
| Pitcher | VORP |
| Zack Greinke | 33.2 |
| Jose Lima | 10.2 |
| Brian Anderson | 5.7 |
| Mike Wood | 16.9 |
| Runelvys Hernandez | 12.2 |
| TOTAL | 78.2 |
Man, does PECOTA ever like Mike Wood's chances of improving. Even with Greinke's expected three-point falloff in VORP, that rotation looks infinitely better than the one I came up with in November, and agrees with Allard Baird's assessment that the strength of the 2005 club may very well be its starting pitching.