By the Numbers: What to make of Joba's '09?

Following up on our review of eight batters whose seasons went sour, we bring you eight pitchers who have given Fantasy owners fits this year.

As with the hitters, we will embark on a statistical whodunit, looking for clues that can help us try to make sense of seasons that disintegrated like a shattered maple bat. These analyses should also shed some light on which players are due for a comeback in 2010 and which need to be taken down a few pegs in your draft rankings.

Chad Billingsley, SP, L.A. Dodgers: This is not really a story about a lost season, but rather a lost half-season. Billingsley was cruising along with a 3.38 ERA and 9-4 record at the All-Star Break, and then everything went haywire. You may think his erratic control, which allowed him to walk four or more batters in nine starts during the first half of the season alone, would have been responsible for the meltdown. It turns out that Billingsley's biggest crime during the second half has been to allow more contact, as he has struck out fewer batters, but also walked fewer. The Dodger D and Lady Luck have conspired to let him down, as Billingsley's batting average on balls in play (BABIP) has risen from .291 at the break to .315. It is hard to get worked up about this trend, especially since his batted ball profile -- the rates of flyballs, grounders and liners allowed -- has been virtually unchanged since the first half. The minor dip in strikeout rate is something to keep an eye on, but overall, Billingsley appears to be the same pitcher he was just over two months ago.

Joba Chamberlain, SP, N.Y. Yankees: You can blame the Joba Rules, and by all outward appearances, you have every reason to. Over his past nine starts, only one of which extended into the sixth inning, Chamberlain's ERA has soared from 3.58 to 4.73. The problem hasn't been his late season performances, but rather relying on ERA to gauge his earlier starts. Back on July 30, Chamberlain's ERC was 4.54, telling us that if we factor out the effects of defense, relievers and luck, he would have given up an extra run per nine innings over the first four months of the season. Since then, the gap between ERA and ERC has shrunk, but Chamberlain's skill ratios, which include an elevated walk rate, have not changed markedly. So while it appears that he has worsened as the season has worn on, he has essentially been the same pitcher all along. If Chamberlain is going to be the top shelf Fantasy pitcher we expected him to be, he needs to curb his walks and find a way to keep the ball inside his new launching pad home.

Ervin Santana has been down-up-down the past three years, so 2010 may be promising. (US Presswire)

Ervin Santana, SP, L.A. Angels: 2009 looked like it would be the year that Ervin would cease to be "the other Santana." Instead, he unraveled all of the progress made in 2008 and threatens to end the season with an ERA over 5.00 and a WHIP above 1.50. Prior to his second DL stint of the year, back in June, his strikeout rate and fastball velocity were substantially down from their normal levels. According to the PitchFX data on BrooksBaseball.net, his velocity is back, though his strikeouts are still lagging behind last year's rate. The rebound in velocity is a good sign for owners looking for a pitching bargain next year. If healthy, Santana should be able to recapture the magic of '08.

Scott Kazmir, SP, L.A. Angels: Santana's new teammate has had a parallel season, at least from a statistical perspective. Sagging velocity and a depressed strikeout rate have resulted in Fantasy stats that are useful -- and just marginally so -- only to owners in deep AL-only leagues. Also like Santana, Kazmir was shelved with an injury mid-year (though with a strained quad and not an arm injury) and has come back to turn things around late in the season. The post-DL Kazmir has pitched with better command and has given up fewer gopherballs, but we are still short on poles to fly all of the red flags. His strikeout rate and velocity are still down from his historical norms, and he is allowing an alarming number of line drives. This past spring, I predicted that Kazmir would join the likes of CC Sabathia and Josh Beckett among the AL pitching elite, but given these recent trends, I won't be making the same mistake next spring.

Max Scherzer, SP, Arizona: Maybe it was my expectations for Scherzer, and not his performance, that was out of line. Last year, the former first round pick shredded Pacific Coast League batters at a rate of 13.4 K/9 while yielding just two homers in 53 innings, and then he barely slowed down his pace after getting the call from the D'backs. Call me crazy, but I thought Scherzer was ready to join the NL pitching elite in his first full season.

Based on those expectations, you would have to call this season a disappointment for Scherzer, who goes into the final days of the season with a pedestrian 4.08 ERA and 1.34 WHIP. Two reasons stand out for these ordinary stats. Scherzer has inherited a bit of bad luck, with a .313 BABIP that would normally be about 15 to 20 points lower. More important, he has not panned out to be the ground ball pitcher he was in the minors, and that has resulted in a much higher HR/9 rate. Even though he has strikeout and walk rates that stack up favorably with those of Felix Hernandez and Ubaldo Jimenez, those pitchers have lower ERAs and WHIPs because they have done a much better job of preventing long balls. Just in the course of normal development and BABIP regression, we can expect Scherzer to have a better season next year, but until he can reestablish a higher ground ball rate, it makes little sense to rank Scherzer among the true elite.

A.J. Burnett, SP, N.Y. Yankees: Burnett's first year in pinstripes promised to be a great one, even though his contract year in Toronto was less than impressive. Last year's ho-hum performance (4.07 ERA, 1.34 WHIP) had fluke written all over it. His peripherals were solid, but a .321 BABIP laid waste to what should have been a sterling performance. With the promise of better luck and new teammates who could deliver truckloads of run support, 2009 looked to be a banner year for Burnett. Instead he heads into his last few starts with his worst stats since his 2003 season that ended prematurely with Tommy John surgery. Burnett's luck did even out this year, but he missed an opportunity to shine by whipping up a perfect storm of mediocre skill indicators. His strikeouts decreased, his walk rate grew, and most surprisingly, he ceased to be a ground ball pitcher. The predictable result is that Burnett has set a career high in home runs given up. Just when it seemed that, for the first time in his career, Burnett would prove to be both durable and consistent, an unexpected down season places him in the "risky" category all over again.

Brad Lidge, RP, Philadelphia: One simple rule for pitching in Citizens Bank Park is to keep the ball on the ground as often as humanly possible. That goes double for pitchers who are prone to issuing lots of walks. Yes, we are talking to you, Brad Lidge. He was certainly lucky last year to have batters go yard on him just twice all season, but he helped his own case by lowering his flyball rate to 35 percent. This year, that rate has jumped to 41 percent, which has contributed to a HR/9 rate that has surged to 1.8. When balls managed to stay in the park, Lidge allowed base hits on 36 percent of them, an extremely high rate that is only a little fluky.

Lidge has come back from disastrous seasons before (see 2006), but his skill indicators are even worse this time around. He was one of the first relievers off the board in this year's drafts, but owners shouldn't even think of taking him next year until the mid-teen rounds at earliest.

Brian Fuentes, RP, L.A. Angels: Did I have high expectations for Fuentes this year? Here's what I wrote in By the Numbers a year ago: "Fuentes won't cash in on the free agent market to the extent that K-Rod will, but he could outperform him in saves, ERA, WHIP and Ks in 2009."

That worked out well, didn't it? Rodriguez annihilated Fuentes in Ks, ERA and WHIP, and if you gave him a team that wins, he probably would have won the saves battle, too. After a career year in which he struck out nearly 12 batters every nine innings, Fuentes was just plain hittable this year. According to the data on the Fangraphs website, Fuentes set a career high for percentage of pitches that were swung at that resulted in contact and a career low for pitches thrown inside the strike zone. Toss in a home run rate that was nearly two and half times his rate from last year, and you have a thoroughly disappointing season. It is probably unrealistic to think next season will be as uncharacteristically bad as this one, but we can also give up on the idea that he will challenge K-Rod and the other top closers for Fantasy supremacy.

Al Melchior was recently a Fantasy columnist and data analyst for Baseball HQ and will be providing advice columns for CBSSports.com. Click here to send him a question. Please put "Melchior" in the subject field.