Comment from Stumped1 on yesterday's post:
"I gotta say I like Zambrano, and so must have a lot of other teams. because what is lost in that trade is the fact that other teams were trying to get him, Tampa didn't come looking for Kazmir. the Mets just got the winning bid. You know he can pitch at the ml level already and has a ton more potential. Kazmir at this point just has potential."
Thanks for the comment, Stumped. I'd like to encourage more of them, and it's a subject I feel fairly strongly about, so I'm going to address it further, if I may:
Taking your second point first, you make the case that Victor Zambrano has demonstrated the ability to pitch at the major league level, while Kazmir has only demonstrated the potential to do so.
Zambrano has indeed been pitching in the Show since 2001, and in almost 500 innings has posted a very respectable career ERA of 4.45. And, in what some might consider to be an even more impressive feat, his record stands at 37-27 despite toiling almost entirely for the D-Rays (pronounced "D minus rays").
On the other hand, he walked 102 batters in 142 innings last year. The strikeout rate was nice, but when you consider he turned 29 in August, it's very hard to believe that he'll ever get much better. I haven't studies his mechanics, and I wouldn't know what to look for even if I did, so I can't say that the "Peterson theory" is pure hogwash... What I can say is that he looks an awful lot like a 4th or 5th starter to me.
As for Kazmir, "potential" might not go far enough to describe a 21 year-old who has struck out 324 batters in 261 professional innings. That's a K/9 of 11.17, with a K/BB of 2.84. After the trade, Tampa Bay had him make 4 more starts at AA, then called him up to the big club.
How did he do in the same uniform that Zambrano wore weeks earlier? He struck out 41 in 33.1 IP. His control was poor (nerves, maybe?), as was his ERA, but his K/BB was still better than Victor's.
On September 14, Kazmir twisted the knife in Mets fans everywhere by shutting out the World Champion Red Sox for 6 innings, allowing 3 hits, 3 walks, and ringing up 9.
You can say he's too small to pitch starter's innings, or that his mechanics put too much strain on his elbow. Maybe he'll wind up as a relief pitcher, and who would want a Billy Wagner-type around anyway, but at this point he looks like a young lefty with filthy stuff who's poised to have a dominant career as a starter.
What really makes me want to pull my hair out is that's exactly what he looked like last July, when Jim Duquette had his great epiphany ("Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead... to a Wild Card berth... possibly"). Ask me at that point which of the two I'd rather have on the 25-man roster, and I would have said Zambrano without much hesitation, but at the cost of Kazmir?
Which brings me to your first point: there was a bidding war for Zambrano's services and the Mets had to win it. I understand the demand for reliable-but-unspectacular starting pitching at the trade deadline always exceeds the supply, and that it can be worth it for contending teams to overpay. But, I ask,
A) Would a rational observer conclude that the Mets were a real title contender last year? and
B) Is it possible, even for a contender, to simply give up too much in exchange for at best a moderate short-term upgrade?
As I said, I would rather have had Zambrano for the last few months of 2004. But entering the spring of 2005, I'd take Kazmir now. That's what I call a very short term upgrade. Kazmir's fanned over a quarter of the big league hitters he's faced, and, for the love of Dwight Gooden, he's only 21. I think only chronic injury can keep him from stardom, and I'm not about to wish it on him.
We got fleeced.
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As the great, inimitable Branch Rickey wrote, "Strikeouts matter no more in terms of preventing runs than a pop-up to the catcher. Can the pitcher prevent runs from scoring."
5.67 Era and 1.62 Whip?
The risks involved are huge. Besides the injury risk, is the "stuff". If this Kid's fastball flattens out, he'll be more Dwight Gooden than Billy Wagner.
I think Zambrano is gonna prove Dr. Peterson correct this year.
something else to consider. zambrano did not start out as pitcher, thus he has not been doing for much longer than kazmir. health is an issue, but there have also been reports on how kazmir throws and how he will eventually throw his arm off. 29 is not too old to improve. look at randy johnson, lots of k's and always a ton of bb's at the same age. when/if kazmir becomes an ace then i will accept this as a bad deal. but mets fans dont want or need to wait for 4-5 more years for that to happen. htre will always be hyped and overly hyped prospects in the mets system just like everywhere else. and personally i dont feel like watching another generation k fiasco. other names that kaz could wind up like are vanpopple, seay and our own beloved (last year) james baldwin who had the same type of hype that kazmir got.
I KNOW you didn't bring up Randy Johnson as a comp for Victor Zambrano. It's true that RJ improved a lot in his age 29 season (note: VZ was 29 for much of last season), and that he improved largely by cutting down on his walks. But he was already a dominant strikeout pitcher (10.3 K/9) before that.
And killabmc, strikeouts aren't always more valuable than other outs, but they are very important in evaluating pitchers. Read about DIPS.
Secondly, why does Kazmir have to become an ace for this to be a bad deal? He has the obvious advantages of being young and inexpensive, so the burden is on Zambrano to be the ace, isn't it? Doesn't it become a bad trade the minute Kazmir simply becomes the better pitcher of the two (which may already be the case)?
i dont compare zambrano to rj. just the fact that wildness can be cured at a late age. kaz was wild as well when he hit the majors. ml hitters tend to work the count a lot better than minor leaguers, which just happen to be the ones kaz pitched to for the most part. zambrano hasnt been a pitcher for that long either. both he and kaz have great upside. but kaz has done very little to date. if he never lives up to the hype, which is quite often the case, then the trade could very well work out if zambrano becomes a better pitcher. the burden of being an ace is being put on him because you think kazmir is an ace which he isnt. at least not yet. maybe never, he is still a prospect with a questionable delivery that could make him as big an injury risk as zambrano. the potential for both is there and zambrano is well ahead of kaz in my opinion as he is established himself as a ml pitcher. you got to remember that prospects are normally traded as part of a package for a ml player, and just because they are met prospects doesnt make them more valuable.
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