After last night's game, I am trying to decide what to do with Pedro Martinez on my roster. Currently with an ERA of 7.12 and a WHIP of 1.75, he certainly has not been the pitcher that I expected when I drafted at the beginning of the season.

As an aside, I want to note that, since the beginning of the season, I have already dropped Francisco Liriano ($22.67) and Rich Hill ($16.42). Dollar figures are based on Tim Dierke's (of Roto Authority) pre-season projections. Pedro ($21.47) was also highly valued. Ouch. Someone should ask Tim whether this season has caused or will cause him to rethink some of his assumptions for pitching performance going into next year, but that is the subject of a different post.

A deeper look at Pedro's numbers show some promise, but ultimately probably not enough. His BABIP stands at .352 and his strand rate is 61.5%. Both of these figures are worse than his career norms, so it appears that bad luck has been partially the cause of his problems. His HR/FB rate is 10.8% so luck is neutral there.

Pedro's K/9 is 6.23 and his K/BB is at 1.91. Neither of these figures is impressive in any sense, and the fact that they are both significantly worse than Pedro's career norms could be a serious warning sign that Pedro has had or is undergoing a major decline in skills at his age. Pedro's GB rate is 38.3%, which is actually slightly above his historical rate, but is certainly not elite.

Putting all of this together, there is no very compelling reason to believe that Pedro will continue to pitch as poorly as he has so far. But how much will he improve? Pedro's ERC is ~6.80 and his DIP/xFIP is ~4.85. If these numbers are to be believed, then Pedro will not be worth his roster spot, not in any 12 team mixed leagues anyway. But on the other hand, with the early season injury, Pedro has pitched only ~30 innings so far and it is known that there is a great deal of randomness in pitching statistics based on such a small sample. If we were at the beginning of the season, conventional wisdom would preach patience. Given Pedro's track record and his reputation for being an intelligent pitcher who makes corrections, would more time not be warranted in his case?

re: Tim's dollar amounts -- No one's going to make it from March to October without some missteps. With that said, Liriano and Pedro were overpriced, but I did like Rich Hill, as well.

re: Pedro in particular -- I think if you were to call Pedro Martinez by any other name, he'd be on waivers and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Pedro is no longer the pitcher that he once was. He might show flashes of brilliance, but extended periods seems to be too much to ask for.

I have started Pedro every game this year. Yes if he wasn't Pedro I would have at least benched him last night. He has singlehandedly raised my team ERA by about .20. My team is doing great in ERA and WHIP so I don't care so much, but I do need him to be good enough to at least be serviceable in the future. The last two starts have been discouraging to say the least. I'll give him a few more starts before I give up hope that he'll be good.

From what I see, he still can't locate his fastball consistently. His pitches are often either way off the plate or up in the zone and over the heart of the plate. I didn't see the whole game last night but he got away with two mistakes to AROD alone. Hung a curve that he hit to the wall in left, the other was a belt high change that he swung and miss. He was probably surprised to see such a bad pitch. LOL