Jose Contreras
ESSENTIALS
2007 RECAP
Jose Contreras' 2007 season was ruined before it was started. He was
implicated in a smuggling case, served with a subpoena before he was set to throw the first pitch on Opening Day.
His first pitch was actually OK. His second pitch, however, was taken
over the right-field wall by Grady Sizemore, and it set the tone for
not only the White Sox's season, but Contreras' as well. He recorded
only three outs that game, and finished the day with a 63.00 ERA.
Things could only get better from there, right? Well, kinda.
Contreras did cut his ERA by 90 percent, but considering he went
through an ugly divorce all the while, I'm sure whatever improvements
he made didn't feel all that great.
For a while, Contreras was on pace to become the Sox's first 20-game loser since
Wilbur Wood in 1975, and he couldn't pin it on bad luck. When he was good -- l
ike his shutout of the Twins May 10 -- he was rewarded with victories.
Through 12 starts, he was an ordinary 4-6 with a 4.23 ERA. He didn't look as sharp, but he appeared to have weathered the worst of it.
Or so we thought.
Over
his next nine starts,
spanning 49 innings, Contreras gave up fewer than five runs only once.
He gave up hits by the boatload (82), and 11 left the yard. He gave up
three of the franchise-record eight homers
against the Yankees July 31.
That start capped off a putrid three-pack of outings in which he gave
up 26 runs over 15 innings, and he was sent to the bullpen with a 5-14
record and a 6.60 ERA.
He pouted after Ozzie's decision, just about demanding a trade, but he
eventually adjusted and earned his way back into the rotation
with five shutout innings in relief
of a struggling Gavin Floyd Aug. 11. Contreras started the rest of the
way, and while he didn't light the world on fire (71 hits in 60 2/3
innings), he looked more confident and pitched more efficiently.
Slightly troubling is that his only great start was
a shutout of the Royals Sept. 19 -- the team Lance Broadway would shut down eight days later.
GOOD SIGNS
No. 1: Heartbreak, not sciatica. Contreras' struggles in 2006 came after the DL trip for
the shooting pain in his hip. There wasn't much talk about injury issues last year, though perhaps because it would've been the least of his problems.
No. 2: Home run rate.
In the 21 starts surrounding that horrible stretch in the middle of the
season, Contreras gave up only nine homers. You can't discount the 11
in the other nine completely, but it helped him to survive despite
declining peripherals in the beginning and end of the season. He set a new full-season high with a groundball-flyball ratio of 1.33
No. 3: Wild pitches. After 16 in 2006, Contreras only threw three in 2007. Maybe because his pitches lacked bite.
BAD SIGNS
No. 1: Hits. Even when he was labeled a bust with the Yankees in his first two seasons, he managed to allow under a hit an inning. He went from giving up 8.91 hits per nine innings to 11.04, and as noted, that didn't improve even when he saw better results in the last month of the season.
No. 2: Strikeouts. Since making his debut in 2003, his strikeout rate has tumbled:
- 2003: 9.13 K/9IP
- 2004: 7.92
- 2005: 6.77
- 2006: 6.15
- 2007: 5.38
That's just about right for somebody who's entering his late 30s, unfortunately.
No. 3: Baserunners besides hits. .He walked 62 in 189 innings, which isn't anywhere close to the worst of his career. However, it is a significant increase over his 2006 walk rate, and he hit five more batters in seven fewer innings on top of that. He finished second in the AL with 15 plunkings, and when you stack these on top of his ballooning hit rate, success will be unsustainable.
2008 OUTLOOKIt'll be a good season if...
For Contreras, I'm sure he'd be happy if he didn't experience another life-shattering event. The Sox are going to need more, however, because the absence of Jon Garland puts pressure on Contreras to turn the Sox rotation from a glass half-empty to one half-full.
Contreras will have to reverse some scary trends in a hurry for that to happen -- his forkball's going to have to fork more, and his drop-down fastball is going to have to do... something besides deliver fastballs a couple miles per hour slower in hitters' wheelhouses. I'd prefer it if he were only allowed to drop down twice a game.
Frank Thomas suffered a rough stretch during his nasty divorce and rebounded in MVP fashion. But he was at least six years younger and his talent level was supernaturally high. Contreras, these days, is merely ordinary, and he's going to have to develop some guile in order to survive.
It would help John Danks and Gavin Floyd (or another young starter) if he could top 200 innings. Ozzie Guillen plans to situate him in the fourth starter spot to pick up any innings the young starters drop along the way, providing relief to the relievers. That seems to be his primary purpose, and if he can get his ERA under 5.00 all the while, I suppose nobody could really complain.
That's not what he's getting paid to do exactly, but them's the breaks. Contreras is a projector's nightmare, and anything between a 3.50 ERA and a 7.00 ERA is downright feasible.
PROJECTIONS
Jose Contreras
|
G
|
W-L
|
IP
|
H
|
HR |
BB |
K |
ERA
|
WHIP |
2008 ZiPS
|
27
|
11-11
|
175 |
194 |
20 |
58 |
96 |
4.73 |
1.44 |
2008 BJS
|
30
|
10-12 |
196 |
200
|
23
|
70 |
141 |
4.27
|
1.29
|
2008 JCM
|
28
|
8-13
|
175 |
199 |
18
|
52 |
119 |
5.31 |
1.43
|