Meet the Sox

John Danks

ESSENTIALS

• Contract
  
  • Not arbitration eligible until 2010
    
• Stats
  • Baseball-Reference.com page
  • ESPN.com current stats
  • FanGraphs
    
  • First Inning
  • PECOTA
    

2007 RECAP

Gavin Floyd entered 2007 spring training with the inside track on the fifth starter spot, considering he had the most big-league experience of the bunch.  John Danks, meanwhile, entered the competition not having mastered either Double-A or Triple-A, although he did show signs of handling the levels after rocky beginnings.  Danks, however, impressed Ozzie Guillen with the way he attacked the strike zone while Floyd nibbled, and thus he began the season as the sole unproven pitcher on a veteran rotation.

You couldn't tell him apart from the rest with the way he started the season.  He lost his first four decisions, mainly because the Sox offense gave him a total of five runs.  He finally cracked the win column with three straight victories against Minnesota, the Yankees and Oakland.  At that point, here was his line:

8 GS, 47 2/3 IP, 3-4, 3.78 ERA, 1.34 WHIP, 8 HR 15 BB, 36 K

Unfortunately, here's what happened afterward:

18 GS, 91 1/3 IP, 3-9, 6.11 ERA, 2.01 WHIP, 20 HR, 39 BB, 73 K

What were the culprits?

No. 1:  Diminished control.  Danks averaged one more walk per nine innings in that second stretch, but walks don't tell the whole story.  Over his first eight starts, he averaged 15.86 pitches per inning; over his last 18, that number increased to 18.08.  That alone can keep a pitcher to only six innings instead of seven, when things are going well.

No. 2:  Hitters warmed up to him.  Even when he stayed in the strike zone, he had a hard time getting it past hitters.  Over the course of the season, here's how batters fared against Danks each time around (thanks to The Cheat for tipping me to this trend):

• First time: .238/.322/.485
• Second time:  .287/.341/.493
• Third time:  .385/.425/.587

And in his last 18 starts:

• First time: .211/.298/.437
• Second time: .321/.387/.583
• Third time: .377/.422/.644

For comparison's sake, when Javier Vazquez hit the wall at the 75-pitch mark in 2006, hitters facing him a third time in a game hit .336/.375/.577, so Danks was 100 points of OPS worse.  And as the Cheat points out, he didn't have much success when teams as a whole faced him the second or third time around.

Danks had a few bright points in the last two-thirds of the season, such as his eight sterling innings against the Royals, and a hard-luck loss to the Indians in which he struck out eight over six innings.  Otherwise, he had a rough go of it, and he ended the year with his shortest start -- 2 2/3 innings against Cleveland.  Guillen pulled him after he walked his third batter in the inning.

GOOD SIGNS

No. 1: He's still here.  I think Guillen did a nice job of managing Danks through his first year.  While he has the propensity to let starters run their pitch counts well over 100, he didn't hang Danks out to dry.

No. 2:  Strikeout rate.  Danks averaged 7.06 strikeouts per nine innings, good for second in the rotation behind Javier Vazquez, and 1.68 more than third-place finisher Jose Contreras.

No. 3:  His changeup can dominate.  When Danks was on, he was doing it mostly with his fastball and changeup.  He'd benefit greatly by developing a cutter, but his curve isn't that far off from giving him three above-average pitches for a left-hander.

BAD SIGNS

Nos. 1 & 2: See above.

No. 3: Homers allowed.  I had doubts about Danks' ability to keep the ball in the park, and Danks justified those concerns.  He finished tied for third in most homers allowed in the AL, and only Shawn Marcum faced fewer batters out of the top dozen.

2008 OUTLOOK

It'll be a good season if...

I think I'm prone to be more pessimistic than most when it comes to Danks' future, mainly because I didn't care for the trade that brought him here.  So I was biased to begin with, and the way he wore down in the second half didn't do much to assuage my angst.

Don't get me wrong -- I can see reasons for optimism.  Any lefty who throws 91-93 throws hard enough, and he's given us glimpses of excellence with his secondary pitches.  His last 91 innings don't exactly give him any momentum going into 2008, but it doesn't take a huge leap of faith to see him developing into an average starter.

Danks enters the 2008 season as the Sox's No. 4 starter on paper, since he was No. 5 last year and saw a lot more action than Floyd.  To have a semblance of a solid rotation, that would require Danks to have an ERA around 4.75.  I'd be thrilled if he got it under 5.00, with a reduction in his home run rate.  Considering he gave up 28 in 26 starts last year, I think it would be realistic to expect him to cut it to under a homer per start, even if it's 25 in 26.

I was pretty much right in last year's projection, and I think I'm going to take the lowball approach once again.  Here's hoping he proves me wrong.

PROJECTIONS

John Danks	G	W-L	IP	H	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP
2008 ZiPS	28	7-13	151	169	33	56	121	5.90	1.49
2008 BJS	23	4-9	116	133	23	43	103	5.74	1.52
2008 JCM	28	8-14	171	199	30	59	125	5.28	1.51