In today’s battle between Big Pedro (Pedro Martinez) and Little Pedro (Ramon Ortiz), both pitchers tanked it.  However, in both cases, I do not believe there should be cause for concern, as both should rebound to have career-average seasons.

 

April 6, 2006:

 

	IP	1B	HR	R	ER	K	BB
Big Pedro	6	3	1	5	4	6	5
Little Pedro	5	9	1	6	6	1	0

 

Little Pedro:

 

Not living up to his nickname

Nine singles off of Ortiz… ouch!  Ramon has always been known as a fly ball pitcher, even though his outfield fly percentage of 23% is still lower than any member of the Reds’ current starting rotation.  The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2006 shows us that Shea Stadium, the site for today’s game, allows 24% more singles per outfield fly than the average ballpark!  As much as Cincinnati caused him to allow excess homers, here we see Shea doing the same with singles.

 

Ramon’s new home, RFK stadium, is particularly nice to flyball pitchers.  It actually depressed the run value of fly balls by .056 runs per fly.  Seem insignificant?  Well, Ortiz allowed 174 fly balls last season, so we estimate that 87 of them came at home.  Let’s see what that would do to the total number of runs allowed above or below the league average for each of his three career home ballparks:

 

	Outfield Fly Run Factor	Runs above/below average
Edison Field (ANA)	-.014	-1.2
Great American Ballpark (CIN)	.016	+1.4
RFK Stadium (WAS)	-.056	-4.9

 

So just looking at outfield flies, Ramon would have allowed about six fewer runs by playing half of his games at RFK last year instead of the GAB.  This alone would have dropped his 2005 ERA from 5.36 to 5.04.  Factor in the Nats’ far superior outfield defense to the Reds (We don’t call him Ken Griffey Jogger because he’s fit), and we can expect Ortiz’ ERA to be in the high 4’s this season.

 

 

Big Pedro:

 

You can't beat the original

My analysis here is far more speculative and less grounded in stats.  Basically, Pedro allowed 5 walks today after having allowed only six in all of April last year.  Everyone wants to talk about Pedro’s drop in velocity over the past few years, but he did average a strikeout per inning today, and I don’t see how a drop in velocity should translate into loss of control.  In fact, some people believe that a pitcher’s control even improves a little with age (while we are certain that strikeout % drops some).

 

Now Pedro’s toe injury could be affecting his balance or his release point, and subsequently ruining his command.  If so, the problem should sort itself out over the next few starts as he heals.  As for the homer he allowed, it was given up to Nick Johnson, who came into the game 7 for 20 lifetime against Martinez.  Nick’s just got a knack for knocking Pedro, I figure.