The Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece documenting a rare record that Beckett finds himself chasing. Currently, Beckett’s 2011 is the 3rd-best single-season ERA turnaround in history.
[As of July 7] Beckett currently owns a 2.12 ERA, despite compiling an unsightly 5.78 mark in 2010. The improvement of 3.66 would be the third-best ERA dropoff from one season to the next in the history of modern baseball, among all pitchers who threw at least 100 innings in each year. (Beckett is scheduled to pitch Friday at home against Baltimore.)
Beckett is chasing a record currently held by Hall-of-Famer Lefty Grove, who put up a 6.50 ERA for the Red Sox in an injury-plagued 1934 season. He rebounded in 1935, going 20-12 with an AL-leading 2.70 ERA. For Beckett to surpass Grove, he’d have to lower his ERA to a minuscule 1.97.
While it’s unlikely that Beckett will catch Lefty Grove for the record (or even pass #2 Butch Henry for that matter as he would need to lower it to 2.08) it does strongly illustrate the dominance Beckett has demonstrated through 2011. His 2.12 ERA is 3rd in all of baseball.
But there is reason to pause when you try to envision Beckett carrying this type of ERA the rest of the year. While his control has improved over 2010, his K/9 is down a bit in 2011. Beckett is striking out 7.7 batters over 9 innings, which is good enough to carry you. His ratio of Ks to BBs is very close to 3.0. Anything in the “3” range and you usually have an upper-tiered arm in your rotation.
But Beckett’s HR/9 is heavily suppressed against the league average as well as his career norm. On average Beckett will give up a home run every 9 innings. This is pretty standard figure (1.0 HR in 9IP) and reasonable to expect. Right now, his HR/9 is 0.5, so that means he’s giving up just one home run every 18 innings. That is very tough to sustain. Tough, but doable. Clay Buchholz did it last year, despite being a guy who also gives up HR/9 in the 1.00 to 1.25 range.
In addition to the favorable home runs aspect is the strand rate. Beckett is stranding almost 4 out of 5 baserunners. That’s 80%. Beckett is usually in the upper 60’s and lower 70’s when it comes to stranding runners. Again, repeatable if your groove never breaks stride (and sometimes it doesn’t all year), but usually it’s not sustainable for 6 months straight.
So while this record is interesting and would make for a remarkable season from Beckett, it’s hard to really expect it to happen or fathom the repeated fortune outing after outing that this record would require.
It can occur though. (It has before and it will again).
But when the peripherals don’t support what’s on the surface, (Beckett’s xERA [expected ERA] is 3.42) you have to assume some regression moving forward.
The last time Beckett stranded 80% of his baserunners, his ERA was 3.12 at the end of the year. An entire run higher than it is right now. That was in 2003 when he struck out 9.6 batters per 9 innings and won the World Series with Florida.
It was a historic and memorable year for Beckett in 2003. If he has a defying performance like that again in 2011, maybe it will come with another championship.
Darryl Johnston can be reached at [email protected]