I am appalled at the erroneous statements made by Adam Small in his article "A-Rod Deal Unites World in Hatred of Yankees." (The Dartmouth, Feb. 12) Not only is Small uninformed, but he has misinterpreted the statistics in order to "prove" weakness when in fact there is none. As Small states, he is, as am I, a Red Sox fan. This, however, doesn't justify a complete lack of objectivity. We must recognize the truth; the Yankees' starting rotation is better, at least on paper, than it was last year.
Let us look at what the Yankees lost in terms of starting pitching last season. They lost David Wells, Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Now, let us look at what they gained; Kevin Brown, Javier Vazquez and Jon Lieber. You may look at this and say, "the Yankees lost three quality starters but gained only two and a question mark." But you would be wrong. What the Yankees did was gain two outstanding pitchers and a question mark. You might think I am crazy, but let's look at the numbers. To do this we will use a metric with which most of you are probably not familiar: win shares.
Win shares were developed by noted baseball author Bill James and essentially (and accurately, I might add) measure thirds of wins. Thus, if a player racked up 30 win shares in a season, he accounted for ten of his team's wins. The beauty of this statistic is that it measures both defensive and offensive performance on the same scale. So we are able accurately to compare the value of pitchers and position players. Perhaps the most useful aspect of win shares in our situation is that they control for differences between ERA and league.
Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez, the ninth and 11th best starters in baseball last season, combined to earn 40.28 win shares in 2003 while Clemens, Pettitte and Wells, the 28th, 32nd, and 34th best starters in baseball, earned a combined 44.56 win shares. This begs the question: Is Jon Lieber worth more than 4.28 win shares? The answer, I believe, is yes. In his last full and healthy season, Lieber earned 15.6 win shares. Should we expect him to duplicate his career-best 2001 season? Certainly not, but we have seen many pitchers fully recover from reconstructive surgery. Kerry Wood and John Smoltz are just two examples. Accordingly, we shouldn't doubt that Lieber will be able to bounce back to at least 70 percent of his former capacity.
Small brought the age and health of the newly acquired pitchers into question but I believe these issues to be less significant than he proclaims them to be. Let's look at Kevin Brown first. He was on the disabled list for two weeks last year but still started 33 games and pitched 211 innings, two-thirds of an inning less than Roger Clemens and three more than Andy Pettitte. Furthermore, Brown will be 39 next season and Clemens will be 41, comparable ages for starting pitchers. Certainly questions involving Brown's health exist, but they don't negate the fact that he was a significantly better pitcher than Roger Clemens last year. The simple truth is that, by replacing Roger Clemens with Kevin Brown, the Yankees improve themselves because Kevin Brown is a better pitcher and is not a greater health risk than a 41 year-old Roger Clemens.
David Wells' bad back (among other of his health problems) is well known among baseball fans. Most people, particularly Yankee fans, however, fail to recall the extent of Andy Pettitte's injury woes. Over the last two seasons Pettitte, who turns 32 this June, has suffered from a strained elbow, for which he spent the first two months of the 2002 season on the disabled list and which significantly hampered his performance in the second half of 2003. In comparison Javier Vazquez, who is turns 28 this July, was last on the disabled list in September 2001 when his eye socket was broken after he was hit by a pitch. This certainly does not speak against his physical condition. Essentially, the Yankees are replacing a pitcher of questionable health, Andy Pettitte, with a veritable Rock of Gibraltar in terms of health and innings pitched. Javier Vazquez is also the better pitcher.
Furthermore, we all know that the Padres are going to get several missed starts and possibly a trip to the DL from David Wells, but we don't have a clue what the Yankees will get from Jon Lieber. I would much rather have a question mark than an out-of-shape 40 year- old starting pitcher who just had his second back surgery and who I am certain will miss a significant amount of time. I cannot even attempt a guess in regard to the outcome of this upcoming season.
I can tell you, however, that on paper the Yankees pitching staff is as good, if not better, than it was last year. Right now, that is all we can go by.
