News & Notes

My assessment of it is that it's more complicated than saying "we're getting an effective pitcher for $7M." Marquis will be way overpaid comparing his effectiveness to the market for starting pitcher so I don't think that's really relevant to the discussion. In order to assess Harden's value at $7M you have to take a look at how the lowered inning totals, injury risk, and other "quality of starter" issues impact his availability and effectiveness.

In assessing the risk of picking up Harden's option I'd want to start by attempting to calculate what his cost would be as a healthy ace. With the risk of upsetting Chad, Dempster was our ace this year and remained healthy the entire year. He pitched 207 innings. Harden pitched 148 innings. Using a single year in isolation we see that Harden pitched 70% of the innings that Dempster pitched. Using this as the most rudimentary baseline to calculate his extended cost:

$7M / 70% = $10M

So at the very least Harden's true cost is at minimum more like $10M. But there are a number of other factors which I think dramatically lower his value. Since Harden's first bout with injury, Harden has played four seasons. In those four seasons Harden has averaged 87 innings (or 42% of a healthy ace's innings). Calculating an extended cost on that average looks more like this:

$7M / 42% = $16.7M

That number even surprised me. The spread between those two numbers is significant and is contingent upon Harden's health. I'm no actuary but I would assume that the drop in velocity and the fact that Harden is seeing a shoulder specialist and has had nagging, unexplainable injuries (torso, ribcage, back, left shoulder) over his career doesn't just speak to his effectiveness, but to an increased likelihood that he will not be as available next year as he was this year. I'd put the chances of his continued relative healthiness pretty low given how he finished the season. This would appear to weight us more towards the $16.7M side. For the sake of argument, let's call his extened cost $13-14M.

Other issues: Harden was far more effective when his velocity was up; however, some of that may have been due to the league switch. By next year scouting and the repeated at bats against Harden will likely make him a less effective pitcher. How much less? The ERA+ discussion shows that in general there's about a 13% shift for pitchers moving from AL to NL. But more important for our discussion, this shift tends to be a temporary one. There's no doubt that Harden will continue to pitch well, it's just extremely unlikely that he'll post an ERA of 1.77 (ERA+ of 254) moving forward. Additionally, Harden has now pitched in four postseason games and has a collective ERA of 6.35. It's undeniably a small sample size, but post-season effectiveness definitely has to weigh into perceived value.

All that said, I won't be terribly broken up if the Cubs risk their money on Harden as long as they're increasing their budget significantly next year. My concern though is that if we pick up Harden he'll be considered as one of our top three pitchers in the rotation and that the spread between $7M and $16M won't be covered with a top notch backup for the starting rotation (assuming he gets injured) or high quality middle relievers to cover his short starts (assuming he stays health). As a fan--given the Cubs recent spending trends--I would assume that even with Crane Kenny's promise of more spending the likelihood of really getting the value from Harden we want is extremely slim.

Appropriate to what? His postseason pitching performances leave a little to be desired.

I am going to go out on a limb and say when a blog is 'reporting there are reports' none of which any of us can find or have heard, that they're making shit up.

He was throwing 94 MPH Saturday night. He's not going to elect for labrum surgery when he has 6 months to rest. I am pretty sure even if Krimchek recommends it, a quick call to Kerry will be a stop to that discussion.