Thursday, January 24, 2013

Thoughts on the Marcum signing.

Sweet cap bro.

The Mets signed Shaun Marcum to a one year deal today. Marcum is one of those guys that Fantasy players know all too well, a just good enough pitcher to get drafted late in deeper leagues or pick up for spot starts in shallow ones. Also file under this category: Bruce Chen and Tim Wakefield. Marcum has been up and down in his career and could really go either way in 2013. I would not be surprised to see him pitch a full season, win over ten games and have a mid three's ERA just as I wouldn't be surprised to see him pitch 100 innings and have an ERA over four. You just can't be sure with Marcum.

Marcum looks like an OK pitcher with standard stats. He has had two seasons of more than ten wins and a career ERA of 3.76. His career xFIP was higher at 4.21 indicating his ERA might be a bit inflated by good defense and luck. His peripheral stats are also not that amazing. His career k/9 is 7.32 which is good but not great and his career walks per 9 is also a just OK 2.77, again not awful but nothing to be excited about. His hr/9 is a frightening 1.22 which is amongst the worst in baseball.

In many ways Marcum strikes me as a guy whose good seasons may have been a combination of luck, circumstance and minimal skill. When you give up a homer a game and don't strike too many guys out, it's going to be a tough year. Fortunately circumstances are with him in 2013, he will be playing in the NL and at a pitchers park, so their is no reason his past successes cant be repeated.

This is sort of  the kind of signing I was advocating the Mets should make it. In a year when we have no chance of being competitive the Mets should be seeking out players who need to have come back years and will take one year deals to prove themselves. It gives the Mets a few more wins in a meaningless 2013 while not tying them to any bad contracts in future more competitive years. Frankly I was hoping they would sign some guys like this that would also be name players that would make it a little more exciting to watch Mets baseball, someone like Melky Cabrera. While Marcum fills a gap usefully on the rotation he is hardly the kind of guy anyone is clamoring for.

1 comment:

  1. "I would not be surprised to see him pitch a full season, win over ten games and have a mid three's ERA just as I wouldn't be surprised to see him pitch 100 innings and have an ERA over four. You just can't be sure with Marcum."

    What? This guy has been so damn consistant in terms of ERA the last 3 years. Low of 3.54 and high of 3.70. The last time he had an ERA of 4+ was in 07, and even then that was in the AL so he still had an ERA+ of over 100.

    However, i would agree on being not sure how many IP he can give.

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