Some perspective regarding Kyle Kendrick

I agree to a certain extent, but disagree to a greater extent.

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Kyle is not a good pitcher, but is also not absolutely horrendous. There probably are not 150 starting pitchers in North America who are better than him at he present time, so the fact that he has a job in MLB is not some sort of travesty.

Also, I think we can agree that if a team already has four good starting pitchers, finding a fifth starting pitcher should not be its highest priority.

That said, it is not a low priority either. If you can improve the #5 starter position easily and in a cost-effective manner, then you should do it.

It may be true that the Phillies did not have any better options than Kendrick in their organization up until now. But that is of very little relevance in determining what the Phillies ought to do now. Minor leaguers who might not have been ready six months ago might be ready today.

Worley is probably a better option than Kendrick right now. Robertson is, at the very least, no worse than Kendrick. And it may be possible to find a low-cost option on the FA market who’s better than Kendrick this offseason, especially when you consider that Kendrick is going to hit his first arb year and will be more expensive in 2011. Under those circumstances, he ought to be replaced.

As for whether people should trash him? Let me put it this way. I will agree that he isn’t as bad as he’s looked for the past month. Oddly enough, he is actually pitching in a little bit of bad luck these days. Kendrick is below-average without luck, so his lucky periods will seem average while his unlucky periods will seem disgustingly awful. He probably doesn’t “deserve” hate on some metaphysical level. He only deserves mild disdain. But it might be a good idea in a Machiavellian sense to jump all over Kendrick when we have the chance. The fact is that he should probably be upgraded, so if a little bit of unfairness now will help us get to the correct result, maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.

Actually, I shouldn’t have used the term “#5 starter position.” There are five positions for starting pitchers, but there is such position as “#5 starter.”

So the fact that Kendrick might not be any worse than many other teams’ fifth-best starters isn’t really very meaningful. It’s not a position like, say, shortstop is. There’s no reason why we couldn’t get a “#3” or a “#4” or even a “#2” to replace Kendrick. What really matters isn’t how he compares to other teams’ fifth-best starters but whether or not he can be upgraded in a manner that satisfies a sensible cost-benefit analysis.

The only wrinkle when you’re looking at “#5 starters” is that when you already have four good starters, it’s more cost-effective to upgrade a position player, all other things being equal, since you can only start four pitchers, at most, during a postseason series. But apart from that, there’s no such thing as a “#5 starter” per se.

The other side of the coin of what taco pal argues here is to think of Kendrick not in terms of roles, necessarily, but in simple numerator/denominator terms – more like opportunity cost. The guy has pitched 158.1 innings – only 13 fewer than Cole Hamels, and, at this point, 46.1 more innings than Jamie Moyer. Partly this has been because injuries to Blanton and then Moyer kept him on the roster, and if nothing else, Kendrick has been pretty durable to this point.

I don’t think there are that many people on the board who excoriate Kendrick (in that “he is what he is”), and you’re right that he’s not all that bad compared to bottom-of-the-rotation pitchalikes. Like taco pal, I am dissatisfied mostly from organizational failure to have many viable options at AAA, or, if you don’t necessarily buy that, to at least play mix-and-match with the Duckworth/Carpenter/Worley set (Parting with Figueroa too was a mistake). The Phillies seem to prefer giving the nod to a guy “with experience” like Kendrick rather than jerking guys back and forth. Maybe that’s a more human way to operate, but I’m not so sure it nets any better results. It also tends to put way too much pressure on guys like Worley, who now have to fear banishment to Siberia if he doesn’t perform well tomorrow. (OTOH, if he does, the spot starter gig should be his for the balance of the season.) Go Nite Owl!

Good effort, but you give away the game right here:

.287 BABIP

He’s actually been lucky this year, much as he was in 2007. In the last month or so—see here—that luck on balls in play has turned, and as his already abysmally low strikeout rate has somehow dropped further, the result is that he’s been hit harder.

At minimum salary, Kendrick is marginally worth keeping around. This was even more true because at his young age and weird developmental track—remember, he was never “supposed” to be up in 2007—there was decent reason to believe the underlying performance would improve even if his early results were unsustainable.

Three years on, through more minor league seasoning, efforts to learn a new pitch, mentoring from Roy Halladay, dating a reality-TV star, he’s still what he is: a guy with a lousy fastball and spotty command who gets utterly bludgeoned by lefties. And now he’s about to get expensive, at least relative to what he offers.

Let’s try something else at #5.

DISCLAIMER: I’M NOT CALLING YOU MISLEADING…

(just wanted to get that out of the way).
I’m not a KK hater. I’m with you that as far as #5’s go, he’s probably adequate, and not where you need to be spending lots of cash. If the offense were typical, nobody would care about Kendrick starting every fifth day.

You picked a handful of #5 starters from other teams for comparison. I don’t know if those guys are typical #5’s or picked because those teams are sort of in pennant races or what…but there are 16 teams in the NL and you used #5s from 5 of the other 15 for comparison. What about from the other 10 teams? It is possible from your showings that you could’ve just picked the 5 ‘most-like’ Kendrick to validate his position, but the other 10 are better. Your post would carry more weight if you explained how you picked those 5, or showed the league average.

Once again…not saying you had ulterior motives, I don’t think you did.