Lester is named opening day starter

[Will617]

Is WAR overrated too then? Its not like his left on base numbers were extremely high.

 

WAR is cumulative, he had a decent WAR simply because he pitched a lot last season. WAR is interesting and useful, it's just not quite complete/predictive yet, and can be misleading if used in the wrong contexts.

[Palodios]

WAR is cumulative' date=' he had a decent WAR simply because he pitched a lot last season. WAR is interesting and useful, it's just not quite complete/predictive yet, and can be misleading if used in the wrong contexts.[/quote']

 

Except that those are all the reasons he was a good pitcher last year. Health, consistently strong outings, and innings. I said it it in 2009 numerous times when they got him, they overpaid for him as a horse, not as an ace. He'll give them tons of innings, be a solid #3, and protect young guys like Tazawa or Bowden from being called up wayy before necessary.

 

From looking at his stats, I think Lackey had a period of adjustment where he needed to get aclimated to the AL East.

 

Pre-All Star 4.78 ERA 1.60 WHIP 3.66 BB/9 5.41 K/9

Post-All Star 3.97 ERA 1.22 WHIP 2.29 BB/9 7.76 K/9

 

Despite all the talk about Lackey's declining K/9 and WHIP and BB/9 on the national level, I think a good number of the naysayers don't realize that they normalized mid season and his stats were exactly where they were expected, despite a makeshift defense.

 

Another point I hear a lot is that his ERA against the AL East was around 4.99 But break it down a bit, and you'll notice that that was heavily influenced by an 8.60 ERA against the Blue Jays. Against the Yankees he pitched to a 3.20 ERA. His stats against the Rays weren't pretty, but in all likelihood, they'll see a big decline in their offense this year anyway.

[Will617]

Sure, I understand that durability is a factor in pitchers' value, I'm just pointing out that a high WAR does not necessarily mean good performances.

All of those indicators suffer from lack of sample size. It's possible that those numbers are a sign of a turnaround, but it's also just as possible that it was just luck over a couple of months (or over a few games against the same team). To be perfectly honest, I was never a fan of the Lackey signing and I don't think that he's going to outperform his 2010 numbers by a ton. I think that he will improve, but I don't expect him to be outside the 3.5-4 ERA range going forward (not that it's bad, but I don't think that he's the ace people expected him to be).

[SoxFanForsyth]

If you actually look into Lackey's stats, he was a very solid pitcher for 31 starts, and a really s***** pitcher for 2 starts.

 

Lackey had 2 poor outings in which he threw 8 IP and allowed 15 ER.

 

Other than that, he threw 207 IP over 31 starts and allowed 90 ER, which equates to a 3.91 ERA. That's pretty much what I think we all expected him to do, sit around 3.8-3.9 ERA, chew up a lot of innings, win 14-15 games. And I think that's exactly what he'll do this year.

 

The reason Lackey had such a poor first half was his control. He walked 46 hitters the first half of the year, compared to 26 the 2nd half. Also, in attacking the strike zone, his K:BB ratio rose from 1.48 to 3.38. He figured it out the 2nd half of the year. He'll be just fine in the number 2 slot.