THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Friday, February 03, 2012

Danks or Garza?  ToMAYto, ToMAHto?

Same service time, similar in age.  Over the last 4 years, 125 starts for one and 124 for the other.  48-43 for one and 44-41 for the other.  3.77 ERA to 3.72 ERA. 12 innings apart.  One gave up 6 more HR, the other gave up 15 more 2b+3b.  59 more K, but 25 more walks+hit batters.  Even their contracts over their last two years: 9.3MM$ for one and 9.45MM$ for the other.

Danks of course signed that big contract extension which we talked about, with the first year coming in at 8MM$.  It’s no surprise that Garza was going to eventually settle at something a bit above that figure.  (In the Danks thread, I had figured close to 10MM.) He’s not at the Felix/Verlander/JJ/Weaver level, so he wasn’t going to get 13-14MM$.  He’s one level below that, and 9MM$ is right about there.

It’ll be interesting if he ends up signing a 5/65 deal like Danks did to supplant the arb deal.