Via BBTF, pitchers with seasons like Josh Beckett‘s 2010 don’t bounce back:
So what are we talking about? Thanks to the magic of baseball-reference.com, it was easy to sort for pitchers in their 30s who posted ERAs above 5.75 while pitching at least 125 innings.
The search returned 69 such seasons by 66 different pitchers. Jaime Navarro appeared on the list three straight times (which helps explain why the White Sox were so mediocre in the late 1990s), while Tim Belcher made it twice.
Of those 66 pitchers, only three managed to regain something even remotely approximating their form, at least as starters.
One of those moved from the Rockies to the Cardinals. The Red Sox may be sorry they didn’t exercise Beckett’s 2010 option and wait. They at least could have saved themselves some money on the new contract after his 2010 performance.
It’d probably be better if we looked to see what happened with these pitchers on a peripheral basis than ERA.
Oh good. Not that I wish any player an injury or end of a career, but the AL East is going to be a bear this year I give Toronto a shot at the division, and even Baltimore will be better.) Hopefully this will help the Yankees.
Actually, I the Red Sox did exercise the option, and Beckett signed an extension with a 5 million signing bonus in April.
The concern I have with Beckett is that he has a labrum issue, which is a carryover from his Marlin days, and he had refused surgery to rehab. His MRI actually held up the trade with the Marlins for awhile. For years his contract was not insurable (by either party), which was one reason Beckett said he signed his 1st extension (for insurance). Apparently the amount of time he was without any admitted shoulder issues was long enough, since Theo said his contract starting in 2011 was insurable. I thought it interesting he mentioned that in an interview without being asked.
So was it the “back” or the labrum? I question the back since he supposedly did not hurt it until swinging a bat in preparation for interleague. However, before this he was pitching poorly for a month, and the Red Sox had announced he was going to miss his next start to work on his mechanics before hurting his back (and then went back on it and said he was being held out because of his back). Before eventually going on the DL, Tito let it slip he aggravated his labrum, but this was never mentioned again.
Beckett missed 2 months on the DL and never was it mentioned his back was subject to an MRI and it was always referred to as a muscle strain. Seems you would want to MRI any part involved, but maybe there is an insurance concern. Something does not ring true.
Hopefully it was just the back, but what about the way he finished 2009 and 2008. His pitching problems in 2010 actually began in August of 2009 and there was no mention of a back problem then.
It may very well be this is just a conditioning problem, and Beckett will bounce back from a bad year like he did in 2007. Have to wait and see.