A reader request on Aaron Harang.

Clearly the newest information to be considered for Harang is the fact that Dusty Baker will be managing the team. There are legions of articles showing that his past pitcher usage was abusive. I won’t repeat that research here, but encourage anyone who is interested to look into it themselves. I take it as a given for the purposes of considering Harang. If Baker somehow throttles back on his abusive tendencies then more power to him. We can hope, but not expect or anticipate, that this will occur.

Harang is one of the most underrated pitchers in baseball. He is a legitimate Ace toiling for a bad team, and his performance speaks for itself:

16-6 3.73 ERA 1.14 WHIP 231.7 IP 30% hit rate 71% contact 8.5 K/9IP 2.0 BB/9IP

His performance this year was fully supported by his skills. Harang was also very consistent this year, never having a bad month, which is fantasy gold. He put up a $26 season. 2007 represented a career low ERA and WHIP for Harang.

On the plus side, how much more can Baker abuse him? The Baker Effect may not be that significant. This year Harang had 231.7 IP, last year 234 IP. How much more can Baker abuse him? Even if Baker made him pitch 250 IP it appears he could handle it. If we get to the 260 range we could have a problem.

It is a much bigger problem though when pushing young pitchers than with other pitchers. Young arms are much more susceptible to injury and abuse. Harang is already past that stage of his career, and has proven himself durable. I don’t see Dusty as too much of a problem, though my opinion is certainly not beyond cavil.

Baseball prospectus has its “Pitcher Abuse Points” system, or PAP. It attempts to measure how much abuse a pitcher has taken, and in my experience is a much better stat than most measures of pitcher fatigue. Harang was fifth in baseball this year in being abused. However, he only had two starts of more than 120 pitches and zero of 133 or more. 25 of his starts were between 100 and 121 pitches. Overall, though he does not seem to be overworked.

But one thing that bears watching is how he responds if Baker makes him pass that 130 pitch mark. With very limited to non-existent experience at that level, it may be a crapshoot. If I owned Harang I would monitor him in every start and would bench him if he had two starts in a row over the 130 pitch mark. Given the state of the Reds bullpen and Baker’s proclivities, this may be a near certainty.

Let’s take a look at Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA. Harang appears to be pretty consistent, so I think there is a good chance that PECOTA will have a good read on him. For 2007 PECOTA (which is pessimistic for pitchers in my experience) had him with a 4.17 ERA 1.28 WHIP 6.8 K/9IP and 2.0 BB/9IP.

This may seem close, but in fact Harang performed at about his 90% expectation. That means in only 10% of the seasons would we expect him to have produced a season of value equivalent to his 2007 performance. Is this luck or maturation?

I think it is not “luck” at least in terms of hit rate and strand rate. But it could be luck in terms of random chance. I don’t think so though; his skills from 2006 are very similar to 2007 so Harang just matured into a top pitcher. He put together two excellent season with a similar skill set in 2006 and 2007, both of which were close to Ace quality. So I do not think it is luck.

There are unknowns, and one is tempted to think that merely because he had a career best season at 29 he may drop off next year. And often this will happen. He can have the exact same skills and just have a decrease in his fantasy stats because of a host of factors.

Overall though we have a pitcher that has:

1. Close to elite skills
2. Coming off two excellent repeated seasons
3. High IP totals, but a guy who is not young and is presumably past his injury phase
4. A new manager with a penchant for pitcher abuse
5. Coming off career bests but who is in his prime.

There are no guarantees, but overall this looks like a guy who will have a slight fall off while still posting top skills. Assuming no injury of course. He may have 20 win, 3.00 ERA upside, but I am expecting something slightly worse than 2007 next year. The injection of a few 130 pitch starts is a large confounding factor that we simply cannot account for other than assuming it will happen and watching how Harang’s performance responds.

That said though, there are many competing factors, and if you are an owner who loves Harang and sees him as a 20 win pitcher next year certainly you shouldn’t let me talk you out of your opinion! He may very well do that next year, I just wouldn’t bet on it. But if you will, I can’t argue with you.

articleId=’17434′;