A.J. Burnett is awful, Sox now 6 - 0 vs. Yanks.

Quick check-in on Robinson Cano before I begin:

His OBP has declined to a Juan Pierre-like .335.

(Juan Pierre, meanwhile, has an OPS+ of 129 and an Adrian Gonzales-like OBP.)

Okay, and now...

A.J. Burnett is vastly overrated

Burnett pitched terribly last night against the Red Sox, which made me excited because it means the Sox still haven't lost to the Yankees yet, and it continues to foster my theory that A.J. Burnett is not as good a pitcher as conventional wisdom say he is. I would like to qualify this by saying that any major league pitcher that can potentially throw 200+ innings in a season and not suck too terribly is an asset to any major league team. However, this does not mean said nameless pitcher deserves a 5-year $82.5 million contract. So I'm thrilled the Yankees are stuck with him, and I look forward to many more beat-downs by the Sox over the years, as I would argue Burnett is exactly the kind of pitcher that team is prime to massacre.

What's that I hear you say? A.J. Burnett won 18 games last year?

Hogwash, I say, and smarmily mock your misguided notion whilst sipping port in my zeppelin.

Anyways, yes, this statistics is true, but it's very misleading when it comes to judging the merit of Burnett as a pitcher. Those 18 wins came shackled to a 4.07 ERA, or for those of us more statistically inclined, an ERA+ of 105. Essentially, he gave up runs at only a slightly above average rate. He was 4th in the AL in wins (placing him behind Roy Halladay and tied with Dice-K in this category), yet his ERA+ placed him 23rd among qualifying pitchers, placing him in the range of guys like Gil Meche and Jered Weaver (both fine pitchers, but not $82.5 million/5 years kind of guys). Burnett's 18 wins were luck.

Doth mine ears hear the voice of an unwashed peasant? Does it say Burnett's ERA is distorted because of a few bad games?

Phineas! More vintage! Tell the boys in the engine room to increase speed!

I heard the "bad games" argument a lot in the offseason, and I would like to counter it by saying that while good pitchers do occasionally have lousy outings, at some point it ceases becoming an anomaly and starts becoming a trend. Suffice to say, Burnett had more bad games than most pitchers with those number of wins. To illustrate this, I present an ordered list of all pitchers from 2008 that won at least 15 games, coupled with how many times they gave up at least 6 earned runs:

Pitcher - # outings with 6+ ER (final record)
Roy Halladay - 0 (20 - 11)
Ted Lilly - 0 (17 - 9)
Johan Santana - 0 (16 - 10)
Mike Mussina - 1 (20 - 9)
Tim Lincecum - 1 (18 - 5)
Edinson Volquez - 1 (17 - 6)
Ryan Dempster - 1 (17 - 6)
Gavin Floyd - 1 (17 - 8)
Dan Haren - 1 (16 - 8)
Chad Billingsley - 1 (16 - 10)
Cliff Lee - 2 (22 - 3)
Dice-K - 2 (18 - 3)
Roy Oswalt - 2 (17 - 10)
John Lester - 2 (16 - 6)
Joe Saunders - 3 (17 - 7)
Ervin Santana - 3 (16 - 6)
Jamie Moyer - 3 (16 - 7)
Kyle Lohse - 3 (15 - 6)
Ricky Nolasco - 3 (15 - 6)
Brandon Webb - 4 (22 - 7)
A.J. Burnett - 5 (18 - 10)
Aaron Cook - 5 (16 - 9)
Bronson Arroyo - 6 (15 - 11)
Mark Buerhle - 6 (15 - 12)

Furthermore, those 5 crappy starts mark his career high in this particular category. So Burnett won 18 games while still managing to throw more lousy games than ever before. Not the kind of consistency I'd want for 80 million dollars.

But...but...he lead the AL in strikeouts!

What drollery!

Sure, strikeouts are impressive, but lest it be forgotten A.J. Burnett was also 5th in the AL in walks, leaving him with a 2.69 K/BB walk ratio. Now, this isn't horrible (15th best in the AL; Roy Halladay was 1st with a 5.28 ratio), but it gets worse when you condiser that he was one of only 4 pitchers to strike out 200 batters. (In other words, he walked A LOT of guys.) Combine this with his half-decent (although not great) hits / 9 inning ratio, and you've got a pitcher with a downright pedestrian 1.342 WHIP, good for 26th in the AL. (For reference, Paul Byrd ranked 23rd in WHIP.) Essentially, a lot of guys got on base vs. Burnett, which is a recipe for disaster no matter how many guys he struck out.

Incidentally, before you accuse me of nit-picking Burnett based on one season, I would like to point out that 2008 was a roughly average year for him, plus it seems that the whole reason he got a big contract was based on this year anyways. (I highly doubt he would've reached anywhere near the $80 million mark if he'd never won more than 12 games in a season, as was the case before 2008.) Furthermore, all the problems he had in 2008 that I've outlined above are continuing in this season. In fact, he's been worse so far. His ERA, K/BB ratio, Hits/9 ratio, and WHIP are all up (along with his ERA+ going down to 92), plus he's giving up home runs at a downright Wasdin-esque rate of 1.5 per 9 innings. In other words, he's not pitching that great, just as I expected. But he's the Yankees' problem now, so I'm extremely happy about this. I look forward to him pitching many more games against the Sox, considering that their offense is an on-base-percentage machine (first in the AL right now) and Burnett excels at letting guys do just this.

Phineas! Set a course for Antartica!