Jason Marquis vs. Bill James vs. CHONE vs. Marcel vs. RMN

Beginning of the season, Counting Rocks broke down each member of the rotation in hopes of making a prediction on the season everyone would have. While we'll cover the rest of the rotation/team later on down the line, I want to take a look at how Jason Marquis performed against the projections, as coming into the season, he was effectively the most boring starter we had, and everyone had a good idea of what we were going to get out of him. Innings eaten, unimpressive ERA, generally blah.

Boy, he sure made us look silly, didn't he? I mean, not to the extent where we're extending him, obviously, but he certainly outperformed my expectations as well as most everyone else's.

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So now that we've seen Marquis' season, let's move past the jump and take a look at what the projections all had to say about him.

Without further ado, here are the projections of Marquis, and at the bottom, we look at his actual season:

	G	GS	W	L	IP	SO	BB	K/BB	HR/9	K/9	BB/9	WHIP	BABIP	FIP	ERA
Bill James	29	27	9	10	167	94	65	1.45	1.19	5.07	3.50	1.43	0.287	5.05	4.60
CHONE	29	29	8	10	167	92	68	1.35	1.08	4.96	3.66	1.52	0.305	5.04	5.32
Marcel			10	9	162	96	66	1.45	1.00	5.33	3.67	1.43	0.291	4.78	4.61
RMN	30	30	9	8	177	96	73	1.30	0.94	4.90	3.71	1.50	0.299	4.74	4.71
Actual	33	33	15	13	216	115	80	1.44	0.63	4.79	3.33	1.38	0.291	4.10	4.04

So who was closest? Well, I was closest to the number of starts he'd make, so hurrah for me. I was also "closest" to his FIP, although we all missed out on that in general. Bill James was closest to his actual ERA, but again, we all thought he'd be far worse than he was. Amusingly enough, he struck out AND walked fewer than anyone expected. He kicked the crap out his projected HR9, but we'll touch on that in a second. Basically, we were all somewhat close, but wrong. In the right ballpark. 

So the first thing that pops out to my eyes is the fact that none of the projection systems thought he'd pitch as many innings as he did. So right off the bat, he provided more for the Rockies in terms of bullpen rest than we anticipated. He accomplished this in part by remaining healthy and not getting himself booted from the rotation, but we'll touch on that below.

The second thing that pops out is clearly the ERA/FIP. Marquis pitched like a man's man, laughed at the projections, and went ahead and showed us all what's what.

The third thing that pops out, and I'm a bit surprised at this, but his HR9 of a mere 0.63. Marquis also enjoyed a career-low 7.8 HR/FB%, very much below his career mark of 11.8%, which, as predicted, helped deflate his ERA/FIP/whatever. BUT CORZ RITE? Marquis allowed .43 HR/9 at home, .82 HR/9 on the road. Do you like apples?

Fourth, and it's not on this chart here, but his 55.6 GB% was just absurd. Absolutely ridiculous. He fully credited pitching coach Bob Apodaca in fixing his sinker, and man did he fix it, good for 3^rd highest in baseball, behind Joel Pineiro's absurd 60.5% and Derek Lowe's excellent 56.3%.

And finally, I will go ahead and toss the man a bone. He posted 15 wins while ranking 58^th/77 eligibile starters in terms of run support per 9 innings (4.42 runs per 9). While I still stand by my disdain for using Wins to grade a pitcher, knowing the entire context makes this somewhat more impressive.

So as I'm sitting here thinking "wow, I was awfully hard on Marquis this season," I figured his first half was so good, I'd wager his second half matched his projections more closely. You know, the "real" Jason Marquis showed up 2nd half, and he sucks something awful, right? Running the numbers, I came up with the following:

	G	GS	W	L	IP	SO	BB	K/BB	HR/9	K/9	BB/9	WHIP	BABIP	FIP	ERA
Bill James	29	27	9	10	167	94	65	1.45	1.19	5.07	3.50	1.43	0.287	5.05	4.60
CHONE	29	29	8	10	167	92	68	1.35	1.08	4.96	3.66	1.52	0.305	5.04	5.32
Marcel			10	9	162	96	66	1.45	1.00	5.33	3.67	1.43	0.291	4.78	4.61
RMN	30	30	9	8	177	96	73	1.30	0.94	4.90	3.71	1.50	0.299	4.74	4.71
1st Half	18	18	11	6	123.33	58	40	1.45	0.66	4.23	2.92	1.31	0.273	3.86	3.65
2nd Half	15	15	4	7	92.67	57	40	1.43	0.58	5.54	3.88	1.48	0.318	4.11	4.56

Huh. Well, color me surprised. It looks like he struck out more, walked more, but ultimately didn't have that much worse of a second half. ERA makes it look worse than it is, but you can probably chalk a lot of that up to a low 1^st half BABIP and a high 2^nd half BABIP. It appears as if the "real" Marquis showed up, unless if you consider that 4.11 FIP is lower than his career mark. The 4.56 ERA is right in line with his career line, yeah, but if you consider how he's a 4.88 ERA/FIP (yes, they're the same) 2nd half pitcher, and the fact that his OMG ITZ THE REAL MARQUIS numbers were better than all the projections for the entire season, maybe I should just admit he had a good season. Not that I'm attacking him or anything, but he did well with the opportunity given to him, however you slice it.

Now I mentioned it above, but his innings pitched total really was understated by the fact that we had 5 guys in the rotation for the majority of the season, excepting the short time that Aaron Cook had his nice little sampler plate of injuries. 216 IP is downright fantastic, ranking 15^th among the 77 eligible starters. Remember that typically your IP leader is your ace (pitchers that are ahead of Marquis in IP are: Justin Verlander, Roy Halladay, Felix Hernandez, Adam Wainwright, Cliff Lee, CC Sabathia, Zack Greinke, Dan Haren, Tim Lincecum, Bronson Arroyo, James Shields, Javier Vazquez, Ubaldo Jimenez, Matt Cain), and the back end of the rotation is usually a revolving door, meaning that you are scrambling to find pitchers to take the spots and dealing with burned out bullpens. Had our rotation not performed so swimmingly overall this season, Marquis' 216IP would have really been more appreciated.

To summarize all the blathering I've done about Marquis in this article, it kind of comes down to this: Marquis exceeded our expectations of him by a long shot, and his accomplishments in being pretty decent (if not completely boring) were completely overshadowed by the best rotation in Colorado Rockies history.

So kudos to you, Jason Marquis, for blowing by projections, for helping us get rid of Luis Vizcaino, for fixing your sinker, for helping Colorado to their 3^rd postseason, for pitching that scoreless inning against Philadelphia, and for earning yourself probably another 3-year deal. Thanks for the memories, and hopefully the sandwich pick.