Their latest wager involves speculating on the futures of the Yankees' and Red Sox best pitching prospects--Joba Chamberlain and Clay Buchholz. Friend A bet friend B a large (enough) sum of money that Chamberlain will have a better career than Buchholz. A let B pick the metric of record: VORP.
Now, let's leave aside for the moment the sheer idiocacy of making an even money bet on the long-term future of a couple of 22-year-old pitchers (I bet friend B that Ian Kennedy would win 150 games, but I got odds). Suppose they both beat attrition rates and have 10- or 12-year careers. Where is the smart money?
Stuff
Well, Buchholz has a shitload of talent. He's that rare big framed right hander with both power and control. In addition to a 92-94mph four-seam fastball, he's got a goodish changeup and what some have called the best 12-6 curveball in baseball. Period.
But Chamberlain has a shitload of talent too. He's that rare big framed right hander with both power and control. In addition to a 96-98 mph four-seam fastball, he's got a goodish changeup and what some have called the best power slider in baseball. Period.
Since most scouts have them as 1 and 1A among pitching prospects, accounting for differences in "tools" becomes a matter of nitpicking. Joba's got a slightly better fastball--how many pitchers in the last ten years can you think of that can regularly paint the black at 100mph?--but Clay has two fastballs, offsetting and excellent four-seamer with a pretty good sinker.
The argument runs the other way for secondary offerings. Buchholz's curveball is triply devastating: he can throw it over the plate for called strikes, as an off-speed pitch, and as a pure downer. Chamberlain's slider, disgusting as it is, is mostly a one-speed, swing and miss pitch that he buries down-and-in on lefties and low-and-away on righties (though, in 2007 Chamberlain was able to backdoor a slider here and there; if this proves consistently possible...My God). And while Chamberlain's slow(er) curveball is only mostly deadly--think Pedro's circa 2006 instead of 1999--it gives a hitter two different plus-plus breaking balls to worry about. Lastly, both Buchholz and Chamberlain feature decent changeups, but neither is a finished product.
I should also note, there isn't enough pitchf/x data (that I could find) to compare them that way, yet. We'll have to wait for '08. What little there is I found here.
Track Record
The 2007 major league numbers look like this:
Buchholz: 22.7IP, 3-1, 1.59ERA, 1.059WHIP, 22K/10BB
Chamberlain: 24.IP, 2-0, 0.38ERA, .750WHIP, 34K/6BB
Neither of these guys is going to be standing on a bread line any time soon. Nevertheless, Chamberlain holds a slight edge (incidentally, the difference is even more pronounced in Davenport Translations). You could argue that Joba didn't have to turn over the lineup three times--like Buchholz did in his no-hitter--but then one also has to remember Joba gave up exactly one earned run (on a patented Mike Lowell solo shot at Fenway)
with half his pitching arsenal tied behind his back. Surely, Chamberlain is going to start hitting a few more bats when he moves into the starting rotation, but you're not going to see that 6-to-1 K/BB ratio dissolve overnight. Rather, Chamberlain is likely to settle in at a level comfortably above Buchholz. Just look at the minor league numbers, which are basically identical but for the K/BB ratio (though Buchholz has the bigger sample as Joba came out of the college system.)
Buchholz: 285.2IP, 2.46ERA, 1.00WHIP, 356K/77BB (4.5/1)
Chamberlain: 88.1IP, 2.45ERA, 1.01WHIP, 135K/27BB (5/1)
Projection:
Buchholz's no-hitter and subsequent disappearance from tthe greater Boston area seemed to have added a rock-star mystique to his status among prospectors. Thankfully, computers don't care about Houdini acts. Here, you can find the 2008 projections for Buchholz and Chamberlain from a popular system that rhymes with SCHMECOTA.
Highlights include the preservation of Chamberlain's lead in K/BB, his far-greater "upside", and substantially higher VORP, WARP, and WXRL numbers despite the fact that he is projected as a swing man and not a starter. Also interesting, despite having accumulated fewer professional innings than Buchholz, Chamberlain's "Beta" number--a measure of the volatility of projection based on comporable players--is lower than Buchholz's.
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