Tom Glavine, SP, New York Mets

December 16, 2006 @ 16:00:00

By Anthony Agolia
Edited by Ryan Dodson

On Friday, Nov. 29, 2006, starting pitcher Tom Glavine agreed to return to the New York Mets by signing a one-year, $10.5 million deal. The contract contains a $9 million player option for 2008 if Glavine pitches at least 160 innings in 2007. 

In Glavine, the Mets retained the most reliable member of their 2006 pitching staff, and a sure-fire first ballot Hall-of-Famer. Despite the fact that he will turn 41 in March, Glavine has enjoyed a rather remarkable resurgence toward the end of his majestic career. 

As recently as June of 2005, Glavine's three-year, $37 million deal with the Mets was widely viewed as a bad contract by those in the industry. After agreeing to leave the Atlanta Braves after the 2002 season, Glavine went 9-14 with a 4.52 ERA for the Mets in 2003 and then 11-14 with a 3.60 ERA in 2004. His first-half 2005 numbers were disappointing as well, as he went 6-7 with a 4.94 ERA and 1.75 WHIP. It seemed as though the end was near for Glavine, who appeared to be on the cusp of joining the multitude of great pitchers whose performance greatly declined in their late 30s. 

But then, Glavine did something that so many successful players refuse to do – he totally reinvented himself as a pitcher. 

In the latter half of 2005, Glavine produced one of the best half-seasons of his career, going 7-6 with a 2.22 ERA, 1.01 WHIP (walks + hits/innings pitched) and a .228 BAA (batting average against). To put those numbers in perspective for you, they were better than either half of his most recent ace-caliber season, 2002, when he posted a 2.27 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, and a .233 batting average against before the All-Star break. 

While Glavine did not put together a full season like that in 2006, he did offer a very solid 15-7, 3.82 ERA, 1.33 WHIP, 133-strikeout and 198-inning campaign. In fact, amidst the resurgence of outfielder Carlos Beltran and the emergence of infielders David Wright and Jose Reyes, Glavine was arguably the Mets' most valuable player in 2006, as he barely missed compiling his 14th 200-inning season over the past 17 years. Think about it: the Mets had four different positional players put together terrific offensive seasons in Wright, Reyes, Beltran and first baseman Carlos Delgado, but Glavine was the only starting pitcher on the staff to actually produce an above-average season. 

Remember, the team's No. 1 starter, Pedro Martinez, produced only 23 starts and 132 innings all year due to a torn labrum. The team's eventual No. 2 starter, Orlando Hernandez, never threw a single postseason pitch. The club's No. 3 starter, Steve Trachsel, struck out only one more batter than he walked over the course of the year. The team's fourth starter was rookie John Maine, who ended up starting Game 1 of the NLCS despite winning all of six games in the regular season. The club's projected fifth starter, Brian Bannister, made a grand total of six starts before being lost for the season. And his eventual replacement, southpaw Oliver Perez, started Game 7 of the NLCS despite going 3-13 with a 6.55 ERA and 1.75 WHIP during the regular season.

In other words, the fact that Glavine took the mound every fifth day was immeasurably valuable to his team, as was the lone stabilizing force in a rotation that should have been the team's Achilles' heel. 

Of course, we now know that remarkably enough, starting pitching was not the downfall of the NL East Champions; instead, it was journeyman right-hander Jeff Suppan, and his 4.68 career ERA. If the team's touted offense could have mustered more than two hits and one run against the eventual NLCS MVP in Game 7, the franchise may have celebrated the 20th anniversary of its 1986 championship banner by hanging another one right next to it in Shea Stadium. 

Why

As we enter the 2007 season, Glavine stands poised to not only enter the sacred ground of 300 career wins, but also to put together yet another viable fantasy season. Consider this: in the 47 starts that he has made following the 2005 All-Star Break, Glavine has gone 22-13 with a 3.25 ERA and 1.22 WHIP. This places him among the elite pitchers in fantasy baseball during this period, and a legitimate No. 3 fantasy pitcher. 

So how is that has Glavine managed to revive his career at an age when so many before him failed? The truth is, in order to answer this question, we must first answer a more fundamental one: why did Glavine, at the age of 37, suddenly begin to struggle upon joining the Mets?

After all, just a year before, he went 18-11 with a 2.96 ERA and 1.28 WHIP with Atlanta. At first glance, it is hard to understand how Glavine went from being a Cy Young candidate to the Goat of Queens in a single season. 

There were many theories floating around to explain his demise. Many suspected that Atlanta was only willing to let Glavine go because they knew he was damaged goods, and his poor 2003 season only confirmed the paranoia. Then there was Braves general manager John Schuerholz's book, in which he claimed Glavine told him he regretted leaving Atlanta for a bigger pay day in New York. And let us not forget the media's favorite theory; that Glavine simply wasn't built to perform under the bright lights of New York, a la Kenny Rogers, Jeff Weaver and so many others.

But in all likelihood, Glavine's worst season as a professional since 1989 was not attributable to a hidden injury, shallow skin or a yearning for Southern hospitality. The largest single cause was probably the emergence of the Questec technology, which was first implemented by Major League Baseball at the beginning of the 2003 season, his first season in New York.

Questec is a pitch-tracking technology that is designed to regulate and improve the accuracy and consistency of umpires' treatment of the strike zone. Cameras are placed throughout the ballpark to record every pitch that is thrown, and the strike zone is set manually on the basis of a snapshot of the batter at the plate. Questec basically functions as a digital umpire that has its own electronic strike zone, which it uses to call its own balls and strikes. After the game, umpires are given a report as to how they fared in comparison to their digital counterparts. 

Before the Questec revolution, Glavine had continued being successful despite losing velocity on his fastball because he had developed terrific command of all of his pitches. He never was a power pitcher, so when his fastball dropped to the 88-91 mph range, he was able to compensate by changing speeds and spotting more pitches on the corners. 

The effect of Questec on finesse pitchers like Glavine was enormous. It essentially forced umpires to stop calling borderline strikes on the edges of the strike zone, which happened to be where pitchers like Glavine and Greg Maddux had resided for well over a decade. Even the Professor himself suffered a marked decline in productivity in the Questec era, albeit less drastic than Glavine's. In 2002, the year before Questec, Maddux went 16-6 with a 2.62 ERA. Then in 2003, year one of Questec, he slipped to 16-11 with a 3.96 ERA. It is no coincidence that in the first year of Questec, both Maddux and Glavine posted the highest ERAs of their careers since their rookie seasons. 

How

So how did Glavine resurrect his career in the Questec Era? What happened in the second half of the 2005 season that turned him into a winning pitcher again?

There are surely a number of reasons, but one in particular stands out. He started doing something that very few pitchers have ever done successfully on a regular basis: throwing inside changeups to right-handed batters. 

And even more remarkably, he began throwing that pitch in literally any count. 

In fact, not only did Glavine show a willingness to do this, but he began doing it more often than not. For example, in 2006, he threw twice as many 2-0 changeups to right-handed batters as 2-0 fastballs. 

This approach is extremely uncommon because it is a pitch that you cannot afford to miss with. If it catches too much of the middle of the plate, it will in all likelihood turn into an extra-base hit. Therefore, only a pitcher with pristine command over the pitch would even think to use it.

But when you can locate the pitch consistently, it keeps hitters off balance. By sprinkling it around opposing lineups throughout the game, Glavine has forced hitters to be aware of the pitch and even look for it. 

In other words, Glavine now has hitters guessing again. When Questec produced a tighter strike zone, Glavine's initial response was to be even finer with his location. This might have worked were it not for the fact that every opponent expected him to do precisely this, and refused to chase the same old pitches that they used to. 

It took him over two years to cope with the reality that it was no longer enough to pitch to the corners with accuracy, and to formulate an appropriate response. As fate would have it, the appropriate response was to add an extra weapon to his arsenal, albeit an unorthodox one. But it really is no surprise that this single pitch was enough to get Glavine over the hump. The balance of power between pitcher and hitter can often be so delicate that placing the smallest shred of doubt into a batter's mind as to the location of the next pitch can make all the difference in the world. The results for Glavine have been undeniable. 

2007 Projection and Advice

One thing is certain about Glavine in 2007: he will receive plenty of run support in New York. With Reyes, Wright, Beltran, Delgado and now Moises Alou behind him, Glavine should be in a position to win between 13 and 18 games, provided he can maintain an ERA of 4.00 or below. Expect his 2006 strikeout total of 131 to drop a bit, but the rest of his peripheral statistics (3.82 ERA and 1.33 WHIP) to stay reasonably close. 

Glavine was a top 100 fantasy player last season, and there is no reason to think he won't be one again in 2007. As far as starting pitchers go, he is as reliable as they come. Glavine is precisely the kind of player that you should target in the middle to late rounds of your draft, after all of the hot commodities have been taken off the board. His value is comparable to that of Philadelphia Phillies starting pitcher Freddy Garcia, Texas Rangers starter Kevin Millwood, Detroit Tigers starter Kenny Rogers and Los Angeles Dodgers starter Brad Penny. You should begin thinking about him in the 120^-pick range, and feel comfortable tabbing him as your third or fourth starter overall. 

The Mets are poised to make another run at 100 wins, and Glavine stands to be the beneficiary of nearly one-fifth of them.

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Anthony Agolia
Anthony graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy from James Madison University in 2002, and is currently attending Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. His aspirations include becoming the GM of the NY Mets and establishing the MLBPA (Major League Beer Pong Association). He strongly believes that the Yankees are the devil, the words flammable and inflammable shouldn't mean the same thing, and that there is no intelligent life anywhere in our universe. He has been with KFFL since 2005.

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