A decision so monstrous!

John Patterson is gone. Let us take a peak at his 05 in relation to some other pitchers that year.

ERA+
JP 130

Livan 102

Jake Peavy 134

Brandon Web 126

Chris Carpenter 149

At this point I started looking at Pedro Martinez and got distracted from my fickle attempts at research by being amazed at how darn good he is. (He is really good!) And did you know Joba’s ERA+ this year was over 1,000? Point is, there are a lot of peoples who are better than John Patterson.So Patterson can go screw himself.

No, not really. John Patterson pitched very very well in 05. He was better the oodles of starters other teams put out there on the mound. Over the following two years, on quick breaks from his global quest for the fountain of youth, he threw 72 innings of subpar ball, while still striking out a fair number of guys. He also did not balk once over the last two years, a fact of no real or unreal importance. His velocity was way down. In short, he was a money shredder.*

(Odalis Perez is our opening day starter....hand-waving)

Many other Nats blog can explain the monetary and performance reasons much better than I. There is one angle I have not seen touched on, though. Doesnt it make us look like jack-asses to cut him now? At the moment, it looks like a money move, or some other sort of bad idea.

If John Patterson was finding a way to pitch average major league baseball around the trading deadline, or even below average, don't you think some team would give us something for him? Sure, not much, but maybe something. We gave up all sorts of potentials. That seems like bad business to me.

We will have to see what happens in Texas. But remember, for it to have been a good decision to let him go, we are not just looking for him to have a bad season. Either he has to severely fail, or he has to be a year or two away from getting back his mechanics.


Well, hopefully people when my blog has many readers someone will look back at this post and wonder how I learned not to suck as a writer.


*A money shredder is a device I plan to invent some day to efficiently dispose of money. It works based on the following principle. Shred money->?->Profit.