suppan schmidt
11-7, 4.25 11-8, 3.45
short followup to this morning's post: si.com has a preview of the sd-la series up today, written by john heyman of the Dodger Thoughts blog. more info there about the cards' two most probable nlds opponents.
the giants are a reasonable proxy for either team --- pitching-oriented club (5th in the league in era) with a couple of hitters you have to be careful with, and a bunch of other nondescript hitters. tonight's starter, jason schmidt, hasn't faced st louis in over a year; he has a history of pitching well against them (3.06 era in 18 career starts) but only an 8-8 lifetime record to show for it.
i'll be interested to see what he signs for. we all know he's a god, but he's won 15+ games only twice in an 11-year career -- and the market overvalues wins and undervalues some of the other metrics. he'll be 34 years old next year, which isn't that old for a pitcher of his type --- think smoltz, schilling, big unit, mussina, all going strong into / beyond their late 30s -- and he's better now than he was even 5 years ago. check out his year-to-year stats; took him a long time to get established. he came up young (22), pitched for bad teams, then struggled with injuries; didn't find himself until the 2d half of 2001, his 7th year in the league. i'm with azruavatar, i'd love to see the cardinals pursue him; hah, we dreamers. he's said to prefer the pacific northwest, but the mariners already have four $10m+ contracts on their payroll through 2007 and three beyond 2008; they may not open the coffers, one never knows. of course the cardinals will never coffer up either, but what's the harm in day-dreaming. . . . .
schmidt is nailing his PECOTA projection this year; the system sees him as a 4- to 5-win player through the next two or three seasons. his comps include jack morris (#1), roger clemens (3), early wynn (5), bob gibson (6), steve carlton (9), and tom seaver (10).
those guys were good.