Jake Westbrook Is Charlie Nagy

[swerb]

Very interesting analysis, sent in to me by a reader ...

Hi. A friend of mine asked me if I thought that Jake Westbrook is just another version of Charles Nagy. I looked up some numbers and came up with this--thought that you might be interested.

Nagy

(Year, W, L, GS, CG, IP, ERA)

1991 10 15 33 6 211.3 4.13
1992 17 10 33 10 252.0 2.96
1994 10 8 23 3 169.3 3.45
1995 16 6 29 2 178.0 4.55
1996 17 5 32 5 222.0 3.41
1997 15 11 34 1 227.0 4.28
1998 15 10 33 2 210.3 5.22
1999 17 11 32 1 202.0 4.95

TTL 117 76 250 30 1672.0
AVG 15 10 31 4 209.0 4.09

Prior to '91, Nagy had made only 8 major-league starts, all of which came in '90. In '93 Nagy had shingles (similar to chickenpox) most of the year and made only 9 starts. After '99 he was riddled by injuries and averaged 12 starts and 2 wins per season. Therefore I consider the above 8 seasons his "prime."

The '94 and '95 seasons were shortened by 64 games due to the strike. The strike cost Nagy about 13 starts, so you can safely add 6 wins (he won slightly less than half his starts in the above time period) and about 91 more innings pitched (he averaged 6.8 IP per start) to the above totals. Of course, his average season stats above suffer from the strike too. However, I am not going to do the math for all those hypotheticals.

Westbrook

(Year, W, L, GS, CG, IP, ERA)

2003 7 10 22 1 133.0 4.33
2004 14 9 30 5 215.6 3.38
2005 15 15 34 2 210.6 4.49
2006 15 10 32 3 211.3 4.17

TTL 51 44 118 11 770.6
AVG 13 11 30 3 192.6 4.06

Westbrook had made 12 major-league starts, spread out over three seasons, before '03.

So: these two guys are eerily similar. Every single yearly average is almost exactly the same (Nagy 15/ Westbrook 13 W, 11/10 L, 31/30 GS, 4/3 CG, 4.09/4.06 ERA)-- with the exception of innings pitched (Nagy averaged 17 more per season). Remember too that Nagy's numbers would all be slightly better if not for the strike. However, we'd all agree that Jake has many good years left --he may not even be in his prime yet-- and his yearly averages ought to eventually exceed Nagy's.

Nevertheless, the conclusion is: Charles Nagy was a pretty damn good pitcher.

[jfiling]

Interesting. According to baseball-reference.com Nagy is the 9th most similar pitcher to Westbrook through age 28. The most similar is beloved Yankee Carl Pavano, followed by Oil Can Boyd, Bill Wegman, Johnny Marcum, and a guy named Sloppy.

Good catch by the person making the Nagy-Westbrook connection.

[jfiling]

By the way, Westbrook's list of similar pitchers on baseball-reference.com overall ain't too shabby. Jason Marquis, Joel Piniero, Bronson Arroyo, Adam Eaton, and Brett Myers are the top 5. Nobody has accused Westbrook of being an ace, but that's not bad company to be keeping.

[FUDU]

I would disagree.

Jake gets pissed when he fucks up, especially after poor pitches that lead to devastating home runs.

Nagy just made the Nagy face as if "damn, life just isn't fair".

I always like Nagy as a person and thought he was good enough, but that whole "one of only 3 pitchers to win 15 games for X amount of years" was a such ridiculous attempt to put him into a category he was so undeserving of.

He was part of great times and memories in CTown and I am glad he was, but he was what he was.

[leadpipe]

I sooo much agree with FUDU. Nagy always struck me as a guy who wasn't happy unless he was doing well. In 1997 the guy was bitter because he wasn't contributing, even as the team kept moving thru the playoffs. At least he could have acted happy for the rest of the team. Also, there are many guys that could have filled his shoes. He was a pretty good pitcher who was on a team that scored a ton of runs for him. There are also pretty good pitchers that put up his same numbers and would be lucky to win 10 games a year.

Perception is a weird thing in sports, I brought this up before, but Nagy blows a five run lead in the World Series (game 4) that the Tribe loses in 7, and Mesa blows a one run save. One guy is a community hero, the other is a punch-line. Mesa was a more valuable piece to those good Indians teams than Nagy ever was, but you would never know it.

[consigliere]

Numbers-wise, yeah, Nagy/Westbrook are a good comp.

Personality-wise and all that, they are night and day.

[swerb]

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