Three Headed Monster - Manny Parra Debate

We are going to start a new segment here at Roto Savants that we will carry into the off season to prepare you for drafting next year and also keeper selection. The segment is three headed monster and the three writers will debate players on their merits for fantasy baseball purposes. This week I will lead off with a debate on Manny Parra.

Troy Patterson -

Manny is a very good pitcher, but the first concern has always been health. This should immediately limit his value since he hasn't been healthy for a full season before this year. His skill set is that of a back end starter in fantasy though in my opinion. Let's look through his splits: K/BB: 1.85 and GB% 49%. The K/BB is to low to be successful and he needs to bring the BB/9 down from it's current 4.21. As with most young pitchers they struggle with their walks early on and he could improve the K/BB, but it won't be as good as his minor league numbers of better than 3 K/BB. The ground ball rate is what saves Parra from being a poor pitcher right now. He is currently above 50% this year and if that stays he should continue to limit homers and his ERA.

I am a bit confused by his top comparable on baseball prospectus as Joe Saunders. I do not see these guys as similar in any skill set. Their K/9 are much different and Saunders is not as good at inducing the ground ball. When you remove the luck from Saunders 2008 season you can see Parra is actually a better Pitcher.

Lee Perrault-

As a Parra owner for two straight years, I've tried to keep my analysis of him as unbiased as possible, but he's always had one flaw: control.

Once Parra was called up, his somewhat respectable walk rate spiked and it hurt his performance, but he's always had one important detail behind him, his FIP.

Although Parra has been putting guys on base for free, he's done an above average job with the rest of his quality metrics to lead one to believe that as the control issues are ironed out, his career will start to turn an upswing. Saunders is an interesting comparable, but I've recently been noticing similarities between him and another high-walk, high-K starter: Matsuzaka.

Japan statistics included, it's easy to say that Matsuzaka's skill and ceiling are undoubtedly higher than Parra's, but the parallel track in which their MLB careers are taking is not one to be ignored. The quality of their outings where walks are under control are fairly comparable.

I'm not here to tell you Manny is Daisuke(Although is Daisuke really more than a #4? That's for another column). What I am here to tell you is right now, and into next year, Parra will still be a low-risk, high-return player you can sneak late in a draft. His walks will scare off more than enough people, but if you can see the potential he has when he's not his own worst enemy, maybe he'll turn into the solid player we know he can be.

Corey Dawkins -

After having to listen to Lee lust over Parra, I tend to get biased too but not in agreement with Lee. I remember reading in one of the Baseball Forecasters several years back that once you display a skill you own it. He has yet to prove at the major league level that he can pitch effectively without giving up walks and HR. Given that most of his HR have come with the bases empty, I still look at one and only one stat that sums up being a good to great pitcher. That statistic is pitches per IP.

Pitch efficiency sums up everything to me in what you want a good pitcher to have. Strikeout pitchers you want to have them retire the batter with as few pitches as possible in order to 1) get deeper in the game to increase the likelihood of getting a W 2) get more strikeouts now that pitch counts are followed so closely and 3) won't fade as much down the stretch as non-efficient pitchers. Control pitchers will get the same things for you except for the strikeouts.

Manny's P/IP is an astronomical 16.9. This puts them in a league of Casey Fossum, Vincente Padilla, Jeremy Affeldt, Gil Meche. This does not make me feel comfortable about Parra. There are others who have numbers this high but they are established people who are having down years (Verlander and Peavy stick out to me). Look at it this way, most people stay in for between 100-110 pitches. That's 6 and change. How many leads are blown in the 6th, 7th, and 8th innings/

That's why to me I never consider a starter to be good until after they have gotten the number under 16.5. Does he have the potential? Sure he does. The problem I see is that he is the ultimate high risk high reward guy. He reminds me of Buchholz except for Parra having a little less pure stuff than Buchholz. Look at what happened with Buchholz and at what point would you draft him now? That's what you need to ask yourself and what I say is somewhere in double digits but not a single round earlier.