Also, to say that Willis is better than Wood is foolish.? Alright the guy is starting off slow, but you are talking about a top-level well above-average starter with the potential for more.? I wish the Cubs saw it that way and would trade us Wood for Willis straight up.

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You serious? That's one of the most uninformed assertions I've ever heard. Wood is, quite possibly, the most over-rated pitcher of all time, he's been living off of one 20 strikeout game from 1998...it's not even what have you done for me lately, it's more like what have you done for me ever.

 

For his career, Kerry Wood is 67-50 with an ERA of 3.63 with 1,209 K's and 512 BB in 1043.0 IP. Not bad, but when you consider that this is in a six year span in which he has been, in many respects, similar to Ryan Dempster (51-56 984.7 IP), Jaret Wright (52-45 758.0 IP), and outperformed by Livan Hernandez (95-94 1704.3 IP and 1181 K's 589 BB), his numbers don't shine. According to baseball-reference.com, Wood compares (through age 27) most favorably to Stan Williams, Ernie Broglio, and Chan Ho Park, and of the 10 players he is most similar to, not one is even a borderline Hall-of-Famer. He's totaled 14 wins in a season once (2003) and only topped 200 IP twice (2002, 2003).

 

To compare, Dontrelle in his two years is 24-17 (Wood was 21-13, but if you want to get technical 13-6) with 358 IP (Wood was at 299 or 167, again, depending how much of a hard-liner you want to be), with both winning the ROY award. Essentially, Dontrelle is on (already) a better pace than Kerry simply because Wood's sophomore season was lost to injury, and through age 22 Dontrelle compares similarly to (again, according to baseball-reference) one Hall-of-Famer (Bobby Walace), and is a mere $7,500,000 cheaper than Wood. Wood has potential, but you shouldn't be paying $8,000,000 a season for potential. Not to mention that Kid K is turning 28 in a month, you have to wonder if he's reached his ceiling after his less than stellar 1-1 start to go with a 5.79 ERA (and this is with solid run support: 4.3 runs per game, and if your "ace" can't win with more than 4 runs per start, you're in trouble). Sure, his K/9 is still high, but as we've seen with AJ this year, a strikeout pitcher can be even nastier if he gets groundball outs and goes 8 innings. Having 11 K's a game won't get you much further than the 7th, and that's if you don't get hit by the base-on-balls bug.

 

Good? Yes. Great? No. Worth $8 million a season? Certainly not.

 

http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/woodke02.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/willido03.shtml

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I think I disagree with you on almost everything you said, so I will go one by one. Before I start though, I would like to reemphasize that I didn't suggest that Wood is a hall-of-fame pitcher. I said he was well above-average and has the potential, considering his raw stuff, to be more.

 

I apologize in advance for not providing enough raw numbers but I have finals next week.

 

First, that ERA of 3.63 pitching in a very hitter-friendly park during a juiced ball era is very solid. He is averaging well over a strikeout per inning and has close to a 3 to 1 K/BB ratio. I would say that immediately qualifies him to be a top level starter. He had one year with an ERA over 3.7 and that was the year coming off tommy john. Also, even though i think that record is by the far the most meaningless statistic in baseball, for those who take it seriously he is 17 games above .500.

He was not outpitched by Dempster and Livan. But pitching is also about lasting power; what is Dempster now. Wood has staying power because of his talent.

 

Next, I think it is too soon to use Willis' numbers because of sample size, but if you want to compare we can. Willis has already had a season with an ERA above 4 in perhaps the most pitcher friendly park around. And that was with a tremendous April. He only put together back-to-back quality starts once last year. Now I don't want to rant about Dontrelle because I have done it before and I feel like this post is more about Wood.

 

To say that you are worried that he has peaked at 28 is not a good argument. Many pitchers don't come into their own until their late 20's. See AJ Burnett and Carl Pavano. Under that reasoning you would say that Willis is better than Burnett, which I think on this board wouldn't hold up. Also, the way he is pitching now, and I am not counting his first 5 starts this year, he is worth 8 million. On todays market with Milton, jared Wright, Benson, V. Zambrano, and O. Perez getting around 7 million and Derek Lowe getting 10, Wood is worth 8 million. Willis is no doubt outperforming his contract, but if Willis were 28 he'd also be getting 8 million. Besides I made that comment disregarding finances, though even if money were a factor I would still rather have wood.

 

I want to say more, but I don't have time; maybe after next week...

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I find it funny to use finals as a cop-out, I've got them too, I think everyone does. Dontrelle at his current experience level, has another year before he even gets to arbitration, and even then his salary won't be in the same stratosphere as Kerry's, Wood has a contract at $8 million annually, so just on money alone, Dontrelle is exponentially more valuable to this franchise than Wood, not to mention, Dontrelle is under team control for another 4 years, Kerry Wood, only 2.

 

Secondly, Wood is an injury prone pitcher, he's erratic, he throws a ton of pitches, and has yet to truly "pitch," he still throws. Note: Tonight, Wood went 3.0 IP with 3 ER (bringing his season ERA to 6.15) against an Astros offense that can't score runs to save its own life, and he left with shoulder tendinitis...ouch. Strikeouts are overrated, all they do is get your pitcher out of the game sooner, I'd rather see a guy throw three pitches in one inning to get out of the inning than throw 9 to get out of the inning with 3 K's. Look at what "pitching" has done for AJ and Josh so far this year.

 

Wood is not valuable at his rate, if you're paying $8 million to a guy, you better not be waiting for his potential to develop, he better have shown you something already...and all Wood has shown is a propensity to be injured while striking out a ton of batters while giving up more runs than you'd expect a "ace" pitcher to allow.

 

Hell, it's appropriate that tonight Willis has pitched better than Wood, and this is while Willis faced a better offense in an offense oriented park, and Wood will likely wake up tomorrow morning on his favorite place to be, the disabled list.

Fact.

When we are talking the best One-Two punch in baseball, we are talking Mark Prior and Kerry Wood hands down, but when we say a more complete pitching staff, it's not that I'm a Marlins fan to blame, but I'll go with them. Especially how somebody else mentioned they are suffering from injuries early, Wood just got shelved, and it's a problem with his elbow, didn't he have reconstructive surgery like AJ Burnett did? That could mean trouble, so for right now edge goes to Marlins even with Carlos Zambrano in for the Cubs!

2 seasons:

 

Wood: 21-13 4.03ERA, trips to DL 3

Willis: 25-17 3.70ERA, trips to DL 0

 

Dontrelle's ERA was better his first season that Wood's first and better his second season than Wood's second.

 

Dontrelle's career ERA is better and his K/BB ratio is better. Except for the K/BB ratio, park effects have a significant impact as does the Marlins all gold-glove caliber IF defense. At the very least, Willis is on par with Wood over the same career period.

FACT!! If Boston was healthy they would threaten more than the Cubs.

Shameless bump... :mischief

BTW I like how after I made this poll beckett get lit up.

 

Oh well I still think we have the best rotation.

I don't think we can call our rotation the best in baseball yet.

 

But the Cubs rot is not better than us.

 

We may be overhyped, but we have one WS thropy to show for it. How many does the Cubs have?

A poor offense that won't take a walk, shaky bullpen and Dusty Baker for a manager. Aside from that the Cubs are a championship caliber team.