Back in the offseason, the Braves made waves when they decided to buy their more promising pitching prospects some time by giving two of their starting rotation spots to a couple of 40-year old journeymen pitchers. Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey both signed relatively cheap one-year deals, and it seemed like the Braves had a few things in mind when they made these deals.
First, they obviously wanted to see some improvement out of their rotation. According to FanGraphs, the Braves received abysmal production from their starting pitchers in 2016 — to the tune of 4.7 fWAR. To put that in perspective, Julio Teheran was worth 3.2 fWAR by himself last season. Yikes. So clearly you can see that adding Bartolo Colon’s 2.9 fWAR from last season and R.A. Dickey’s 1.0 fWAR from the same season seemed like it would only boost the Braves’ starting rotation if they continued to defy Father Time.
Secondly, there’s the idea that they could eat innings. Braves starters threw 880.1 innings in 2016, so you figure that adding two pitchers who regularly managed to get 200 innings a season under their belts would help out as well.
Finally, there’s potential trade value. Even though the Braves were clearly trying to build a team that would at least be watchable for the team’s first season in SunTrust Park, this is still a rebuilding team and if Colon and/or Dickey were productive enough to warrant being traded for younger talent and more assets, in my opinion it’s a safe bet that the Braves would pull the trigger on a potential deal.
Now that we’re around the 30-game mark of the season, we’re starting to get an indication of what could be coming for the rest of the season, and it’s a tad bit concerning. So far through the 2017 season, R.A. Dickey has an ERA of 4.29 and a bloated FIP of 6.18. It’s early yet, but Dickey’s K% this year (13.6 percent) is nearly four full points below what it was last year (17.3 percent), and his BB% (9.7 percent) is a point above what it was last season.
Meanwhile, Bartolo Colon’s ERA has ballooned to 7.22 and his FIP is currently at 5.13. Just like Dickey, his K% is down compared to last season (16.2 percent in 2016, currently 15.7 percent) and his BB% is up compared to 2016 (4.1 percent last year, 5.4 this year). The main reason why we’re talking about this is because both pitchers got shelled in their most recent appearances.
The Cardinals had little-to-no problem getting hits and scoring on R.A. Dickey, while the Astros basically had batting practice with Bartolo Colon in the first inning of his last appearance. So not only are these two looking bad on the stat sheet, they’re looking bad when it comes to actually watching them throw as well. I mean, just look at the optics on this homer that Colon gave up to Carlos Correa.
#Braves 0 @ #Astros 4 [B1-0o]
— Home Run Tracker (@DingerTracker) May 10, 2017
Carlos Correa homers (4): fly ball to CF (3-run)
[ 23° • 106mph • 438ft ]
Viz: pic.twitter.com/Xag9L5D2XK
Yuck. Of course, I’m not trying to judge Colon off of one inning or even just one at-bat in the middle of May, but it’s still concerning when it’s part of what could be a pretty bad trend going forward.
One thing that is good is the fact that these two are managing to eat a decent amount of innings despite getting hit pretty hard out there. Going back to Tuesday night, Colon stayed in the game (despite not listening to me, the baseball genius) and very nearly made it out of the sixth inning. That would have been his fourth start out of seven where he made it through six innings. Colon currently has 38.2 innings under his belt, while Dickey’s got 35.2 IP, himself. Again, this isn’t spectacular but as long as they continue to avoid injury then this could definitely result in them eating a sizable amount of innings this year — whether or not those innings are going to be productive innings that are easy on the eyes and the heart rates of Braves fans has yet to be determined.
Of course, it’s kind of hard to be an effective seller in the trade market if what you’re trying to sell isn’t attractive. So after reading all of this, it’s probably easy to come to the conclusion that if Colon and Dickey keep these performances up, they’re probably not going to be used as trade bait at or near the trade deadline. Teams who are going into the Postseason will value experience, but there’s a difference between having experience and having experience while being productive, and right now these two don’t fit the latter description.
That could change if they pick things up, but if they keep on going like they are right now then this will be a long season of staying with the same team instead of potentially latching on to a winner as a late-season rental.
So, even though we know what to expect as far as their ceiling is concerned, the obvious hope is that what we’ve seen from R.A. Dickey and Bartolo Colon so far is their floor. I’d much rather see them have nowhere to go but up instead of finding even lower depths to reach, because it hasn’t been too good so far outside of eating innings.
If the only goal was to buy time for the prospects, then they’re on track to do that. But for now, it’s been pretty tough to watch and hopefully things will pick up. It’s time to start seeing vintage performances from this pair of vintage pitchers.