Randy Johnson

I wonder how much help to the Yankees Randy Johnson will really be. Let's take a look, shall we?

Last year, RJ had 25 Win Shares, which is 13 Win Shares above average for a National League pitcher. Now, this is pretty impressive, considering that Win Shares, according to Bill James, generally correlates with a pitcher's actual win total. But for Johnson, he has 9 more win shares than actual wins, which is a testament a) to him pitching well for a hella-bad ballclub, b) pitching hella-well.

Pitching for the Yankees, given that they're a much better club than the Diamondbacks were last year, we can expect Johnson's Win Share total to more closely mimic his actual wins. In 2002, pitching for a better club, Johnson managed 29 Win Shares, compared to 24 Ws. In 2001, Johnson garnered 26 WSs to go with 21 Ws. (2003 is tossed out because of injuries.)

Now let's look at the Yankees' rotation last year. Being charitable, here's the best rotation they could have thrown out there:

Leiber WS: 11
Vazquez WS: 10
El Duque WS: 9
Kevin Brown WS: 9
Mike Mussina WS: 9

Not very distinguished in terms of WSs. Let's take a look at their actual win totals:

Leiber W: 14
Vazquez W: 14
El Duque W: 8
Kevin Brown W: 10
Mike Mussina W: 12

So what we have here is exactly the opposite of what happened to RJ last year (and, incidentally, since 2001 at least): these pitchers were actually much WORSE than their records indicate. (El Duque, of course, is a funny case.) They actually got BOOSTS turning their WSs into Ws.

So what does this say about RJ and the Yanks?

Now, there may be things I'm not calculating, or leaving out, for whatever reason. But if these statistics are a reasonable basis upon which to make judgments of the future, I think these are some extremely troubling statistics for Red Sox fans. Now, I don't think we should be looking for 30 Ws out of RJ, but it does suggest that if RJ continues to pitch as well (or close to as well) as he did for the Diamondbacks, we could be looking at a 25-or-so W season without breaking a sweat. For the Yankees, this means adding 10 Ws to the W total of the pitcher you traded for him. And you throw in Pavano, with 20 WSs, this could be a very scary Yankees rotation in 2005. (Of course, you have to factor in Pavano's career year; prior to 2004 Pavano had accumulated precisely 29 win shares total.) But even if Pavano pulls a Vazquez, adding RJ alone would be huge.