2009 Recap: Rich Harden

I told you all about how Ryan Dempster let the Cubs in strikeouts. As it turns out, he almost didn't. Rich Harden pitched 59 fewer innings, started five fewer games -- and at the end of the season, only trailed Demp by one in the strikeout category. Of his 26 starts, Harden racked up eight or more strikeouts in 12 of them. As you may or may not know, 12 is really close to half of 26. So that is really super great. Rich's 171 strikeouts in 141 innings gave him a rate of nearly 11 K's per nine innings pitched. Unfortunately, Rich never managed to get through all nine innings this season. In fact, he only threw more than six innings exactly five times this year. And Harden never did make it to the eighth inning. So what's a 141-inning strikeout machine worth? According to Fangraphs, probably about $8 million. Intuitively, I think that makes sense. Furthermore, it's what Harden was paid for 2009. As for what Rich's value is going forward, it seems as thou...