Projecting the 2009 Cubs:  Ted Lilly

2009 PROJECTIONS Rich Harden | Carlos Zambrano | Ryan Dempster | Ted Lilly | Kevin Gregg TED LILLY STATS Fan Graphs | The Hardball Times | ESPN | Baseball Reference | Cubs.com | Baseball Prospectus Ted Lilly wasn't as good in 2008 as he was in 2007, but he was still a good pitcher. In 2008 he gave up a few more hits and a few more walks (1.23 WHIP in '08, 1.14 WHIP in '07). His BABIP was .283, but his FIP was 4.41. He allowed more home runs per 9, which is something Lilly has always had trouble with anyway. However, much of Lilly's decline in 2008 can be explained in his first few starts. Once the calendar turned to May, Lilly was even better than he was in 2007 (3.67 ERA). That was a span of 28 starts. Over his last 30 starts he posted a 3.58 ERA. In those 4 starts to begin the season Lilly posted an ERA of 9.16. I know selective endpoints are rather useless, but I do think Lilly was just as good, if not better, than he was in 2007, but his overall numbers took a hit because he was so ridiculously awful when the season began. You may recall a lot of talk around here in the early part of the season, during Lilly's struggles, when we talked about his drop in velocity. He seemed to be hitting 84 to 86 rather than 87-89. His end of the season velocity on his fastball was 87.4 mph and I seem to recall it being 86.0 in the early part of the season. He also allowed 22.1% of his batted balls as line drives, which was up quite a bit from 2007 and up a bit from his career average. I expect Lilly to be just as good as he's been since coming to the Cubs. Hopefully he gets off to a better start in 2009 than he did in 2008. His 2009 projections are below: LILLY IP H HR BB K ERA CAIRO 193 178 28 63 160 4.50 MARCELS 183 170 26 62 159 4.06 ZiPS 190 175 26 65 172 4.03 JAMES 208 194 31 75 176 3.95 Chone 172 170 24 58 150 4.19 AVERAGE 190 178 27 65 164 4.14 I think these look a little high personally. The CAIRO projection for Lilly seems to be a bit off in comparison to the other 4. Still, even if you remove it entirely, his average ERA only comes down .09 runs to 4.05 so it's not much of a factor. His WAR and value chart below: Name League IP_Start ERA W/L Win% WAR_Start WAR $WAR Actual Diff. LILLY NL 190 4.14 1.12 0.53 2.92 2.92 $14.54 $12.00 $2.54 Running total for team projected wins (updated as I do each profile) Replacement level team: 48.6 wins Kevin Gregg: 0.94 WAR Rich Harden: 5.75 WAR Carlos Zambrano: 3.65 WAR Ryan Dempster: 3.42 WAR Ted Lilly: 2.92 WAR TOTAL: 65.3 wins