The Big Three, Minus Two

I was looking back at an old post of mine from March, about former Oakland Athletics teammates Tim Hudson, Barry Zito, and Mark Mulder. The gist of that particular blog entry was, statistically speaking, those guys were much better as teammates than they've been since. I also mentioned the fact that all three really had quite a bit to prove this season.

Well, almost 5 months to the day later, it seems two of them still have a lot to prove (arguably even more than they did back in spring training), while the third guy, Tm Hudson, has quietly enjoyed an excellent season.

Hudson is fresh off a win in his 7th consecutive decision. His 13 total wins are tied for second in the National League and his 3.01 ERA is good for 5th. Opponents are slugging just .320 against him, which is 3rd best in baseball behind San Diego's pair of aces, and no big league starter has given up fewer homeruns than he has (4), which is remarkable considering he gave up 25 a year ago. That, coupled with his renewed command (38 walks in 164 2/3 innings, compared to 79 in 218 1/3 a year ago), has really been the difference for Huddy in '07. And even with two sub-par seasons with the Braves prior to this year, he still owns the 5th best winning percentage among active pitchers (Santana, Pedro, Oswalt, and Halladay are in front of him, and not by much).

While Hudson has improved, Zito has regressed, big time. It's probably still too early to say his 7-year, $126 million dollar deal ranks among the worst of all time, but #75 has done next-to-nothing to silence his critics who said there was no way he deserved to be the richest pitcher in baseball history. With 37 more walks this season, Zito's base on balls allowed total will have risen for a third straight year. With just 8 wins so far, he's running the risk of setting a new career low (it's 11 right now), his 5.16 ERA would easily be a career worst (it's a full run and a half higher than his carer average), and he's allowing almost 3 baserunners every two innings. I guess the only silver lining at this point is that 2008 will almost certainly be an improvement, and it's not exclusively his fault the Giants are so bad.

Then there's Mulder. At first, we were expecting he'd be fully recovered from rotator cuff surgery by July. Here we are in mid-August and he's thrown as many big league innings as I have thus far. The latest word on his progress is that he threw a simulated game Monday, and he could re-join the red birds before September. Even though the Cardinals are 6 games under .500, they're only 5.5 back in the Central, so the '06 champs are not out of it, yet. But if they fall much further out of contention, their motivation to get Mulder back on the mound this year has to be virtually nil. I know this much. He won't be rushed.

I guess the story of the Big Three is really a microcosm of the fluid state of elite starting pitching in today's game. GMs would have killed for these guys five years ago. Now, the Braves have to be thinking, "it's about time" while the Giants are thinking "six more years of this?" and the Cardinals are thinking, "I wonder what he has left?" Kind of makes you wonder what the future has in store for today's aces.