Q.  Are 125-150 innings of Rich Harden worth more than, say, 200 innings of Jarrod Washburn?

A.  Of course they are, if you could get 125-150 innings of Harden, in form.  But you might want to be clear about the fact that this is the best case scenario.

Granted, he's thrown 140+ the last couple of years.  Those were career years, healthwise.

.

Q.  Is he really that good?

A.  Harden is simply death on a stick when he's feeling good. 

Get him when he's right, with bounce in his step, and he's the closest thing you're going to get to the old Randy Johnson.

.

Q.  Like what?

A.  Harden's fastball has just about one Olde English foot of "rise" -- if he threw the same ball in a vacuum, it would hit the catcher's mitt one foot lower than it does in, say, the Earth's atmosphere. 

That creates a legit Byung Kim wiffleball rising effect, and hitters just can't deal.  Well, I dunno.  I couldn't make a wiffleball rise a full 10-12 inches, could you?

Harden likes to throw the FB up, amplifying the rise effect, and gets tons of spectacular swinging strike threes on "challenge" pitches.  It's joyful to watch -- just like watching the Big Unit.

..........

It's not clear to me why Fangraphs has his average FB at 92.0.  You watch him and the gun is 94-95 all game, plus the exploding rise.

Maybe he faded late in the year, or some other pitches got mixed in, or something. 

Anyway, the typical Harden fastball is 95, up, rising, big swing and miss.

.

Q.  So he pounds the fastball?

A.  Not at all.  He throws it quite a bit less than most pitchers.   Felix throws his 63% + ...  Rick Porcello throws 77% FB ... lots of guys throw their FB's 2/3 of the time.

Harden throws only 60% fastballs, about league average, despite the fact that most ML pitchers can only dream about throwing the high hard one the way Harden does.

Even much worse than his Nintendo fastball, is his Tim Lincecum change.  If you've ever seen Lincecum pitch a game, just imagine the same thing .... with Timmy leaving off his curve ball to throw 60% fastballs and 40% untouchable changeups (except Harden's fastball is even tougher than Lincecum's).

He throws the change with the awesome arm motion, the pitch starts high like his fastball, and then WHOOOOOM, the bottom falls out.  

So imagine the eye levels:  here come the ball and it's going to swerve way up or way down...

............

It's literally as though Trevor Hoffman had Mariano Rivera's swerving fastball.  You can't overstate how good this man is when he's right. 

I doubt that I've ever seen a pure 100% fastball-change pitcher, "even" mix, blow away hitters like Harden does.  It's like a boxer: jab, cross.  Jab, jab, cross.  Harden hits you and you hit the floor.  Who's next?

.

Part II