The 2014 Mariners sport a shiny, teamwide ERA+ of 114.  As we're sure you've noticed, this is because:

• Roenis Elias has jumped from AA to give us 15 (!) starts at a 3+ ERA
• Chris Young has jumped out of his world-famous San Diego Pool to give us 13 stats at a 3+ ERA

Those two items boast mightily of Jack Zduriencik's ability to cobble a 25-man roster out of a set of preseason question marks.  (It would take only a single SP swapout before the 2014 Mariners were able to match the ERA+ of the 2001 Mariners who won 116 games).

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Roenis Elias

Since he started throwing the changeup "dead fish," dropping on the outer half of the plate, and started throwing the Bedard Curve to break out of the zone, has become one of the most talented SP's in the whole of Mariner history.

MtGrizzly pointed out that he has remarkable physical balance.  He was right.  Elias stumbled on the idea of a Japanese "pause at the top," to break up hitters' timing -- and he simply performed it in his next game.  Late innings, no less, when he should have been tired.

James used to say, show me any young lefty, and I'll look at his balance at the top, and I'll tell you right then whether he will be a big-league pitcher.  If he's got no body control, he's got no plus command, and he's got no chance.

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Elias has three (3) wipeout pitches, which is something we say about very few starters in the big leagues.   Even more oddly, as a Cuban, he has no PREFERENCE for any of them; it's not like he has to focus on his curve at the expense of his changeup.  And he varies arm angles.

The bad news is that his "moxie" plays out as "lack of a sense of danger," and this young pitcher too often leaves HR'able pitches hanging.  This mistake ratio is the main difference between:

• Elias, vs
• CJ Wilson, Jon Lester, Chris Sale, Derek Holland, David Price, Geo Gonzalez, CC Sabathia

Under any normal circumstances, you would simply pencil :- ) in Elias as your #3-4 starter, for 2014-15, and wait to enjoy the fruits of his development as he slowly morphs into Chris Sale or Derek Holland.  But other things are at play for the Mariners.

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Chris Young

Chris Young's xFIP ... that is, his "fielding independent pitching" where you take his balls in play and "normalize" for fielding, park, and set HR/fly to 10.5% ... is 5.72.  Of course, fangraphs uses xFIP because it is (SOMETIMES) a good predictor of a pitcher's ERA going forward, after the luck (on HR-per-fly, on BABIP, on strand rate, etc) "evens out."

As compared to Young's actual ERA, which is 3.40.  A stunning difference!

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There is a takeway here:  Young's lifetime xFIP is 4.83, compared to his actual ERA of 3.76.  That's over the course of 970 innings, folks.

Jeremy Bonderman was a local whipping boy whose actual ERA (4.91) was never anywhere near his talented, projected xFIP of 4.12.  Pitchability.

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It is critical to keep in mind that sabermetric projections -- attempts to guess performance in the future -- is based on the middle 90, 90% of the player population.  There are exceptions to these rules.  Ichiro "broke" BaseballHQ's "expected batting average" formula; his ability to beat out base hits, and "steer" the ball to holes in the defense, were things that 95% of players could do.

Chris Young's ability to draw popups, using only an "illusory" fastball, is not within the 95% of player population that xFIP-ERA captures.  If you put Chris Young into a big park, with fast outfielders, you're going to get an ERA of 3.50 to 3.99.  It's the Bartolo Colon-type of boring shtick that Billy Beane loves to beat us with.

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Last year, there were 22 qualified starters in the American League with an ERA that was lower than Young's lifetime 3.76 ERA.

This year, Chris Young ranks #18 in the American League in ERA.  Ahead of:

• CJ Wilson
• Tommy Milone
• James Shields
• Jered Weaver
• Max Scherzer
• David Price
• Justin Verlander

We might literally have traded Taijuan and K-Pax for one of those guys, and received fewer wins for our trouble than Young has got us.

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