In Moshe’s post analyzing Ken Rosenthal’s piece comparing A.J. Burnett to Josh Beckett — which inspired a deeper analysis of A.J. Burnett through the lens of PitchFX this past Thursday — I was also struck by commenter T.O. Chris‘ look at the duo’s more advanced numbers, which in turn compelled me to want to take an even deeper look myself.
As Moshe noted, Ronsenthal’s uncomplicated analysis looked at both pitchers’ W-L records (meaningless), ERA (somewhat instructive) and opponents’ OPS (meh). Here are Burnett’s and Beckett’s career numbers across 14 different categories, with the leader highlighted in yellow:
If you asked most fans, I think they’d tell you without question that Josh Beckett is better than A.J. Burnett (because it’s true); however, I don’t know that most fans would realize quite how close the two pitchers really are.
Their numbers are very very close across the board, with Burnett surrendering less home runs per nine innings and getting more ground balls, which in turn has helped him to a lower BAA and BABIP than Beckett. Looking at the chart above, the primary difference — and one of the main factors that have kept A.J. Burnett from ever being a true #1 — lies in the walk rate, as Beckett has walked a full batter less per nine (2.77) during his career than Burnett has (3.78). That’s why Beckett has a slight edge in FIP, despite surrendering home runs more frequently.
Here are their career pitch values, per Fangraphs:
| Career | wFB | wSL | wCT | wCB | wCH | wSF |
| A.J. Burnett | 10.4 | -0.2 | 86.7 | -2.1 | ||
| Josh Beckett | 63.7 | 0.6 | -2.6 | 27.8 | 8.3 | 0.1 |
The differences between the two pitchers become much clearer after reviewing the relative successes and failures of their pitching arsenals. Burnett has historically been known as a two-pitch pitcher (fastball and curve), who occasionally throws a sinker and very rarely a changeup to keep hitters honest. As we know, Burnett’s bread-and-butter throughout his career has been the curve, which abandoned him last season.
Beckett has a more complete arsenal, mixing his four-seamer with a two-seamer, curveball, cutter and changeup. Clearly his assorted fastballs have served him quite well during his career, while his curveball and chanege aren’t too shabby themselves.
Since Fangraphs doesn’t include pitchers in its wonderful WAR graphs feature for some reason, I’ve taken the liberty of creating my own versions for your viewing enjoyment:
Once again, both pitchers are rather closely intertwined, though Beckett wins out once again, as his six best seasons are each superior to Burnett’s six best. However, this is slightly misleading, as it’s not like Burnett’s never had a better season than Beckett — A.J. out-fWARed Beckett in 2001 (of course, that was Beckett’s first season), 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2008. But it does underscore both how good Beckett has been, and how much better he’s been than Burnett when Beckett’s at his best.
The cumulative WAR by age graph is really no contest. While the pitchers are only separated by 1.7 fWAR for their careers, Beckett got a head start by breaking into the Majors at his age 21 season, and he’s also accrued his FWAR total in three less seasons than the 33-year-old Burnett. Expect this table to grow even further lopsided as time elapses.
In any event, my takeaway from this is that A.J. Burnett and Josh Beckett are indeed quite a bit more similar than public perception might lead one to believe; although Josh Beckett is obviously a more complete pitcher, whose numbers support the “ace” tag — even if he hasn’t always quite pitched like one during his tenure in Boston — and he has clearly been the superior pitcher during both players’ careers.
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5 Responses to The thinking man’s A.J. Burnett vs. Josh Beckett
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TIQ IQ
Good stuff Larry, definitely an interesting post. I think Beckett’s postseason success is a major reason for the discrepancy in perception between the two, because as the stats show, they are pretty similar pitchers. I would disagree, however, that Beckett’s numbers support him being labeled an ace. He has been far too inconsistent to deserve that label IMO.
While he is no longer an ace (Lester is now) I would have to call Beckett an Ace during time from the Marlins World Series to 2008 or 9 because how he was able to lead his team to world series wins as the best pitcher on the staff.
Putting up numbers in the regular season is one thing but having distinctive playoffs runs with you at the charge seperates aces from number 1′s in my opinion.
You raise an interesting point regarding what actually constitutes a true ace. Obviously there are no “set” parameters — it’s almost like former Supreme Court Potter Stewart’s threshold test for pornography/obscenity: “I know it when I see it.”
I suppose we don’t generally think of a staff ace also carrying a career ERA of nearly 4.00, though having accumulated more than 5 fWAR in three of the five seasons he’s been on the Red Sox makes him pretty close to an ace-type pitcher in my book, even if he doesn’t possess the ultra-reliability of someone like, say, CC Sabathia.
I think this could actually be a worthwhile follow-up post for someone — is there a set of metrics we can use to determine (obviously somewhat subjectively/arbitrarily) who can truly be considered an ace-level pitcher? Sabathia has a career ERA of 3.57, and I doubt you’d find anyone who doesn’t consider CC to be a staff ace, so where do we draw the line? Of course, if you remove the first two seasons of his career from the equation, in which he posted ERAs of 4.39 and 4.37, we come away with a career ERA of 3.39, which really isn’t all that different but almost seems better somehow.
Additionally, if you sort pitchers by cumulative ERA over the last three seasons, only 13 have compiled an ERA below 3.39, and 20 with an ERA below 3.57. So, if you’re able to pitch to an ERA below 3.60 over a three-year period, does that constitute an ace?
These are obviously crude measures (ERA) and selective endpoints; I’m simply bringing it up for the sake of discussion. Also because I think someone should try to do a post on it.
Certainly an interesting topic, and probably not one that I’ve thought about in enough detail. My conception of an ace would probably have more to do with somebody being consistently in the top x pitchers in the game (I would probably go top 10, or something along those lines), so it’s less about meeting particular statistical cutoffs and more about how you rank as compared to your peers (of course this rank would need to be measured statistically somehow, maybe by WAR or FIP?). To be an ace, I think that a certain peak level of performance is required, as well as a measure of consistency and durability.
Ultimately, “ace” is really more a subjective term used to further praise pitchers that are already considered to be good, and may very well have different meanings for different people. Is Josh Beckett an ace because he has a great postseason record and has had a few dominant seasons? Not to me, but I guess it’s all about how you define your terms.
Hey AR’s – Who would you rather have on your pitching staff? Burnett or Beckett? Done.