How did St. Claire actually do in his tenure?

There has been some discussion as to whether or not Randy St. Claire deserved to be fired. I decided to do some research to figure out just how effective St. Claire was during his time in Washington.

It is obvious that 2009 has been an awful pitching performance by the entire Nationals club. They have the worst ERA in the National League at 5.69, they’ve allowed more runs than anyone else at 308, and the bullpen has been awful, blowing 12 saves less than a third of the way through the season.

It is also obvious that the Nationals front office utterly failed planning this season, and no coach was put in a position to succeed.

Some say the fact that the Nationals ERA has ranked near the bottom of the Major Leagues since 2005 is an indictment to the performance of St. Claire, while others argue that it is more an indictment of the people hiring the pitchers.

I decided to look into this and wanted to see if St. Claire helped his pitchers overachieve, not succeed under traditional standards. We all know the Nationals did not have the best pitchers, but St. Claire’s job was to get the most out of them that he could.

The Research:

I went back and identified the top 10 contributing pitchers from 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. Not the top 10 producing pitchers, but the five starting pitchers who had the most games started, and the five relief pitchers who had the most appearances.

I looked at the pitchers record and ERA for the respective season and compared it to their career 162 game average. Simply enough if the player had better numbers in the respective season they were labeled as outperforming their ability. If the pitcher had worse numbers than their career average they underperformed.

This obviously isn’t the most in depth research I could have gone in, and there are some loopholes. Some players may have been in their prime when they pitched with the Nationals and some may have not, there for obscuring their performance with the Nationals compared to their career.

For example Ray King had a 4.45 ERA with the Nationals, which is actually a pretty solid output considering his age. However his career ERA was much lower due to his performance as a much younger Cardinal.

The Results:

In the period from 2005-2008; pitchers outperformed their career averages 29 times, underperformed their averages eight times, and four times was the performance equal to their career average, or put up by a rookie.

The only year where St. Claire had more pitchers underperform was 2006 when six pitchers failed to meet their career averages. In 2005 and 2007 however, nine out of ten pitchers outperformed their career averages. In 2008 six pitchers outperformed, and four pitchers were either rookies or too close to their career averages to pass judgment upon.

Conclusion:

Randy St. Claire did an excellent job given the poor talent he received from Jim Bowden and the front office. Under his tutelage the pitchers who had the biggest effect on the ball club almost always had one of their career years.

Up until 2009, the bullpen had been absolutely outstanding for St. Claire, almost always outperforming their career averages. Even when Chad Cordero hurt his arm, Jon Rauch and Hanrahan filled in well as a closer underneath him.

Journeymen pitchers like Esteban Loaiza, Livan Hernandez, Tim Redding, and Odalis Perez all outperformed their long career averages, proving that these pitchers pitched better under St. Claire than other pitching coaches.

The Bottom Line: The Nationals pitching failures came from those selecting the pitchers, not coaching them.

See the numbers: