Is It No Longer Sonny In Tampa?

The Tampa Bay Rays, often the laughing stock of the American League East, shut some people up with a terrific 2008 run to the World Series. They were led by a great, young core of Evan Longoria, B.J. Upton, Carl Crawford, James Shields, Andy Sonnanstine, and Matt Garza. If the Rays plan on making another run at the World Series crown, you would figure every one of those players would be needed, however, that is not the case.

The Rays are now loaded with rotation depth with the likes of James Shields, Matt Garza, Jeff Niemann, David Price, Wade Davis, and budding prospect Jeremy Hellickson. This leaves poor Andy Sonnanstine, who ranked 2nd in WAR (+3.6) among the Rays' starters in 2008, out in the cold. This shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone though, as the writing was on the wall when he was sent to AAA-Durham last year and even cast to the bullpen later in the season, leading to his mere 18 starts and eye-covering 6.77 ERA.

So what exactly went so wrong for Andy? How did he go from good #2 starter on an American League Championship team to a near-replacement level pitcher in 1 year? Here is a breakdown of his peripherals, comparing 2007, 2008, and 2009. You'll immediately notice how much different 2009 was:

2007: 130.2 IP, 3.73 K/BB, 1.24 HR/9, 1.35 WHIP, 60.2 LOB%, 4.26 FIP, 4.34 xFIP, 4.09 tERA.

2008: 193.1 IP, 3.35 K/BB, 0.98 HR/9, 1.29 WHIP, 66.3 LOB%, 3.91 FIP, 4.36 xFIP, 3.68 tERA.

2009: 99.2 IP, 1.76 K/BB, 1.72 HR/9, 1.66 WHIP, 58.4 LOB%, 5.45 FIP, 4.85 xFIP, 5.46 tERA.

The 3 things I'll touch on here are his K/BB ratio, HR rate, and LOB%.

1) K/BB rate

Sonnanstine saw his BB/9 creep up from 1.79 in 2007 and 1.72 in 2008 to 3.07 in 2009. While the strikeouts have gone down over the past 3 seasons, it just doesn't seem right to expect Sonnanstine to repeat such a poor K/BB rate, and most projections agree by having his projected K/BB at 3.00 (Bill James), 2.48 (CHONE), and 2.49 (Marcel).

2) HR rate

Sonnanstine saw a dramatic increase in his HR rate in 2009. His HR/9 in 2008 was a strong 0.98, yet it drastically jumped to a whopping 1.72, which ironically  came in a year in which his FB% was a career-low 38.5%. Like the K/BB ratio, this appears like another flukey peripheral that one would expect to come back down to Earth, especially when you consider that ESPN's Park Factors doesn't seem to think Tropicana Field is a HR-favorable park, though Sonnanstine might not pitching there in 2010. Bill James, CHONE, and Marcel have his HR/9 projected in the 1.17 to 1.29 range for 2010, which seems fairly reasonable to me.

3) LOB%

Andy was absolutely terrible with stranding runners last year. And I mean, like, really bad. Among starting pitchers with at least 90 IP in 2009, Sonnanstine ranked dead last in LOB%. The unfortunate thing here for Andy though is that hes always been pretty bad with stranding runners, as evident to the 60.6 LOB% in 2007 and 66.3 LOB% in 2008. Is this something Andy can turn around, or will he always have to live off a poor LOB%? I obviously cannot answer whether or not he'll ever improve on it, but the good thing is that he seemed to fair alright in 2007 and 2008 with below average left-on-base rates.

*Wild Card - Splits vs RH Hitters

Sonnanstine splits vs RH hitters in 2009 compared to his career peripherals are very strange:

2009 vs RH: 1.80 K/BB, .375 AVG (.397 BABIP), 16.7 LD%, 0.72 GB/FB, 17.9 HR/FB%

Career vs RH: 3.51 K/BB, .299 AVG (.337 BABIP), 15.2 LD%, 0.74 GB/FB, 8.9 HR/FB%

Right off the bat you notice his K/BB is down and his batting average against appeared to be largely inflated from a .397 BABIP. But the most stunning thing to me is the HR rate against RH hitters; despite the line drive percentages and GB/FB ratios being very similar, his HR/FB rate was insanely higher. I will caution that the 2009 is a small sample size (36 IP), but its still stunning to me. Sonnanstine was incredibly unlucky vs RH hitters last year, and I am still going to chalk up the poor K/BB rate as an outlier occurrence.

So all in all, I believe Andy Sonnanstine is still very much a valuable starting pitcher. While his strikeout rates appear to be declining, I have a very difficult time believing his walk rate will remain in the 3 BB/9 range, and while the LOB% is up in the air for me, I firmly believe the HR rate will come back down; so to me, his 2009 performance looks like an outlier more than anything. I'm not saying he'll return to 2008-form, but I think that's more likely than the chance of him repeating a year like 2009. I do think there is some limitations for where Sonnanstine should go; he puts the ball in play frequently, so pitching in front of a strong defense and pitcher-friendly park would seem like the perfect fit (Mariners?). 

Anyway, I don't know what the future holds for Sonnanstine as a Tampa Bay Ray, but if a team is looking for a quality mid-rotation starter, who is not even arbitration eligible yet, and one that they can likely be acquired on a bargain price, they should be phoning St. Petersburg, Florida, right now.