Jair Jurrjens: (Still) Broken

On April 24th, Jair Jurrjens was demoted to Gwinnett after beginning the year with the following line: 4 GS, 16.1 IP, 8 K, 10 BB, 5 HR, 1.167 OPS Against, 9.37 ERA. While some of this was fueled by random variation in BABIP and HR%, he carried an FIP- of 220 into his minor league excursion.

Since his return in late June Jurrjens has posted a sub-2.00 ERA. Many, namely Chip Carray and Joe Simpson, have taken to touting Jurrjens return to relevance, but his current ERA is no more sustainable than the insanely high figure he had before heading to the minors. After 3 superficially good starts, Jurrjens has lowered his ERA to 5.10, and now carries an FIP of 5.43. He’s done this by limiting baserunners, as his WHIP of 1.21 is half of what he was allowing early in the season. As with all things though, some of this is simple regression and sample size noise. His early season BABIP sat north of .400—limiting hits to the tune of a .273 BABIP is not out of the ordinary. He has cut his walks by more than 50%, but this has come at the expense of strikouts. Jurrjens was never much of a strikeout artist, peaking right around league average, but over the last three years he’s seen a precipitous decline in K rate that makes it hard to succeed regardless of how lucky he gets.


K/9 - Jair Jurrjens

Source: Fangraphs.com


Beyond the underlying statistics, a casual observation of Jurrjens shows that he just can’t locate his pitches anymore. To my eye, he’s missing his target by 6 inches more than half the time. He’s usually elevated in the zone, which may be both a factor in his elevated HR rate and a result of his recovery from knee surgery. However, what’s good anecdotal evidence without a graph to back it up?


Fastball Location VS. L/R 2012 - Jair Jurrjens

Source: Fangraphs.com

Yeah, he’s been up in the zone. In fact, since 2008, Jurrjens’ heat maps show a general trend towards the upper part of the zone. Not coincidentally, Jurrjens’ groundball percentage has trended downward and sits at a 5-year low, while his fly-ball percentage has hovered around 40% and his HR/9 rate has climbed.

Batted Ball Profile - Jair Jurrjens

Source: Fangraphs.com

HR/9 - Jair Jurrjens

Source: Fangraphs.com


These factors, along with a well-documented decline in velocity and Jurrjens’ doesn’t even resemble the pitcher he used to be. When he broke into the rotation full-time in 2007, he was a young kid who could touch 95 MPH, generated boat-loads of groundballs, and got enough strikeouts and limited walks enough to get by. He was, in most respects, smoke and mirrors, with the promise of much, much more. Since returning from Gwinnett he's back to doing his best to give DIPS theory one large middle finger, but there's only one Matt Cain, and he can at least hang a few K's on batters. Without his young-man skills, it appears Jurrjens' days as a rotation stalwart are ending before they really ever began.