Impact Report: John Lannan

June 18, 2009 8:10pm CDT

John Lannan twirled a borderline gem on Wednesday night against the Yankees, going 8.1 innings and allowing just two runs to lower his ERA to 3.38 on the year. After last year's effort that included a 3.91 ERA in his first full season in the bigs, is this lefty someone to count on in mixed leagues despite his relative youth and lack of top shelf stuff?

John Lannan, SP, Nationals
6'2", 225 pounds
Bats: L Throws: L
Born: September 27, 1984 (Long Beach, NY)
Drafted: Eleventh round in 2005 by the Washington Nationals
MINOR LEAGUE HIGHLIGHTS

2003-05 (College): Pitching for Siena for three years, Lannan improved with each passing season, as his ERA dipped from 5.44 to 3.84 to 2.29 as his workload increased. He also saw his WHIP improve each season (1.63 to 1.35 to 1.09). Lannan was particularly effective in his junior season, when he went 10-2 with a 2.29 ERA and a 1.09 WHIP along with 83 Ks in his 82.2 innings on the hill.

2006 (Single-A): Made 27 appearances, including 26 starts, on his way to an 6-8 record. Lannan posted a solid 7.4 K/9 mark, though his walk rate was a bit elevated at 3.5. As a result, it's no shock to find that his WHIP was 1.47 and that his ERA was likely slightly up at 4.70.

2007 (High-A, Double-A, Triple-A): Talk about a quick ascent through the minors. Lannan dominated at A-ball, going 6-0 with a 2.13 ERA before progressing on to Double-A, where he made six appearances and went 3-2 with a 3.25 ERA despite a poor 1.33 K/BB mark. He then made seven appearances with Triple-A Columbus, posting a 1.66 ERA and 3-1 record in his 38 innings.

MAJOR LEAGUE CAREER

2007: Made six late-season starts for the Nationals, going 2-2 with a respectable 4.15 ERA. On the downside, his K/BB rate was unfailingly awful at 0.59 (he walked 17 in 34.2 innings), leaving his 1.53 WHIP as a fairly solid mark all things considered.

2008: As a full-time starter, Lannan made 31 starts and had nine victories, second on the club to Tim Redding's 10 wins. Unfortunately, John also led the club with 15 loses, though he did manage to hurl 182 innings, the same total as team leader Redding. Lannan posted a 3.91 ERA and a 1.34 WHIP on the season, numbers that outpaced the NL averages of 4.30 and 1.39. He also greatly improved his K/BB ratio from year one, though his mark was still a sub-par 1.63.

TEAM REVIEW

The future - that could be the name of this team's front five. With the Daniel Cabrera experiment finally over, the Nationals can get to auditioning the young talent they have in spades in the starting rotation. Youngster Shairon Martis currently leads the team with five wins with only one loss. Ross Detwiller is also getting his feet wet in the bigs with six starts this season after being the club's first-round pick in 2007, but two other names really stand out with this unit. Jordan Zimmerman dominated this spring, and though his current numbers aren't great (2-3, 5.37 ERA), his potential is huge, especially considering his total of 60 Ks and a 3.75 K/BB mark in 57 innings this season. However, the most luminous talent the club has on the hill is a young man who has yet to even throw a pitch, first overall selection in last week's draft Stephen Strasburg, who you can read more about in a piece entitled MLB Draft Thoughts. The talent is here for this to be one effective unit, 1-5.

PERSONAL REVIEW

2009 stats: 4-5, 3.38 ERA, 42 K, 1.34 WHIP in 85.1 IP

Is Lannan worth a look in standard mixed leagues given that entering the day's action his ERA of 3.38 was 14th in the NL and better than the likes of Javier Vazquez (3.41), Ryan Dempster (3.92) and Jake Peavy (3.97), to name just a few?

We've said it before, and we'll say it again - pitchers can be effective without striking out batters, but it makes the task much more difficult when a guy doesn't rack up the punchouts (even if he is a groundball machine - more on that later). In this respect, Lannan is woefully inadequate, not just compared to the minimum of six per nine innings that we like to see, but also compared to the average National League pitcher who is actually averaging 6.99 K/9 this season through 4,182 games. Just how far below those baselines has Lannan actually been? Try 4.43. OK, OK, perhaps he just isn't striking anyone out this season and he has in the past. Uh, no. In 302 big league innings, he is averaging just a shade over five per nine (5.04), and after averaging just 6.44 in his minor league career, it's clear that he will not be making his money racking up big strikeout totals, so you will have to look elsewhere for help in that category.

Given the lack of swing-and-miss stuff, it's vital that a guy like Lannan has good control. Does he? Well, not really. His current 3.38 BB/9 mark is only a bit better than the current NL average of 3.69, and his career rate is 3.61. This is distressing when combined with his K/9 mark. As a result of less than ideal numbers in each measure, his K/BB mark this season is 1.31, a simply awful total considering that so far the NL average is 1.90.

Given those facts, how is it that Lannan has been effective this season? Good question. Well, he has somehow held batters to a .255 batting average, which is one point off his .256 career mark in 302 innings. Given his lack of pure "stuff" as viewed in his middling strikeout rates, it's a bit odd to find his BAA number so low. When we glance over at his BABIP mark, we find it at .263, well ahead of the average major league hurler, which is about .295 or so. Therefore, the next thing we look at is his line drive rate. Currently at 18.8 percent, that mark is slightly better than the average major league mark, which is usually about 20 percent. Still, if we do the old expected BABIP trick, that is we add .120 to a pitcher's line drive rate, we get an eBABIP of .308 this season for Lannan, far worse than his current mark. The obvious conclusion is that he has had quite a bit of luck on his side this season. Mitigating this idea somewhat is the fact that he allowed a 19.1 percent LD-rate last season that led to a .273 BABIP, again somewhat lower than one would expect given that line drive number. We need more data to be sure, but it can be said that for the past year and a half Lannan has outpaced what the average major leaguer would be expected to do in BABIP given his LD-rate. Is this merely a trend influenced by a small sample size, or does Lannan have an innate talent to keep this trend up moving forward? Time will tell, but history really isn't on his side.

Moving to another category, we see that Lannan's LOB percentage this season is a strong 78.4 percent (his career mark is 75.4 percent), well above the norm of about 70 percent. Again, we wouldn't expect to see a number quite this high here, but given that his numbers in years one (74.8) and two (74.0) were actually slightly worse than his current number, perhaps his current rate may be sustainable? Again, not likely, but it's possible.

One fact that is a bit distressing no matter how you look at it is that his home run rates are clearly a bit high, which has to put a bit of a damper on the solid ERA talk. Lannan has allowed 1.16 homers per nine innings thanks to a poor 14 percent HR/F rate. Luckily for him, this shortcoming is mitigated by the fact that Lannan is a rather extreme groundball hurler who just doesn't allow many balls to be hit skyward. In fact, his current 2009 number in these categories are just about identical to his career totals.

GB: 52.2 percent (career 53.2)
FB: 29.0 percent (career 28.4)

This ability to keep the ball on the ground is another reason that despite fewer Ks and more walks than you would like to see, Lannan is able to keep scoring in line by limiting batters abilities to drive the ball into the gaps and take extra bases.

PREDICTION

Time will tell if this skill set will enable Lannan to have a Derek Lowe-like effect on hitters year after year. However, given his obvious deficiencies in strikeouts, the fact he walks a bit too many, and the fact that his average fastball is only 87 mph, we are a bit dubious. In addition, some of his measures don't exactly jibe with what we would expect to see given his skill set, measures like his BABIP being lower than expected, and that causes us to seriously question just how valuable a piece of a mixed league fantasy rotation he can be at this point. Clearly when he is on he can be an effective major league hurler, even if he will never be able to rise to the level of fantasy greatness given his limitations on the hill. Another fact to consider is that he is averaging just a shade more than six innings per start, and while that isn't a terrible number in today's game, a bit more depth in his starts would likely improve his chances of emerging from outings with a "W" in the decision column. Still, with only one start in his last 12 times to the hill in which he has allowed more than three earned runs, Lannan clearly keeps the Nationals in just about every game he pitches. If you can put up with the utter lack of Ks, and the fact that his ERA is almost certain to rise a bit moving forward, he might make a nice depth play in mixed leagues. Still, despite the strong ERA so far, he only is recommended in NL-only leagues where his deficiencies aren't as easily noticeable.