Got Weaver!

Now that Jeff Weaver finally is a Halo, I digged a little deeper into his stats to see how he'll do next year. This is what I found out:

Much will depend on how Weaver fares at home. During his career, he played in seven games in Angels stadium, starting six. This is his line:

G-GS---IP--H-HR--R-ER-BB-SO-W-L--ERA
7--6-44.2-39--1-10-10-12-32-4-1-2.01

Pretty good, actually. I was very surprised that he gave up only one homerun. Although the sample size is small, this might be a good omen after all.

So how about our division rivals?

Team-----G-GS---IP--H-HR--R-ER-BB-SO-W-L--ERA
Oakland--5--5-29---38--7-25-23-11-24-2-1-7.14
Texas----2--2-11.1-16--0-11--9--3--8-0-2-7.15
Seattle--3--2-15.2-22--2-11-11--0-13-1-1-6.32
---------------------------------------------
Total---10--9-56---76--9-47-43-14-45-3-4-6.91

Not really that encouraging. It's strange that he allowed that many homeruns in Oakland, but none in Texas, but all this is probably due to small sample size as well.

The one thing everybody agrees on is that Weaver can eat innings. Well, maybe he ate a little to much of them. From 2003 to 2005, his OPS against when throwing 106-120 pitches rose to .948. Also, his OPS against in inning 7-9 is .871, while it is .733 from inning 1-3 and .755 from 4-6.
Other stats that indicate that Jeff shouldn't be trusted in the clutch (all stats 2003-2005):
.971 OPS against with bases loaded
1.242 OPS against with first and third
1.091 OPS against in situations close and late

It has been said that Jeff sometimes has problems controlling his nerves and these stats certainly support that statement. But some of his other stats are really good (see my last post) and now he has a great bullpen behind him. So if Scioscia pulls him early enough, i.e. after 100 pitches, in close situation and with a lefty at bat, and lets the pen finish the game, Jeff Weaver might actually have a chance to hold his ERA under 4. I'd rather see him do that and pitch 30 innings less than have 220 IP with an 4.50+ ERA at the end of the season.