The LVP

Just how bad have Jeff Weaver's first five starts been?  Well, pretty horrible by any measure:  0 wins and 5 losses, a 15.35 ERA, a .465 batting average by opponents, 40 hits in just 17 innings pitched (that's less than four innings per start), etc., etc.  The folks over at USSMariner.com, who maintained a glimmer of hope before Weaver's last start against the Yankees, have dubbed the  Weaver experiment "a failure."

According to Baseball Prospectus, Weaver hasn't just been bad, he's been the worst starting pitcher in all of baseball.  They have a statistic that puts Weaver's season in even better context than his awful ERA: SNLVAR, which stands for Support-Neutral Lineup-adjusted Value Above Replacement.  Basically, it's a measurement of how many additional wins a starting pitcher has provided his team over a replacement-level pitcher (the typical emergency starter called up from Triple-A).  A rating of 0 means that there is no difference in performance between the starter and Joe Whomever from the Rainiers.  A negative rating indicates that the pitcher is "worse" than his journeyman replacement would have been.  The numbers correspond to actual wins.

Here are the top 5 worst starting pitchers in the majors so far this year (keep in mind this only evaluates starting pitchers, so Igawa's six shutout innings in relief last week wouldn't count under this metric; the full list can be seen here):

Team    Pitcher         SNLVAR

SEA      Jeff Weaver    -1.2
ATL      Mark Redman -0.7
PHI      Adam Eaton    -0.7
NYY      Kei Igawa       -0.6
TBD      Jae Seo         -0.6

By this measurement, Weaver is by far the worst starting pitcher in the Majors this year.  Incidentally, canceling out Weaver's sorry numbers somewhat is another Mariners starter with the initials JW, who's tied for fourth-best at +1.2:  Jarrod Washburn.  (Also in Washburn's cohort:  Gil Meche, who has so far justified what the Royals are paying him.) 

What does all this mean?  I think Baseball Prospectus co-founder Rany Jazayerli explains it most eloquently:  "If instead of signing Weaver the Mariners had invited their fans out to Safeco Field to watch as they threw eight million dollars into an enormous bonfire on the pitcher's mound, and then given his spot in the rotation to some Triple-A journeyman, they probably would have at least one additional win right now."  Ouch.