Knights Share Blame for Zito's Failure

(New York Daily Mirror - December 23, 2008)

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.

NEW YORK - William Shakespeare wrote those words over 400 years ago as part of Act III of his legendary play "Julius Caesar." It was those words that came to our editorial minds when embarking on the project of writing Barry Zito's epitaph as a member of the Knights after an awful four year tenure. New York is obviously ready to bury the memory of Zito's time here and certainly has little praise for him after an 0-23 season.

But a funny thing happened during our research for this article: we found out that while Zito's performances in a Knights uniform was certainly putrid, the Knights' overall ineptitude certainly was a contributing factor.

First, a little history. As any avid Knights fan can tell you (if you can find any, that is), Zito came to New York from Springfield after the 2004 season in exchange for the Knights' first round draft pick for 2005 (which was the sixteenth pick overall) and closer Joe Nathan. Knights GM Mitch Pak was heralded by fellow NASBL GM's for pulling off this deal, coming as it did weeks after Pak had obtained lefty Dontrelle Willis in a prior trade. But while Willis was a good pitcher, Zito had been a great one. In three seasons as a 'Tope, Zito compiled an impressive 59-24 record (a .711 winning percentage) and was a two-time 20-game winner. He seemed to be a perfect fit at the top of the Knights rotation, which had been starved for an ace since the trade of Mike Mussina in 2004.

But not everyone was happy with the deal; some whispered that the deal was too good to be true and that Zito, even at age 26, was in a decline. Some pointed to his declining strikeout totals from 2002 (213) to 2004 (144) and his control problems. Others wondered how an organization as smart and well-run as the Isotopes would let Zito go for a severely devalued pick and an unproven closer. But they were drowned out by the media jubilation at the apparent steal orchestrated by Mitch Pak.

Turns out the whisperers were right. Zito had an awful 2005 season for the Knights, going 7-13 with a 6.63 ERA, while Nathan went on to become a perennial All-Star closer. Knights brass, embarrassed at having brought in a high-profile dud, insisted that '05 was an aberration and that Zito would return to form in 2006 and lead the team to prosperity.

But it never happened. Zito ended up laboring in New York for the next three years, never once posting a winning season and never having an ERA under 5. In 2007, Zito contributed almost nothing to an 87-win Knights club, losing 13 games and posting a 6.28 ERA. But the last straw came in 2008, when Zito famously lost 23 games without a win and had a brutal 8.46 ERA. Even on a bad team like the '08 Knights, Zito's ineptitude stood out. He finished the 2008 season with a career Knights record of 26-62 and a 6.51 ERA in 128 starts. Its no secret that Zito's time in New York is over, even if the official announcement hasn't been made yet.

So when the time came to write Zito's retrospective, we thought the ease of excoriating the lefty would be akin to shooting fish in the proverbial barrel. After all, Zito's stats as a Knights were so bad, blasting him out of New York would be easy pickings. Right?

Wrong. When the numbers were crunched and the stats compiled, a stunning thing happened: we found that the quality of Zito's pitching was not appreciably worse in New York than it had been in Springfield. Impossible, we thought. But we checked and rechecked and what we found was surprising.

So instead of blasting Zito, we are here to defend him. Believe us, we are as shocked as you.

Initially, we have to conclude that the whisperers were partially correct; Zito had been in a decline when he came to New York but what the whisperers did not know was that Zito's numbers in Springfield were not as good as they appeared, so that when he came to an inferior team, which the Knights clearly were in comparison to the Topes, his numbers got worse as well. When you get away from the gaudy won-loss record, the WHP and ERA, his numbers for the two clubs are quite similar.

Consider the following breakdown of Zito's stats as a 'Tope and as a Knight.

SPR NYK

W-L 59-26 26-62
ERA 4.71 6.51
WHP 1.51 1.67 (+9.6%)
IP/GS 6.7 6.1 (-8.9%)
K/BB 1.52 1.41 (-7.3%)
BB/9 4.53 4.67 (+3%)
K/9 6.9 6.6 (-4.4%)
H/9 9.02 10.4 (+13.3%)
HR/9 1.12 1.57 (+29%)

Collectively, the numbers indicate that Zito's control, which was widely panned in New York, really did not become very much worse in New York, as his walks per 9 innings ratio only increased by 3% and his strikeouts per nine innings declined by only 4.4%. His WHP increased nearly 10% in New York.

While its clear that Zito was not as good a pitcher in New York as he was in Springfield, the numbers don't explain why he lost so many more games in New York than he did for the 'Topes.

Some of Zito's other numbers worsened as well, such as hits per nine innings (up 13.3%), home runs allowed per nine innings (up 29%) and WHP (up 9.6%). But these numbers are affected by factors not under Zito's control.

Initially, team defense must be considered. The 'Topes, a perennial contender, boast superior defense to the Knights and always have. The Knights have never been about defense, Mitch Pak believing that the NASBL is a slugger's league and that defense doesn't win games. While we can't specify precisely how many probable hits were turned into outs by outstanding 'Topes defense while the opposite occurred with the inferior Knights defense, it seems reasonable to believe that the 'Topes fielders saved numerous hits from occurring while the Knights fielders didn't. That could account for the disparity in hits allowed per 9 innings. This would account for his heightened WHP as well.

Another factor affecting Zito's won-loss record is the quality of the Knights bullpen. In Zito's four seasons in New York, Knights relievers never got below the 30% level in allowing inherited runners to score. In both 2005 and 2006, the Knights bullpen allowed 39 and 37 percent of runners to score, which ranked near the bottom of the league. While its true that in 2002, the 'Topes pen allowed 41% of runners to score, that team also won 98 games, had a .301 team batting average and scored 1005 runs, clearly benefitting the starting pitching. But when you have a combination of a team that can't hit well and allows inherited runners to score, you're going to blow late leads and end up losing games that you might have otherwise have won. That's what happened to Zito as a Knight.

Zito's numbers in Springfield establish that he needed to be supported by good offense and a good bullpen to win. He wasn't the kind of pitcher to blow people away and win 1-0 games. In the only season that the Knights were a formidable offense, 2007, Zito had his best season, posting an 11-13 record and pitching over 209 innings. Its no coincidence, then, that Zito was so terrible in 2008, in a year when the Knights couldn't hit, couldn't score runs and couldn't field all that well either.

Thus, we conclude that while Zito was a terrible bust as a Knight and will always be reviled here, some of the blame lies with the teams he played on. As Julius Caesar said to Brutus in the very same play, "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves."