Free Agent Watch: Mitch Talbot

Mitch Talbot has a -1.1 WAR in his career. He produced a 0 WAR in 2010, and a -.6 WAR in 2011. He has a miserable 4.92 PE in his career, with an even worse 6.76 PE in 2011. He had a TR of 5.17 in 2011, and 6.3 TR for his career. His career FIP is 4.96, and he has been plagued by a high BABIP his Major League career, with a .360 BABIP in 2011. He walks almost as many as he strikes out, and that is a horrible combination. He does get a solid amount of groundballs, which further adds to the frustration of his lack of success. While he has decent strikeout totals in the minors, but that hasn't translated, and it seems there is a big enough sample size to assume that it won't. In 44.1 AAA innings in 2011, he had a PE of .17 (in both relief and as a starter. That doesn't sound impressive until you realize he gave up a stunningly high BABIP of .373. His FIP was 3.15 (even though his ERA was 4.26), showing that the Cleveland AAA team must be pretty terrible on defense (I also raised concerns about the lower level Cleveland teams ability to help their pitchers' in my article on Jason Knapp. Talbot gave up 3 unearned runs in AAA as well). FanGraphs seems so sure about Talbot's unluckiness in his Major League career that they have given him a positive 1 WAR for his career. There may still be hope for a Major League career for Talbot, but the time is running out, and he may soon find himself in Independent ball (it would seem that team would be very lucky though).