Stop and Slow

According to Will Carroll at Baseball Prospectus, if we were driving on the highway of Dodger pitchers we wouldn't be moving very fast. I don't know how many of you have ESPN Insider, or subscribe to BP, so I'll include brief notes so all can see. You got the floor Will...

Each season at Baseball Prospectus, I do Team Health Reports for all 30 MLB squads using a system that uses twelve factors to help predict the risk of injury. I assign a red, yellow, or green flag to each player. Red, naturally, is the riskiest. The bad news in this L.A. story? It looks like the team has swapped from Dodgers blue to Dodgers red.

• Randy Wolf:
  Risk Category: Yellow
  PECOTA Says: 23 GS, 7-8, 4.50 ERA, 14.1 VORP
  Wolf was signed to solidify the rotation, but he's only a year removed from shoulder surgery, and just two years removed from a Tommy John surgery on his elbow. Maybe scar tissue is the solid Ned Colletti is looking for.
• Chad Billingsley:
  Risk Category: Red
  PECOTA Says: 28 GS, 12-8, 3.55 ERA, 35.4 VORP
  He broke his leg after slipping on ice, putting his conditioning in even more question than it was before. Sir Mix-A-Lot's favorite pitcher has a lot of questions to answer in spring training, and to add to the risk, a lot of miles on his young arm already.
• Hiroki Kuroda:
  Risk Category: Yellow
  PECOTA Says: 22 GS, 8-7, 4.16 ERA, 16.5 VORP
  Like many Japanese pitchers, Kuroda hit a wall at the end of the season. Most tend to adjust, however, and Kuroda wasn't used as heavily in Japan as most.
• Clayton Kershaw:
  Risk Category: Red
  PECOTA Says: 28 GS, 10-8, 4.00 ERA, 23.9 VORP
  Kershaw threw 160 innings as a 20-year-old. If he lasts the season and makes 30-plus starts, he'll push past 200 IP unless the organization places draconian limits on his workload. Find me a recent pitcher who did that at those ages and lasted.
• Jason Schmidt:
  Risk Category: Red
  PECOTA Says: 9 GS, 3-4, 4.88 ERA, 3.1 VORP
  The Dodgers are both penciling Schmidt into their rotation and suing their insurance company to help pay for his damaged arm. Does anyone seriously expect him to contribute?
• Eric Stults:
  Risk Category: Yellow
  PECOTA Says: 15 GS, 6-7, 4.80 ERA, 6.50 VORP
  I loved this guy in Some Kind of Wonderful. No? This one is a Quad-A pitcher who is precisely the kind of guy you keep in Triple-A to soak up the innings that you shouldn't push onto Kershaw.
• Claudio Vargas:
  Risk Category: Green
  PECOTA Says: 13 GS, 5-5, 4.60 ERA, 7.4 VORP
  Vargas has three partial seasons' worth of experience starting, but has never been able to pitch well enough to lock down the job. He'll start off in the Dodgers' pen, but with this group listed above ahead of him, you have to think that he's likely to see ten starts along the way. Good thing is, he's proven he can do that without breaking.
• James McDonald:
  Risk Category: Yellow
  PECOTA Says: 16 GS, 6-8, 5.11 ERA, 3.2 VORP
  

  The Dodgers want to ease McDonald in more than they were able to do with Kershaw. It's a smart plan, one that goes back to pitching coach Johnny Sain and Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver as a fair way to handle young talent effectively. Like Vargas, he'll start in the pen but the deceptive righty is a real sleeper.

While the pitching staff is shaky, is it really that negative? Bills is a "Red?"