Ace. It’s a title the Hudson has flirted with throughout his career, but he’s always been seen as second fiddle. He’s been in John’s shadow (like I mentioned in my Smoltz post) since he arrived in Atlanta and though he was a better pitcher than Barry Zito in Oakland, Barry was the rock star. But Braves fans should remind themselves that Hudson is 31 and is one of the few pitchers in baseball who has a chance to reach the 300-win summit. He’s averaged 15 wins throughout his career, with the high being 20 and the low being 12, and if he continues to average 15 a season until he’s 42, he’ll get there.
2007 was Hudson’s best season as a Brave. Why was he so good? Groundball outs. It’s his bread-and-butter stat and if he’s getting a lot of ground balls, he’s going to win a lot of games. Hudson lead the world in Groundball outs last season last season (382), and if he can continue that trend, he’ll continue to win 15+.
His ERA has been up and down in Atlanta, but you can expect something closer to the 3.33 in 2007 than the 4.86 from his nightmare season in 2006. Like Smoltz, you can expect a Quality Start from Hudson 3 out of every 4 times he steps on the mound and also like Smoltz, Hudson got screwed by the bullpen more than a few times, (he had 4 Tough Losses, a start that the bullpen blew, last year). Had they done their jobs, Hudson would have won 20 games.
Our opening day starter’s best case for 2008 is that he doesn’t have a bad month like the August-early September he had in ‘07 and he wins 20 games and has a sub-3.00 ERA, his best season since 2000. Worst case? 2006 all over again. I’m guessing we’ll see something in the middle with 17-18 wins and a 3.15 ERA, and Hudson will join John Smoltz in the top 10 in WHIP in the NL once again. He’ll get some Cy Young votes, maybe even more than a few, and if the best case scenario comes to pass, he’ll win the thing.
~BH in LA (Happy Easter to all.)
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March 25, 2008 at 7:58 pm
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