James Shields: How Would He Fit in Houston?

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We’ve all heard that there is a mystery team that has put in an offer in the 5 year/$100M range on James Shields, right? Good. I’m going to give both the pros and cons of a potential deal involving Shields coming to the Astros. But first, the facts.

Shields, or “Big Game James” as he is known to some, is a 33-year old right-handed pitcher, most recently of the Kansas City Royals. In his nine-year career, Shields holds a 114-90 record, with a career ERA of 3.72, while averaging right about 212 innings per season. Last year, Shields went 14-8 with a 3.21 ERA and threw 227 innings. Over the past four seasons, his average ERA is a much better 3.17.

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Shields is a ground ball pitcher, with a career 1.25 ground ball to fly ball ratio over his career. He has four pitches, and he uses them all. Like most pitchers, his fastball (92.4 mph) is used the most, at a 41.4% clip, but his cutter (86.7 mph, 24.2%), curveball (79.6, 12.5%) and changeup (85.3, 21.9%) get a fair amount of attention as well.

Pros

Adding James Shields to the Houston staff makes sense for the obvious reasons. He would give the Astros a fourth quality pitcher, and would protect them against some regression from Collin McHugh and Dallas Keuchel, who figure to be at or near the top of the rotation.

While his career ERA may not be outstanding, he will become the workhorse on any staff he joins. When he was traded from Tampa to Kansas City, he wanted all of the starters to pitch 200 innings, and to reach 1,000 innings as a staff. He could provide some extra motivation on a young team, with young pitching on the way.

Having Shields on the Astros would take some of the pressure off of Keuchel. Instead of having to face the likes of Felix Hernandez, Yu Darvish, Sonny Gray and Garrett Richards, he would be paired against Hisashi Iwakuma, Derek Holland, Scott Kazmir and Jered Weaver.

With Shields eating over 200 innings, the bullpen would log fewer innings, and I think we can all agree that that’s a winning proposition, no matter how optimistic we are about the new acquisitions.

Next: The Cons of Shields in Houston

Oct 21, 2014; Kansas City, MO, USA; Kansas City Royals starting pitcher

James Shields

(33) reacts after the first inning during game one of the 2014 World Series against the San Francisco Giants at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports

Cons

Let’s start with the amount of money that is reportedly on the table. At five years, $100+ million, we are looking at at least $20M a season for a player that will be on the decline before the contract expires.

The Astros have pitching talent in the minors. Adding Shields would be nice for 2015, but over the final four years, he wouldn’t have the same impact, and would hardly be worth $20M per season. With the team being so close to finishing “the process” we’re all a little antsy. Signing Shields now would be like taking your seatbelt off on a roller coaster before the ride has come to a complete stop. Sure it sounds fun, but if you wait just a touch longer, everything will be just fine.

Having thrown 1,910 1/3 innings over his career already, how will his arm continue to hold up? While I believe that his arm will be fine, for a team that has already reached their spending limit this offseason, to go over that limit by such a large margin they would have to be certain of the player they would be getting.

His postseason numbers don’t inspire much confidence in a team that hopes to be participating in October festivities in the near future. If James Shields is your ace, you’d expect a little better return on investment than a career 5.46 ERA, which includes 2014 postseason ERAs of 7.20 in the wild card game, 3.00 in the ALDS, 7.20 in the ALCS, and 7.00 in the World Series. In five postseason starts in 2014, Shields pitched 25 innings, or five innings per start. While the superb Kansas City bullpen likely had something to do with his low innings total, the ERAs he posted couldn’t have helped his cause.

I say pass on Shields. Let’s let Jeff Luhnow send us on “the process” roller coaster ride one more season. When we come to a complete stop, this will all be worth it.

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