"Breakout candidate." These were the last two words of the 2005 player comment for John Patterson. Patterson not only broke out, he pretty much went “clobbering time” on the league. Pick your metric, Patterson has excelled this year: Category Patterson MLB Rank PK_RA 2.84 4th RA 2.84 6th FAIR RA 2.96 6th SNLVAR 6.90 7th VORP 57.50 9th H/9 7.76 10th SO/9 8.39 11th HR/9 0.72 15th *All with min. 150 IP Patterson’s stats belie his miniscule 9-6 record. Using our LUCK metric we can see that Patterson has also been the 13th unluckiest pitcher in the Majors, and should really have more than four additional wins in his briefcase. No outing more exemplifies Patterson’s season than his start on September 3. After being pasted 7-1 the day before by Philadelphia, the Nats entered play trailing the then wild-card leading Phillies by four games and suddenly found themselves in the NL East cellar. Things were going south so quickly that Frank Robinson finally admitted before the game for the first time he did not think the Nats could win the NL East. A loss would assure Philly of at least a split of the four game series and continue the Nats downward spiral--entering the game Washington was 6-11 in their last 17 contests. None of that mattered to Patterson, who came out and dominated: 7 2/3 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 8 K, allowing only a second-inning homer to Pat Burrell. Did he get the win? Of course not. The Washington offense waited until he was out of the game and Joey Eischen was the pitcher of record before they took the lead. Not that it mattered, as Chad Cordero blew his fifth save in the ninth, forcing the Nats to go 12 innings to win the game. Patterson’s dominating performance became a footnote in the wake of the dramatic extra-inning victory. In the chart above, we can see from Patterson’s PK_RA and SNLVAR stats that his success this year is due to much more than his home ballpark. In the chart below, we can see that Patterson has made a pretty big jump in performance, ranking fourth for pitchers in their Age 27 season (thanks to James Click for the data mining): Player Year VORP Pre_VORP DIFF Pat Hentgen 1996 94.7 12.7 82.0 Frank Viola 1987 80.3 20.1 60.2 Charles Nagy 1994 47.4 -6.4 53.8 John Patterson 2005 57.5 5.0 52.5 (For those of you thinking, “1996, wasn’t that the year Hentgen won the Cy Young?” well, yes it was) The Nationals have experienced so many poor performances (Guzman, Castilla, Baerga), so many faux-solutions (Hammonds, P-Dub, Spivey, Drese), and so many seasons slowed or derailed by injuries (Vidro, Day, Johnson) that performances like Patterson's have been a much-needed breath of fresh air. The more dominating seasons from Roger Clemens, Chris Carpenter, and Dontrelle Willis have dominated the Cy Young talk, and rightly so, but something would be out of place if we did not mention the season that Patterson has had. Though his track record is short, Patterson stands to get a good raise in the off-season, as he should be a lock to qualify for arbitration under the “Super-Two” provision. There will certainly be questions of whether or not Patterson can repeat this performance next year, but PECOTA liked him entering the season and he has done nothing to dissuade its confidence. At the very least, it is has been fun to see Patterson finally on the incredible hype that he once carried. --Paul Swydan --

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