Jair Jurrjens

#49 / Pitcher / Atlanta Braves

Height: 6-1

Weight: 200

Bats: R

Throws: R

Born: Jan 29, 1986

Jair Jurrjens was perhaps the "throw-in" during the October 2007 trade between Atlanta and Detroit that sent Gorkys Hernandez and Jurrjens to the Braves and Edgar Renteria to the Tigers. As most teams do, the Tigers immediately regretted the trade with the Braves front office as Edgar Renteria went on to post this stinker of a line:

While Gorkys Hernandez didn't do very well in High-A Myrtle Beach (posting a .264/.348/.387 line over 406 AB), Jair Jurrjens performed well above expectations. Immediately slotted into the rotation, Jurrjens went on to post this line for the Atlanta Braves:

(Why anyone trades with the Braves is a mystery to me.)

Jurrjens was the real deal in 2008 - posting a 3.59 FIP and 4.02 xFIP, it would indicate that his true talent level is not too far out of line with what he did last year. Though he has a slightly high walk rate (3.3 per game), he minimized the damage due to a 0.52 HR/game rate. He got slightly lucky on flyballs staying in the park, as he posted a 7.9% HR/FB rate, which is 2% less than the average rate. It is true that not all pitchers have the same HR/FB rate since higher-quality pitchers can control this statistic to some degree, but in general rates that are large outliers for someone's career or very far away from 10% are likely to be anomalous. Jurrjens is a good bet to regress some, but Marcel predicts him to throw 157 IP with a 3.77 FIP - well above-average.

Though I'm not a Braves fan, I enjoy watching genius at work, and there's no doubt that the Atlanta front office has done an amazing job over the past 10 years. Their ability to accurately judge player talent keeps them competitive year in and year out, and their stretch of division titles is one of the most underrated achievements in team sports.

Josh Kalk's (dixieflatline) PITCHf/x Player Card for Jair Jurrjens indicates that he throws a fastball (92.5 MPH), slider (80.9 MPH), and change (84.4 MPH) as his primary pitches. This seems fairly normal for your standard fastball/slider right-handed starting pitcher, but it's not - look at the velocities. Most pitchers throw their changeup slower than their fastball and their slider, but Jurrjens throws his slider the slowest. Jurrjens' #1 comparable per the PITCHf/x Player Card is Johan Santana, which makes sense given the type of pitches they throw. Santana is well-known for throwing two sliders - a hard one and a slower one, yet even his slider average velocity is higher than his changeup velocity.

Anyway, it's no secret that I like changeups (like this particularly nasty one from Max Scherzer), and Jurrjens has a great one:

Nasty. Here's where he mainly locates it (look at the chart as if you were the catcher):

He actually likes it so much that he throws it to both RHB and LHB quite a bit:

Though he uses it against LHB more often, he is not afraid to use it against righties. If I were him, I would do the same thing!

Part Two of our analysis will look at his pitching mechanics in depth and see how his long-term health looks.