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Rich Harden sleeps eight hours a night; I guess he's pretty normal in that respect. (AP Photo/Jim Prisching)

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So, what better to follow one of the departure of one of the cleverest and most prolific saber-themed writers on the web, than an intermittent serial themed on injured free agents and named after a Kathy Griffin realty show? The question is rhetorical: This is all you get, and you're going to like it, and you're going to like liking it. Sure, Kathy Griffin and Erik Bedard may have as much in common as baseball and politics, but some people are making that work too. At least the pitcher and the comedian have both been under the knife a few times, which is less than I can say for my next project.

Unbelievable as it may be, RIch Harden has never had TJ, arthroscopic debridement, or any baseball-related surgery. Despite this fact, he has logged more time on the disabled list in his career than your average tommy-john patient, straining his UCL, rotator cuff, and obliques (among other things). He's been the quintessential insanely talented guy who if-he-only-could-stay-healthy. He's struck out more than a batter per inning in his career, broken 100 MPH with his fastball, and has a career FIP of 3.53.

Here's what Bill James (or whoever it is that writes the Bill James Annual, I'm told there are people) has to think of Harden and Bedard.

Unlike some of those pitchers over whom many pine but who never seem to make it out of the hot tub, Harden is actually trending in the right direction in time spent on the disabled list, down to almost a career-low 25 days in 2009. As I said before, Harden has good stuff and gets good results from it. Harden is more or less a two-pitch guy now, though he seems to mix in a changeup. His real killer pitch isn't the change, however. It's some crazy thing no one has ever seen before:

via www.fangraphs.com

Actually. That pitch looks kind of familiar. Hmm...

via www.fangraphs.com

The second graph is Mariano Rivera's cutter, a pitch that's I've heard is kind of good. It's lot faster than Harden's slider-thing, but the movement chart just struck me. I'm calling it a slider, though FG calls it a changeup. At any rate, it's a pitch that almost no one else is throwing, which is probably the reason Harden gets so many empty swings on it. Harden's only real problem is that he's been a fly ball pitcher since he cut down to two pitches, and he's been lowering his velocity while still pitching up in the zone. Wrigley Field also did him no favors, contributing to a career-high 15.1% HR/FB in 2009.

His main injuries were a strained UCL in 2007, a strained rotator cuff in 2006, tired arm in 2009, and oblique strains in 2005, 2007, and 2008.  Because his arm problems are so old, I'm tempted to say they are behind him. That said, his 2007 UCL strain is the most concerning and was the most debilitating of his injuries. It's possible that his subsequent oblique problems are a result of a mechanical change undertaken to alleviate some pressure from his elbow. As I said before, he's never been under the knife, and his arm problems appear to be isolated incidents. Perhaps it's just bad conditioning or genetics.

In all, I love Rich Harden. I know he's a big injury risk, but I pray my team signs him, and I can't think of a team that couldn't profit from a Harden signing- even the Yankees who just spent a jillion dollars on their staff last year. He could dominate in the pen, but the lure of a 4+ win season out of the rotation is just too much. Imagine him in say, Seattle, with a spacious outfield and a good defense. Mmm.

For a mechanical breakdown, Kyle actually beat me to the punch by more than a year.

DF, your writing has been really entertaining and it seems like you've really grown into your analysis style. Good luck in the future, and I'll see you around.