Thanks but no thanks, Jered Weaver

Did you hear? Jered Weaver is ready to come off the DL and rejoin the rotation. That’s… good news?

OK, look, Jered. I’ve got to be honest, it is really great that you are such a competitor and have been so diligent in your rehab but the thing is- we’re good. Your services are not required at this time. Thanks for the effort, but we’ve got this. So, yeah. Thanks, but no thanks.

I assure you, Jered, this is nothing personal. This is all about on-field performance. You’ve been a great pitcher for the Angels for a long time, arguably one of the three greatest Angels pitchers of all time. You’ve meant a lot to this team and the fans and none of that will be forgotten. The thing is though, you kind of stink right now.

Perhaps that seems insensitive given that you’re coming off an injury, but this has been coming for some time now. Your performance has been slipping for the last few years, but this year, it fell off a cliff. Your ERA of 4.75 is just dreadful and it isn’t particularly flukish given your 4.79 FIP and 5.03 DRA. Seriously, I want to write this off to bad luck or some anomalous peripheral that will regress to the mean to save you, but your BABIP, strand rate and batted ball rates are all well within normal bounds.

This is never easy to hear, but your general talent level has dropped off significantly. This isn’t the typical hand-wringing over your velocity decline, mind you, though reports of you throwing 83 MPH during your rehab start certainly doesn’t help. The problem is that more than the velocity has declined.

First and foremost, none of your pitches really miss bats anymore. Your fastball is generating a 5.15% whiff rate now when it had been over 7% most of your career. Similarly, your curveball and slider’s respective whiff rates are down by more than three percentage points. Your changeup is down from your career whiff rate with the pitch but about the same as the previous season, but that doesn’t tell the entire story.

The changeup has arguably been Jered’s best secondary offering throughout his career. It hasn’t been as effective this year and I had assumed it was just because your fastball was so bad that it was doing a poor job of setting up the changeup. For that I owe you an apology. It turns out that the changeup has gotten worse in its own right. As recently as 2011, your changeup had 10.73 inches of vertical movement. It has steadily declined to just 8.22 inches this year. The same goes for your two-seam sinker. It doesn’t really sink anymore as it, too, has lost well over an inch of vertical movement in the last few years.

The fact of the matter is that your stuff just isn’t good anymore. You’ve probably only made it this far because of your deceptive delivery. Clearly batters aren’t being fooled anymore because they have a 33% (!!!) line drive rate against your “fast”ball. Your curveball used to be a big weapon, but it has generated a .328 ISO so far this year which almost seems impossible.

What I really want to convey to you though is that this isn’t just a one-year aberration. I mean, look at all of those charts. There really isn’t just a giant spike right at the end, these are gradual changes, verifiable trends. As tempting as it might be to just chalk up your awful 2015 season to this hip injury, all signs seem to indicate that while the hip issue probably wasn’t helping, clearing that up isn’t suddenly going to turn everything around.

Here’s the thing though, we kind of need you to be the one to push back from the table and excuse yourself. Because you were so good for so long, you’ve kind of become an institution in Anaheim. Nobody is going to have the balls to tell you to go hang out in the bullpen for awhile. Lord knows that Mike Scioscia can’t help himself when it comes to giving a veteran a role he no longer deserves based solely on said veteran status. I know you yourself are an incredible competitor, so there is about as good a chance of you volunteering to stay out of the rotation as there is of you throwing 95 MPH, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to bring this to your attention. So, what do you think, Jered?

Oh- oh my. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Please don’t hurt me.