What’s with all the Kevin Millwood love?

As I rolled through ESPN.com the other day, I saw a link to a video about AL West offseason activity. Of course, being the dutiful Rangers fan I am, I checked it out. It was a 3 Up, 3 Down segment with Buster Olney. Okay, I thought, this should have some positive Rangers vibes in it, right? Wrong.

The three up: Cliff Lee to Seattle, Ben Sheets to Oakland, Chone Figgins to Seattle.

The three down: John Lackey leaving the Angels, Kevin Millwood leaving the Rangers and Russell Branyan leaving Seattle.

My jaw almost hit the desk.

First, a couple of brief thoughts on the three up: Lee, of course, was the best move. Sheets got $1o million a year after he missed a whole season. I was hoping the Rangers could get him. At half that. Probably a case of Oakland being forced to spend its revenue sharing money. And Seattle is spending $9 million a year on a 32 year old third baseman whose game is predicated on speed. Good luck with all that.

Now the three down. Lackey leaving the Angels? Big loss. Branyan leaving the M’s? A fairly big loss. (He had 31 home runs last year. No, seriously. 31.)

But Millwood leaving the Rangers? Really????

Olney made the argument that Millwood pitched a lot of innings for the Rangers the four years he was in Texas. And it is true that in 2006 and 2009, Millwood threw 215 and 198.2 innings. But in 2007 and 2008, he threw 168.2 and 172.2. With ERAs in each season over 5.00.

It is true that his BABIP those two years was absurdly high. His ERA in each season should have been lower. Going with the more sophisticated FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching), his ERA should have been much lower, as his 2008 FIP was 4.02. So judging by these two stats, along with a very low 68.5% strand rate, Millwood was unlucky in 2008.

But in 2009, those trends basically reversed themselves. Millwood’s ERA dropped to 3.67. His BABIP was .279 (.300 is average). His strand rate was 10 percent higher. And his FIP was 4.80 – more than a run more than expected.

So it seems, going by the numbers, that Millwood was fortunate last year to have the season that he did.

But in reality, Millwood’s season was propped up by a good month of April and a scintillating month of June. In 34.2 innings, Millwood’s ERA was 1.30 in the sixth month, one of the main reasons the Rangers didn’t completely fall out of the race despite the horrible offensive slump that surrounded the club that month.

That month also featured Millwood stranding nearly 90% of all runners. That’s unbelievable. Nine of ten runners that got on base against Millwood failed to score.

Next month, the strand rate fell to 58.7%. The ERA rose to 6.75.

The best month to truly see what Millwood is like as a pitcher now is August. Pretty average BABIP of .302 and strand rate of about 79%.

29 innings pitched, 4.66 ERA. 17 K’s, 16 walks. Second-highest FIP of any month (5.58), because of the number of walks he gave up (more than four per nine innings).

If those numbers don’t scream mediocrity, I don’t know what does. This is a 36-year-old pitcher. He is certainly not going to get any better. He hasn’t struck out more than 125 guys in a season since 2006. His strikeout rate dipped to 5.5 per 9 innings while his walk rate has steadily risen up to more than 3 per 9.

Why are people saying this is a significant loss for the Rangers? Besides the fact that getting Millwood’s declining stats off the mound will help the Rangers, the trade that brought Chris Ray to Texas also freed up enough cash for the Rangers to bring in Rich Harden (and probably make some other moves as well).

If the Rangers can’t replace what Millwood was going to give them, then I am freakin’ terrified of what’s going to happen this season.