Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Wed 7/23
We have 15 games today starting at 1PM EST. That means we’re going to be light on the analysis and possibly heavy on the sarcasm in place of it in order to get this posted at a reasonable hour before the action starts. This also means I’m rushing and more likely to make a mistake today, so if you spot one, just point it out in the comments.
Most of the stats in these charts are pulled directly from the Fangraphs.com database. If a stat is used that you are not familiar with and want to learn more about, their glossary does a terrific job of explaining all of the advanced stats I use in these charts.
Starting Pitching Main Chart
We’re using Seamheads.com 3 year park factors. Home team is in bold. Team Def = UZR/150. L2Yrs is a rolling calendar. 2013+ is since the start of that season. Combo stats are explained below.
A.J. Burnett – got spanked in his last start and hasn’t been great. SF has been hitting lately and he has the 2nd reddest HR rate today.
Alex Cobb- his line looks eerily similar to the one above it. It’s not the greatest matchup, but the Cards have struggled a bit with RHP.
Anibal Sanchez – had more K’s (7) in his last start than in the previous 3 combined (6). And he doesn’t have to face a DH today.
Bartolo Colon – was said to have gotten sick in his last start before allowing 4 runs to the Padres. He has been rolling prior and has another great matchup tonight. He has 13 K’s in 13 innings in his last 2 starts.
Chris Tillman – is in an ugly spot and there are issues buying into the recent ERA.
Clay Buchholz – has been pitching better, but might have the toughest park neutral matchup today against a Toronto team that is still hitting decently without their cleanup hitter.
David Phelps – hasn’t been bad at all and has a favorable matchup against one of the worst and coldest lineups in baseball.
Ervin Santana – has not been good against the bottom of the NL East in his last 2 starts (5 K’s, 5 BB’s vs NYM & PHI). Now he gets another shot at a terrible offense.
Francisco Liriano – has only gone a total of 9 IP in 2 starts back. The 1st one was rough, but he struck out 8 Rockies in his most recent. The BB% could be a big problem.
Ian Kennedy – the Cubs are usually a favorable matchup, but not recently and Padre pitchers aren’t as comfortable away from home.
James Shields- had been more his old self in recent starts before a trip to Boston. The White Sox are sort of a neutral matchup for him today.
Jered Weaver – had his 2nd highest K total of the year against Seattle last time out (8), but you’re not in love with what he has to deal with tonight.
Jesse Chavez – has been a bit better again in recent starts. The Astros lose over 20 points in team wRC+ going from facing LHP to RHP. More on that IFFB% below.
Jorge de la Rosa – easily the day’s worst park included matchup. Stack your RH Nats.
Jose Quintana – although it’s still probably fine in terms of innings and runs, let’s see what the Royals do to his K%. See why I’m skeptical in the SwStr chart below. He has the day’s greenest HR/FB too.
Kyle Lohse – has one of the better matchups of the day (only the Padres are much better). He hasn’t walked a batter in 2 starts.
Lance Lynn – faces one of the majors’ hottest offenses and doesn’t have as much green across his line as you’d think.
Madison Bumgarner – seemed to straighten himself out against one bottom feeding NL East offense in his last start and now he gets another.
Nathan Eovaldi – got smashed in his last start, but at least had 8 K’s. Will a matchup against the Braves pull his K% up enough to be useful?
R.A. Dickey – has seen an increase in the K% lately, but faces the hottest offense in the league.
Stephen Strasburg – has had enough problems in normal road parks that you might want to curb him today in Colorado. The K’s should still be there, but the rest might be a problem. He is a bit prone to the long ball.
Taijuan Walker – hasn’t been all that impressive in recent minor league starts. He had just 1 K in each of his last 2. He does have potentially the day’s best park included matchup today.
Trevor Bauer – has been a bit better recently, but has allowed at least 3 ER in every road start this year, yet no more than 4 in any.
Tsuyoshi Wada – one the back of one decent start is your Plug & Play vs the Padres.
Yu Darvish – as usual is your greenest K% of the day. The actual results have been more questionable, but is coming off a great one and has another top matchup tonight.
Combo K/BB Chart
These are the Combo K & BB numbers from above fleshed out. They are weighted equally in the main chart above. They probably shouldn’t be, but were originally due to space limitations. What’s the correct weighting? Who knows, but now, you have all 6 components (Pitcher: L2Yrs, H/R, L14Days – Opposition: H/A, vL/R, L7Days) that make up the above numbers.
Bartolo Colon – Seattle is a great spot for a guy who already doesn’t walk anyone.
Ervin Santan – drags down his own K% today in a great matchup.
Francisco Liriano – every part of that BB% is red.
Kyle Lohse – the greenest walk rate of the day is green and mostly very green all the way across.
Stephen Strasburg – the Rockies don’t often strike out in their home park.
Yu Darvish – is strong enough on his own to have the day’s top K%. The Yankees drag it down with not a single number above 19%.
Combo Batted Ball Chart
Ditto for the Combo Batted Ball stats in the Main Chart above.
A.J. Burnett – the Giants will hit HR’s on the road and he’s allowed 1 in each of his last 2 starts.
Alex Cobb – is not one to allow a lot of LD’s and the Cards aren’t a team to hit them. The HR/FB issue is almost entirely on him, but the high GB% makes it not as bad as it looks.
Anibal Sanchez – has only allowed 3 HR’s all year. The D’Backs, in a great park, only really hit them at a league average rate at best.
Jesse Chavez – the day’s top IFFB% is driven almost entirely by 2 of them out of 5 fly balls in his most recent start. It’s otherwise pretty league average across the board.
Jose Quintana – allows HR’s at a little below a league average rate ordinarily in a tough park. It’s always a benefit facing the Royals.
Stephen Strasburg – the HR/FB is dangerous across the board.
Taijuan Walker – should keep the ball in the park today.
K/SwStr Chart
Getting called strikeouts can be a skill, but it’s usually not a sustainable one at a large deviation from the league rate (catcher framing can make some difference here). K% correlates heavily with SwStr% though. Look for a large difference and you might find a potential adjustment before anyone else.
Alex Cobb – has had 3 starts of a sub 7 SwStr% with 3 K’s or less and 2 starts of a 12+ SwStr% with 5 K’s or more in his last 5 starts. Small sample size….he’s fine.
Anibal Sanchez – had a 14 SwStr% and 7 K’s in his last start. If you look at the 3 prior, it’s OAK, TB, & KC, which it seems every pitcher must face back to back to back these days and it messes up all the K%’s. I feel better about his K-rate now than I did before his last start.
Bartolo Colon – keeps doing his thing. He may bet more called strikes than most pitchers, but should regress under 3.0 K/SwStr eventually. He had his first double digit SwStr% of the year against the Padres last start with 6 K’s (21 BF).
Clay Buchholz – faced KC his last time out and still has a couple of starts on the tail end of the last 30 days where he was just getting healthy and missing bats without getting K’s. He had 19 K’s in the 2 starts in between and has at least a 9.9 SwStr% in each of his last 5 starts.
Dan Haren – the SwStr% has climbed recently, but 7.4% would still be by far the worst of his career while the his K% hasn’t exceeded 21.4% since 2010.
David Phelps – has been befuddling me for weeks, but it finally feels like we’re making some progress as the SwStr% rises while the K% stays the same.
Ervin Santana – has a similar SwStr% to Strasburg, so they should have similar K-rates, right? Only once in his career has he had a SwStr% exceeding 10 (10.8 in 2008). That year, he had a 23.9 K%.
Jose Quintana – now it’s even more absurd. His last start was against the Astros. Against KC, I’d not be surprised if his K-rate dropped hard today.
Yu Darvish – has a K% right around his career rate (30.2%) with a SwStr% a full point worst (11.9%).
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
A.J. Burnett – is BABIPing .322 with a 64 LOB% over the last month.
Bartolo Colon – has a 60.3 LOB% over the last 30 days.
Chris Tillman – where do you start? The .203 BABIP, the 80.9 LOB%, or the 5.9 HR/FB over the last month?
Clay Buchholz – his BABIP is 50 points above his career average, while his strand rate is 7 points below.
Dan Haren – as you see, the FIP isn’t as far off as the other estimators for the last month. That’s 6 HR’s in 25 innings. The BABIP and LOB are a little off, but it’s really the HR’s.
Jesse Chavez – has a .422 BABIP over his last 4 starts.
Madison Bumgarner – has seen a slight skills decline in the last month with a decrease K-rate, but the LOB% is 62.8.
Stephen Strasburg – immediately I was going to scream BABIP, but it’s a reasonable .316 over the last month, but he has allowed 6 HR’s in 32 innings for a 22.2 HR/FB.
Yu Darvish – lots of strikeouts, but a .329 BABIP and 14.7 HR/FB in his last 5 starts.
BABIP Chart
Last year, both Dan Rosencheck and Steve Staude separately found that high Infield Fly Ball (IFFB) rates and low Zone Contact (Z-Contact) rates correlated well with lower BABIP for pitchers. I won’t pretend to know how much of the variation in BABIP can be explained by these factors, but since they seem to have some effect, here they are. See if you can use it to your advantage.
It’s presented as the difference between team and pitcher BABIP allowed because team defense can explain a lot of the variance from league average on its own. For example, if you have a pitcher with a much lower BABIP than his team’s allowed (red), then you look for some factors that may support it (green). If you have a pitcher with a much higher BABIP (green), but decent IFFB and Z-Contact rates you may be onto something (check batted ball profile too).
Anibal Sanchez – his last 2 games have seen BABIP’s north of .330 so it’s catching up on him, but still 40 points south of his career total.
Clay Buchholz – had a sub .200 BABIP in 3 of 4 starts until .417 in his last. It should even out.
Ian Kennedy – is still 30 points north of both his career and his team’s allowed rate. His IFFB is 3 points less than his career rate, which probably isn’t enough to mean anything substantial though.
Jesse Chavez – doesn’t have much of a career baseline established, but the line drive rate (23.1%) is slightly elevated. The BABIP has been .400 or worse in 3 of his last 4 starts.
Jorge de la Rosa – is still sitting 40+ points below his career rate. His LD% (15.3) is well below his career rate (20.6).
Madison Bumgarner – his career BABIP is .294 and while some of his indicators are a bit worse this year, he should still stabilize.
R.A. Dickey – knuckleballers don’t play by BABIP rules.
Stephen Strasburg – I saw at least one bloop fall in his last game, but otherwise I’m not sure what it is aside from the 23.9 LD%.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
A.J. Burnett- the price is favorable enough that you might want to take a look as a pitcher #2 if using one of the top guys. The K’s have been good enough with at least 5 in each of his last 5.
Alex Cobb – if you’re looking at Burnett, you probably also want to peek at Cobb for the same price. The K’s may be a bit reduced, but the ground ball specialist should still be able to hang in there against a team that struggles against RHP.
Anibal Sanchez – the matchup today, along with a price tag right in line with the first two guys mentioned allow me to talk about him in this section for the first time in a while. He struck out more than 5 for the first time in 5 starts in his last outing and should keep the ball in the park even in Arizona against a bad team against RHP and at home.
Bartolo Colon – again, take your pick. All 4 of these guys are priced very similarly. Colon’s most attractive asset today is the matchup in Seattle. He should keep the ball in the park and make them earn anything they get.
Clay Buchholz – is cheaper than the guys above and may scare you with the matchup, but is really under-valued today. He allowed 10 hits to the Royals, but it shouldn’t surprise you that 15 of 24 batted balls were on the ground. Prior to that he had 19 strikeouts in 2 starts and has been proving that he’s healthy again. Though it’s risky, there’s a real shot at some upside here.
David Phelps – still a skeptic of that K-rate, the results have been there and the Texas lineup scares nobody. He’s the cheapest of the guys I’ve mentioned so far.
James Shields – is the most expensive guy mentioned so far, but still moderately priced and worth a mention. Before running into a hot Boston team, he’d been pitching well and the best defense in the game should help keep the damage down while he should accumulate a few K’s.
Jesse Chavez – while you have to pick your spots with LHP’s against this Houston lineup now, they’re still very susceptible to RHP’s with the same lofty K rates and less offense. It’s true that he’s failed to go 6 innings and allowed at least 3 ER’s in 3 of his last 4 starts, but he also has 15 K’s and just 3 ER’s in his last 11.2 IP and it’s always nice to pitch in Oakland. He’s one of the higher potential upside guys of the day. He might be the best price tag value guy if things go the way they should today.
Jose Quintana – I may be making a mistake, but it might be tough to pay an above average price tag in a spot where I’m not sure the K’s are going to be there today. You may still get something like 7 IP with 2 ER though.
Kyle Lohse – the Reds are a must stream against any decent pitcher right now and Lohse is at least that. He faced them in Cincinnati a few weeks ago and though he did only last 5 innings (3 ER), he struck out 8.
Madison Bumgarner – ended a string of rough starts, as you knew he would eventually, against the Marlins. He gets another bottom feeder from that division today. He’s tied for the #2 price of the day with a HR prone pitcher in Colorado. He may strike out a few less batters, but I like his odds of a strong overall outing a bit better.
Nathan Eovaldi – if you’re looking for another rock bottom price tag for your #2 who nobody else should have after his last outing, the Braves have been making some daily fantasy pitching lines look good this year. In 3 outings against them already in 2014 he’s gone 21 innings with 3 ER’s with 16 K’s and 2 BB’s.
Stephen Strasburg – if you want to roll the dice with the potential for K’s and HR’s today, the Rockies may not be rolling their A lineup out there today. It’s a steep price to pay for a lot of risk today though.
Taijuan Walker – he has a lot of talent and he’s cheap with a great matchup. He just hasn’t been all that dominant lately. There is something to be said about seeing teams for the first time, but it’s not like the Mets don’t know who he is.
Tsuyoshi Wada – I might consider a lot of people, including family members and readers, at this price tag against the Padres.
Yu Darvish – has to be your top guy for overall performance today, right? But can you afford him? He’s failed to reach at least 8 K’s only twice in his last 13 starts.
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.