Advanced Pitching Charts: Wednesday, April 6th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2016-04-06 23:37:29

Dave Stewart may be learning a new word this week: Regression. The Diamondbacks spent a lot, an absurd amount really, in terms of money and prospect to acquire two pitchers this off-season. The Diamondbacks thought they were two Aces that would drive them to a division title with a combined ERA well under five last year. The underlying metrics showed ERA estimators over seven, suggesting that that Dave Stewart had just acquired two of the biggest over-achievers in the league last year (in terms of ERA). It’s not that these are bad pitchers at all. In fact, Zack Greinke is probably a one A or number two pitcher on a contender and Shelby Miller is a decent three or above average fourth. Nobody expects what happened to them this week to continue at that pace, but Greinke is over 10% to his 2015 run total and Miller over 20% to his 2015 HR total after just a few innings. That’s not just regression. That’s a punch in the face. Every year there are outliers, even extreme outliers, but they are very difficult to predict past a certain point. It’s just amazing that the guys who sometimes make millions to make these transactions don’t always see the things that should be right in front of their face for someone in their position. Expect these guys to be much better the rest of the season, but nothing like last year.

New season changes to the article were outlined yesterday which you can find here so we won’t repeat those again today. Park factors should be updated by next week.

Don’t forget to check lineups, umpire assignments, line movement, and Kevin’s weather report as they are released later in the day, all of which may change the equation and help you decide between two pitchers of otherwise equal value in a pinch.

Most stats 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 used here.

Starting Pitching Main Chart

We’re using Seamheads.com’s three-year park factors. Home team is in bold. Team Def = UZR/150. L2Yrs is a rolling calendar. Hm/Rd xFIP is since the start of the 2015 season. Opp team offensive stats are wRC+.

Aaron Nola was the first major pitching prospect of a newly restocked Phillies farm system to make a major league appearance last year in just his second year as a professional. He acquitted himself fairly well with a high HR rate (15.1%) countering a high strand rate (80.4%). He doesn’t throw particularly hard (90.7 mph), but the strikeout rate broke 20% and the walk rate was below league average, so that’s something. Expect him to stick around the middle of the rotation, just don’t expect too much from him. A matchup with the Reds is not terrible, but they do have some left-handed power in hitter’s park.

Brandon Finnegan has flashed a 24.4 K% in the majors so far, but also a 9.8 BB% and eight HRs in just 55 innings combined from the rotation and bullpen. Many might remember him from his bullpen role in Kansas City’s first post-season run and then as a major piece in the Johnny Cueto trade. There’s upside here against weak Philadelphia offense, but also a lot of risk in a tough home park.

Carlos Rodon dominated LHBs last season, but had issues throwing strikes and getting RHBs out. He frequently used up all of his pitches by the 5th inning, but showed some improvement later in the season, going at least six innings in each of his last eight starts. Dropping the walk rate and developing a 3rd pitch (change-up?) to neutralize righties would go a long way in reaching his potential. As if the White Sox needed another dominant lefty. We’ll see how that goes right away as he’s likely to face an almost entirely RH lineup in Oakland.

Collin McHugh didn’t have a bad season last year, but did take a step backward from his 2014 breakout. Interestingly enough, it was more of a regression than a drop off. He did slightly beat his peripherals in 2014, but his K% dropped over 5 points despite less than a 1 point drop in his SwStr and his BABIP rose 50 points with neither mark being too absurd. Which version is real then? Yankee Stadium might be a tough place for a RHP to start to figure that out.

Juan Nicasio successfully pitched out the Dodger bullpen last year and many thought he would have a similar role in Pittsburgh, but he’s had a very impressive spring as a starter, which the Pirates are crediting to a few minor adjustments enabling him to keep the ball down more. Spring stats don’t mean anything and the Cardinals could bomb him, but it’s something and nobody can argue that he was always talented. If he can now throw strikes and get LHBs out, he could be at least be a useful cheap arm in the Pittsburgh rotation, who needs all the cheap they can get. Pitching coach Ray Searage has had success with under-achieving arms before (Liriano, Happ).

Kyle Gibson has always been an arm that’s been interesting to me as he seems to have an ability to miss bats that rarely manifests itself in actual strikeouts. He did raise his K% for the 2nd straight season to a more respectable 17.7%, but I still feel like there might be more there and Baltimore is an offense full of whiffs (21.7 K% vs RHP in 2015). A rate of two ground balls for every fly ball should help him keep the ball in the park and give him a chance here as his 26.6 Hard% over the last two year is a solid number.

Michael Pineda had a great 2015 season….or at least I thought he did. I knew there was some inconsistency, some betrayals of defense, but I had no idea his ERA was that high. The underlying numbers are fantastic. He has an above average strikeout rate and doesn’t walk anybody. The contact is occasionally a bit hard and he had an 18.6 HR/FB at home last season. The Astros have some power, so that last number is concerning today, but he should also be able to generate some strikeouts.

Mike Leake had an 18.2 K% in 2014 and people were suddenly interested with his ground ball profile despite the high HR rate. That was partially a product of his ball park. Then he had just a 15.3 K% in 2015, like his 15.2 K% in 2013 and 15.3 K% in 2012. Oh, well. Because the high ground ball rate makes the career 13.7 HR/FB less intimidating and the relocation to St Louis should do wonders for that number as well (though it sat at 15.4% over his last two months in San Francisco last year). The BABIP (.260) was a bit low last year, but shouldn’t jump too much. It may be prudent to expect a league average pitcher without a lot of upside and maybe a lower HR rate. Nearly $100 million seems to be the going rate for that these days. The Pirates represent an average matchup here in a decent park for RHPs, but better for lefties.

Sonny Gray makes his 2016 debut today after a bout of food poisoning on Opening Day. That should make him the top overall option on the mound when most teams are throwing their number three, but that may not be the case. An entirely lazy writer would tell you to click the link in the 3rd paragraph of the open to see what was written about him on Monday. A slight less lazy one will make the effort to copy and paste as he sees no reason that the same wouldn’t apply today: “”(player-popup)Sonny Gray”:/players/sonny-gray-14979 is a very good pitcher to have on a real life baseball team you root for. He excels at taking advantage of some things that are beyond an average pitcher’s control. He’s managed contact well and in a favorable park he’s generally able to turn batted balls into outs. From a DFS and sabermetric standpoint though, he really comes across as somewhat more average. We’ll dig in more below in the ERA Chart comments. The White Sox should be a tougher offense this season, but still look to be a favorable matchup at home.”

Stephen Strasburg separates himself from the group today. He’s a potential Ace in a number two’s body, pitching on Day Three. For a long time he was either injured or under-achieving, occasionally due to an enormous BABIP. He still did so to a small extent last and even saw a slip in his SwStr%, but he also showed what all the hype was about with a FIP and xFIP of two after the break last season. He opens against a weak Atlanta offense that did not score a run against him in two starts last year.

NOT AS GOOD AS THEY LOOK

This list is reserved for pitchers who may look attractive because their ERAs are much lower than their estimators. The reason for this is almost always extreme BABIP, LOB, and/or HR/FB deviation from the norm, so we’ll just quote those stats and be done with them.

League AVG (.295 BABIP – 72.3 LOB% – 10.8 HR/FB)

Yovani Gallardo (.303 BABIP – 77.2 LOB% – 8.8 HR/FB) is our first 2016 entry in this section. With a strikeout rate that’s dropped that low in a tough park, he really not worth any extra words…..as a ball player for daily fantasy purposes at least. He may be a fine human being otherwise and worthy of many more words.

NO THANK YOU (In order from least to most offensive)

Andrew Cashner was one SD pitcher to pitch better at home last season, but was very unstable overall and finds himself with a tough matchup on Wednesday.

Bud Norris got hit HARD last season. Disregard the home numbers as he’s in a much better situation now and should rebound somewhat (estimators two and a half runs below his ERA) and could even be a respectable pitcher this year, but are we all going to have a large piece of Bryce Harper and Daniel Murphy tonight?

K/BB Chart

Pitcher and Opponent K% & BB% for titled splits, similar to the Main Chart.

K/BB Chart – Opponent

Batted Ball Chart

Pitcher and Opponent Batted Ball stats.

Batted Ball Charts – Opponent

K/SwStr Chart (2015 LG AVG – 19.5 K% – 9.3 SwStr% – 2.1 K/SwStr)

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 and other factors may 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.

We’re using 2015 numbers for the first week. As mentioned, we’re showing just starting pitcher league averages in the header information now, which drops K% and SwStr% just slightly from the overall average that includes relievers.

Yet again, there are no outliers today, but the range is larger and a couple are at least close and maybe worth talking about today.

Collin McHugh is interesting mostly for the fact that his K/SwStr went from 2.31 in 2014 to 1.93 in 2015. That’s a pretty big change and I’d think his K% has a chance to jump back over 20 if he maintains a double digit SwStr%.

Stephen Strasburg had his highest K% since 2012, but his 11.2 SwStr% is right at his 11.3% career mark. In fact, he’s been between 11.0-11.4% in four of the last five seasons and has a 2.54 career K/SwStr. Although he’s on the edge of a generally acceptable range for this number last year, it’s not too far off from his career rate.

ERA Estimators Chart (2015 LG AVG – 4.10 ERA – 4.07 SIERA – 4.00 xFIP – 4.03 FIP)

How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.

Michael Pineda is our top under-achiever and though I haven’t done the numbers, I’d expect the top under-achiever of the year. The enormous home HR rate led to a 14.7 overall number that might just end up being a Yankee Stadium thing, while a .332 BABIP should improve (no bad indicators) along with his 68.6 LOB%. So, if we’re looking at his FIP (FIP uses a pitcher’s actual HR rate, while xFIP and SIERA normalize it to league average essentially), he’s still a run lower. Expect much better results overall this season.

Sonny Gray had a 16.6 LD%, 25.1 Hard%, and 8.2 IFFB% that were all career best. You would then expect him to regress from a .255 BABIP this season. However, none of those marks are very far from his three year established career rates and considering the favorable park, he may be a candidate to sneak by a little below his estimators, but not by a run. If the strikeout and walk rates remain average, you might expect to see an ERA at least in the low threes this season.

Stephen Strasburg was a bit worse than you’d expect in each of the three major indicators we use to separate ERA from estimators here: BABIP (.311), LOB% (70.7), and HR/FB (12.4). However, none were really absurd and close enough to his career numbers. The Washington defense struggled last season and in fact, he’s had a BABIP between .311 and .315 in three of the last four seasons. Maybe this is just who he is to some extent with an ERA that runs a little over a quarter of a run above his estimators for his career.

BABIP Chart (2015 LG AVG – .295 BABIP – 21.1 LD% – 9.5 IFFB% – 87.7 Z-Contact%)

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 may be onto something (check batted ball profile too).

Brandon Finnegan balanced out his low BABIP and high LOB% with a sky high 21.6 HR/FB to keep his ERA in line with estimators, but that’s not something that’s likely to continue as the 16.5 LD% is just not sustainable (only two qualified pitchers topped that last season).

Juan Nicasio only pitched out of the bullpen last season, but allowed a 24.8 LD% that should regress. I wouldn’t expect him to have that Z-Contact% either as a starter though.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Here we normally rank pitchers by value tiers with their overall rank in parenthesis next to the name for the top five to ten. These are not hard and rigid rankings. Everything is fluid and can changed depending on ever evolving situations throughout the day. This is the more opinionated part. If there are questions, it’ll help show you where my imaginary boundaries are drawn.

Today, and probably for the first week or so, we’re not going to do that though. Instead, I’d like to revert to the previous format of just talking a bit more about the pitchers you might be considering today in relation to their price tags until we get a bit more information about 2016.

It looks like a few pitchers that cost a bit more than I originally expected at the time of writing.

Aaron Nola is perhaps not as useful today as I originally thought. His DraftKings price is a bit high and while much lower on FanDuel, he may not be the pitcher you want when you’re only allowed one.

Brandon Finnegan is high risk, above average return, which explains his low cost. The matchup is a good one against the Phillies, but the park could cause him some problems, even more so if he can’t throw strikes.

Carlos Rodon – When I wrote him up above, I didn’t notice how much he costs today. He may get there, but I don’t know that I’d expect him to exceed his cost by much even in one of his better efforts and although there are no scary names in the Oakland lineup, they will run it out there heavily right-handed. He has to show that his change-up can handle that.

Collin McHugh – Meh, his price tag is not really very attractive in this spot either.

Juan Nicasio is somewhat interesting for some of the same reasons as Finnegan today. The cost is similar. The matchup is much worse, but the park is much more favorable. It may be cold again, but that didn’t stop the offenses last night. I imagine those who put too much emphasis on March stats may be on him today in GPPs.

Kyle Gibson is my sneaky GPP play tonight. This is not to say you should expect a breakout and I should probably jump off the band wagon if he under-achieves his SwStr for another couple of months, but I think this might be a better spot than it initially appears and I wouldn’t expect anyone to be on him. If I’m playing 10 lineups with two pitchers, I’d probably have him in two or maybe three.

Michael Pineda is priced more to his underlying metrics than his actual ERA because strikeouts generate just as many daily fantasy points as runs allowed cost you. He may allow a ball or two to leave the yard tonight. In fact, it’s likely, but he won’t walk anybody and should generate one of the top strikeout totals of the night. I’m borderline on him for cash games, though don’t really see any other more stable sources with nearly his upside.

Mike Leake is priced just above a couple of higher upside, higher risk type guys, including the pitcher he’s facing. With pitcher pricing generally being low, I guess I don’t see why you’d use him today, but he probably won’t hurt you too much. If he does have a bad day though, he probably won’t pick you up by missing many bats.

Sonny Gray is (at least for me) perhaps the most over-rated pitcher from a DFS perspective. He’s often over-priced with middling peripherals. That said, he’s in a solid matchup at home for what looks like a more reasonable price tag than usual, which keeps him in consideration. That was all written on Monday. On Wednesday, he’s looking like he could and should be one of the top owned pitchers. More of a cash play for me with sparing use in GPPs.

Stephen Strasburg has a price tag that soars far above all others today and I expect him to easily be today’s top owned pitcher. He has been known to blow up in the past, so there is some merit to a partial GPP fade (in favor of Pineda?), but there’s also a good chance he blows just about everybody else out of the water in a great spot.

You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.

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