Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Friday, April 24th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2015-04-27 17:47:59

Friday presents us, as Friday often will, with the full 15-game schedule tonight. Two starters are making their 2015 debut, one a bit more exciting than the other, but most of them are onto their fourth start of the season. No matter, we’re going to cover them all and look for those edges wherever they can be found.

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

NOTE – Team defense stats are still 2014 as UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) is not available for 2015 yet.

Alex Wood has seen a sharp drop in his bat missing skills and although what’s directly hurt his game seems to be an elevated BABIP, there is some connection as more balls in play with a higher BABIP is going to lead to worse results. He gets the tasty Phillies matchup, but they haven’t been hopeless against LHP so far.

Andrew Cashner gets a tough LA team that trounced him in his first start and has generally mauled righties so far. His strikeouts are way up and validated by SwStr. The change seems to be in which fastball he favors (the four-seam this year according to Pitch F/X). He’s allowed 12 runs but only 5 earned and none in his last 2 starts.

Carlos Martinez has had some things go his way this season as you’ll see in the charts below. While he’s a sure fire candidate for regression in some areas, the team he’s facing has been horrible this season and is striking out a ton, including 26.5% of the time over the last week.

Chris Heston has done enough in his first three starts to make him interesting going forward, especially at home, but not today.

Dallas Keuchel has twice as many walks as last year and even more ground balls, but is still pretty good. We’ll talk a lot about him in the ERA section. The A’s have shown no power at home (4.3 HR/FB) or vs LHP (3.1 HR/FB), but excel in making contact. Result: expect a lot of ground balls.

Danny Duffy is off to a rough start, but at least he’s not shouting profanities at the other team’s batters. The White Sox have been the second worst offense vs LHP, striking out 28.5% of the time against them and 24.8% of the time overall this past week.

Danny Salazar was averaging nearly 96 mph in his season debut against Minnesota last weekend. He got an astounding 20 swings and misses and 10 Ks and has a 27.5 K% over the last two calendar years. The Tigers are a tough bunch, who have been tamed lately.

Drew Smyly did not complete four innings in any of his minor league rehab starts this month, so I’d be skeptical that he can go much more than five innings today. He’s had great success since arriving in Tampa Bay last season, where they told him to “throw that high fastball young man”. The Toronto bats remain the hottest in the majors, even without Joey Bats these last few days. They’ve thumped lefties as well.

Felix Hernandez is a beast at home with a 28.6 K% there since the start of last season. He faces the worst road offense in the league so far. The Twins have shown no power (1.3 HR/FB) away from home.

Garrett Richards was very rusty, walking four, in his season debut in Houston.

Gerrit Cole was on my breakout list this season and that’s exactly what it looks like he might do. The bat missing portion of his game is way up, resulting in a connected spike in K rate. The D’Backs are a weak hitting lineup, but the park pushes them closer to neutral. Cole has a 25.1 K% on the road since the start of last season.

Jacob DeGrom is going to put his career 5.9 HR/FB to the test in Yankee Stadium. That’s not likely something he can sustain, but his ERA estimators have him picking up right where he left off last year, with a 17.9 K-BB% that’s exactly the same.

Jon Lester is not enjoying his time in Chicago so far. What’s wrong? Maybe nothing, but maybe something. Let’s find out below. There’s a big hint in this chart though, and that hint is line drives, which these Reds hit a lot of last time they faced him. They have an absurd 19.1 HR/FB at home.

Jordan Zimmermann has completely stopped missing bats and been terrible with just a 2.9 K-BB%. His velocity is down almost two miles per hour, although a bit better in his last start. He’s in a good spot against the struggling Marlins, but just doesn’t seem to be pitching like himself so far.

Jose Quintana has been terrible and has to deal with daily fantasy miserableness in Kansas City. They’ve been very tough on LHP, including having Chris Sale a little off his game last night.

Mat Latos was on my pre-season, entirely fabricated inside my own head, Buyer Beware List along with guys like Chris Tillman and Doug Fister, but he was in a class by himself. Even I didn’t think it would be this bad though.

Matt Garza has a walk rate (11.3%) equal to his strikeout rate. That’s never a good thing.

Michael Pineda has peripheral metrics that tell a completely different story than the results so far. He’s been doing a great job missing bats, but the ones he hasn’t have really caused a lot of trouble for him. The Mets haven’t lost a game in nearly two weeks, but started the season with some offensive struggles on the road.

Miguel Gonzalez has had one exceptional start by his underlying metrics where he struck out 10 Yankees and walked only one, but the other two have been stinkers (9 BB – 10 K), though the overall results are again a success due to a solid BABIP (.262) and 82.5 LOB%. He has had a strong SwStr% in every single start. The Boston offense has been just as disappointing as last year despite money spent.

Phil Hughes keeps his excellent walk rate, but the bat missing portion of his game may be even worse than the K% looks. Last year, you would have loved him in this spot, but the Mariners have been able to mount an impressive offense at home.

R.A. Dickey can’t find the plate, resulting in a 5.0 K-BB%. Ok, rough April weather may be a culprit, but he’s pitched two of his three games indoors and will do so again against a team with a double-digit walk rate both at home and vs RHP. Dickey walked five Rays a couple of weeks ago. His success thus far has been entirely fueled by BABIP.

Rick Porcello got lit up in his last start and has allowed a HR or two in every start. He’s already up to five on the year after allowing exactly 18 in four of the last five years. Baltimore has a 23.9 HR/FB at home and 19.8 HR/FB vs RHP this year.

Scott Kazmir picked up eight strikeouts the last time he faced these Astros and now gets them at home where it’s a bit tougher for their RH power to play. Against LHP, they have struck out in 27.1% of plate appearances, but have a 19.4 HR/FB.

Shane Greene is probably neither as good as his ERA says, nor as bad as his estimators think. We’ll get into it below. He did walk four in his last start though. The Cleveland offense has under-whelmed to start the season.

Zack Greinke hasn’t missed bats at the same rate he has in the past, but has remained good and travels to Petco to race the now competent San Diego offense.

Combo K/BB Charts

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 originally were due to size 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.

Combo K/BB Charts – Opponent

Combo Batted Ball Charts

See the explanation for the K/BB chart above.

Combo Batted Ball Charts – Opponent

K/SwStr Chart (2014 LG AVG – 20.3 K% – 9.3 SwStr% – 2.18 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.

Alex Wood – If the sharp drop in K% isn’t alarming enough, his SwStr% has been cut in half from an above average mark last year. Even more disturbing is that it’s been consistently low in each start, not once topping 6.1%. He got only two swings and misses (95 pitches) against a tough Toronto team last time out.

Carlos Martinez hasn’t missed as many bats as you’d expect from a guy that throws gas. He did so at a much better rate last year out of the pen. If his SwStr% doesn’t improve, expect his K% to drop to somewhere near league average.

Josh Collmenter – His SwStr% is close to what it was last year when he struck out nearly twice as many batters (rate wise). It’s also been fairly consistent in each start this year, as have his strikeouts. You’re not going to get much, but you’re going to get more strikeouts soon at least.

Mat Latos – His SwStr% is worse than it was last year, so don’t buy for a minute that his strikeout rate is back to league average.

Phil Hughes has seen his SwStr% cut in half from both last year and his career rate. In fact, it peaked at 6.5% in his first game and has dropped in both subsequent ones, including just two swings and misses through 86 pitches in his last start. His velocity is down nearly a mile per hour, but was also in a similar range last April.

Shane Greene – This is the good news: he’s missing bats at a league average rate and did so last year when he had strong K%. The bad news is that his SwStr% in each particular game this season has been high variance, as high as 14.1%, but as low as 4.9% in his last start. We’ll have to wait for it to stabilize somewhere, but should be able to expect more strikeouts either way.

ERA Estimators Chart (2014 LG AVG – 3.80 ERA – 3.72 SIERA – 3.80 xFIP – 3.80 FIP)

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

Aaron Harang hasn’t pitched badly, but with a batted ball profile similar to what he’s done throughout his career and no other positive indicators in the BABIP chart below, his batted balls are just finding gloves more often than they should and he’s stranding 84.3% of runners.

Carlos Martinez – Three of his 12 fly balls and seven hits allowed have been HRs. That’s fluky, but his BABIP through two starts (.133) is even more so. These two things together have led to him stranding every single runner so far. There have been no indicators that he deserves nor projects for anything other than a normal range BABIP.

Chris Heston – This is just a little bit of everything (BABIP, LOB, HR/FB) being just past the edge of where we could accept them. Pitching in San Francisco can help him suppress his HR rate and his 13.8 LD% plus three infield flies support his low BABIP. There’s often a lot of variance in those things, but for now there’s enough interesting about his first three starts to keep an eye on him. Just not today.

Dallas Keuchel is pretty much what he was last year, but with one big change from a peripheral standpoint. His walk rate has doubled. That’s bad, but his estimators haven’t budged despite the same exact strikeout rate to go along with it. Now we get to the absurd part of this. That he hasn’t allowed a HR yet is not surprising because he’s allowed only three fly balls. Last year, he was the only qualified pitcher with a ground ball rate above 60%. This year he has a 74.5 GB% and 13.67 GB/FB. He’s also sporting a .200 BABIP, which would be low even if all of his batted balls were grounders, but he has a league average LD%. It’s just the fly balls he’s avoiding. Lastly, he’s stranded 90% of his runners.

Danny Duffy – Last year he had a suppressed BABIP and HR rate with a superior IFFB. Many people believed that was due to his defense and park and while both are an asset to him, he was pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable even in an elite situation in addition to a special talent towards those things. While the IFFB% is still a strength, he has already allowed 2 HRs (just 12 in 149.1 IP last year) and the BABIP has spiked to .333 and it’s hard to say it’s not all his fault. His LD% has nearly doubled to 34%.

Eddie Butler has walked more batters than he’s struck out and stranded 89.8% of them.

Jacob DeGrom has stranded 97.1% of his baserunners and it’s completely sustainable because of his awesome hair.

Jon Lester has some pretty great estimators that line up well with last season. So this is all about his enormous BABIP and 60.2 LOB%. Well, kinda. His GB rate (42.6%) is almost exactly what it was last year, but his GB/FB has more than doubled to 2.56. He’s allowed exactly three fly balls in each start. You know where I’m going with this: 40.7% of his batted balls have been line drives! To be fair, more than half (13) of those came in his second start against Cincinnati. I think he’ll settle down and be fine.

Jose Quintana – Great news everyone! His nearly run an inning ERA is predicated on a .365 BABIP and 54.6 LOB%. It should really be about three or four runs less. What? That’s still really bad? If you say so. I guess the fact that he’s allowed more line drives (17) than ground balls (16) isn’t helping matters.

Mat Latos – You may say that it takes a while to wipe that massacre from his first start off the books, but his BABIP has been above .350 in each start and he’s allowed more line drives than any other type of batted ball. That’s how you only strand half your runners. Last year, he at least had the elite IFFB rate. This year, he doesn’t have any yet. In fact, I’m not sure how he even has one near quality start on his ledger.

Michael Pineda has seen a complete about face in his BABIP and consequently his strand rate to start the season, while his estimators see the same guy as last year despite an ERA over three runs higher. There has been a stark change in his batted ball rates, but not his line drives, which have stayed below 19% throughout his career. The big change is in a GB/FB above 1.00 for the first time (currently at 1.93). More ground balls finding gloves, maybe better shifting, should solve this problem.

Rick Porcello – The BABIP is perfectly fine, but the strand rate is a little low, due in part to the five HRs. A quarter of his 20 fly balls have left the yard. His HR/FB rate runs a little high (11.6%) for his career, but it should somewhat normalize at some point, in which case he should get back to being the league average pitcher his underlying metrics think he is and basically has been for most of his career.

Scott Kazmir has seen his 89.7 LOB% aided by a .196 BABIP that we all know is unsustainable despite a current 13.3 LD%. His zone contact rate has been exceptional (83.5%), but he has yet to induce an infield fly. The Oakland defense has been the best in the league at limiting hits on balls in play so far. Both numbers are sure to regress some, but may remain better than league average.

Shane Greene – These estimators are predicated on K%, not SwStr%, so they could/should improve. That said, none of his 22 fly balls have left the yard and his .188 BABIP has led to an 88.2 LOB%. He does have four pop-ups and the Detroit defense has been amazingly good at limiting BABIP thus far, but we all know about the sustainability of sub 200 BABIPs.

BABIP Chart (2014 LG AVG – .295 BABIP – 9.5 IFFB% – 87.2 Z-Contact%)

A couple of years ago, 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 a pitcher has a much lower BABIP than his team’s allowed (red), then you look for some factors that may support it and maybe you’re onto something (check batted ball profile too).

NOTE – Often the batted ball numbers and the stuff in the ERA chart above correlate, so I’m often going to be combining notes from the two charts above from now on if the reason for variance in one is due in part to the other. In other words, if I cover a pitcher in the ERA chart, I probably won’t be writing about his BABIP again.

Alex Wood is sort of a neutral pitcher as far as grounders and fly balls go and has already gotten four IFFBs (10 last year) with a fairly average line drive rate. This part of his game is not as concerning as his sudden bat missing problem.

Andrew Cashner with a line drive rate of just 15.4% and otherwise normal indicators in this chart, there’s no obvious reason for his elevated BABIP.

Felix Hernandez through three starts has allowed just five line drives and 12 fly balls with four of them being pop-ups. He’s very much earned his BABIP thus far.

Mike Leake already has 20% of the IFFBs he had last year and his current 1.47 GB/FB would be a career low. He doesn’t seem to be fooling too many with a 93.8 Z-Contact% and 24.2 LD% that starkly go against his current BABIP.

R.A. Dickey has a history of low BABIPs, but there’s still an acceptable range, even for knuckleballs. His career rate is .282, but he’s not been above .280 in a single season since finding first finding success in 2010. He’s still excellent at missing bats in the zone, which has been a trait of his, but his league average IFFB has been cut in half with just one thus far. Expect a nearly 100-point jump in his BABIP, which could be dangerous if he continues to struggle to throw strikes.

Zack Greinke – There’s nothing different in his batted ball profile and in fact, his Z-Contact% is way up from recent seasons. It’s not cause for alarm yet, but we all expect sharp regression from such a low BABIP, especially with nothing to support it.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Alex Wood – Pitchers opposing the Phillies are always supposed to be an option, but I think there’s enough cause for concern with his SwStr and K issues to scare me off a bit here. He should be ok, even though the Phillies have hit LHP, but you’re probably paying for better than ok.

Andrew Cashner – I know the Dodgers are a strong offense and roughed him up a little the first time around, but he’s in a better park and I believe his unsupported BABIP along with his increased K% (which is supported) currently make him a bit of an under-valued pitcher.

Carlos Martinez will see regression in several areas sooner or later, but maybe not today. You can’t beat a Milwaukee matchup for a pitcher with some talent and a low price tag these days.

Dallas Keuchel should be sort of a neutral, somewhat safe option in the middle of your board. He may not get you much in the strikeout department, but should keep the ball in the park and on the ground.

Danny Salazar is a high risk, high reward play, but I wouldn’t mind taking a shot on his upside against a slumping Detroit team after what he showed in his first outing. The cost is reasonably near the middle of the board on most sites.

Felix Hernandez should be extremely highly owned in double ups, despite the highest price tag by a decent margin. If you look at all his chart numbers today, there’s nothing to add or argue. He’s the best pitcher in a great spot.

Gerrit Cole – Ascending stud versus a very beatable offense. The park is the only drawback, but not nearly a big enough one. He’s priced similarly to Cashner on most sites, but fairly expensive on DK.

Jacob DeGrom is in a tough spot at a not cheap price tag, but should do well enough to cover his cost.

Jon Lester is no higher than the third priced pitcher today and even lower in some places. I think he’ll bounce back and I’m not worried about the line drive thing as most of that took place in one game. His K% is down, but his SwStr% is nearly identical to last year. He’s still good and may be a contrarian play for GPPs today with a lot of other players scared off by recent results.

Jordan Zimmermann – I’m concerned enough to be off the bandwagon. Let others take the risk until we see him bounce back with factors to support it.

Michael Pineda – If you believe in the underlying metrics, he’s an absolute bargain tonight. The park is a little scary, but the Mets don’t have much in terms of LH power aside from Duda and aren’t this good. They’ve played a very soft NL East schedule in the first two-plus weeks.

Miguel Gonzalez – It’s interesting that the sites have either not bought into his ERA or that the Red Sox offense hasn’t been good in over a year. Maybe the park plays an assisting role in keeping his price down and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he may provide some value beyond his price tag tonight, although I’d never fully trust him.

Scott Kazmir – Lots of strikeouts in a park that makes the Houston RH power play down? Yes, please. You might have to pay a little bit for him, but he should be worth it.

Zack Greinke – I’m going to stay with him as an option (though maybe not the best one) because despite the decreased strikeouts so far, he’s still a good pitcher in a great park. The Padres might even be a little over-rated right now. They’ve done more their damage vs LHP and might look better than they are just coming out of Colorado.

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