Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Friday, April 8th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2016-04-09 00:53:57

We begin to fill out the stat sheet today with five pitchers back for their 2nd go around (although two only pitched two innings on Monday). You could say that things look even slightly more uncoordinated because A.J. Griffin hasn’t thrown a major league pitch the last two years and Ross Stripling is the 2nd Dodger pitcher to make his Major League debut this week. By next week just about every pitcher will have made at least one start and opposing team numbers will be included as well. I can tell you right away that there are a lot of “Do Not Wants” on the board today, but thankfully a few big names as well.

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 3 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+.

Chris Archer picked up right where he left off last year on Sunday. That’s mostly a good thing as he struck out half of the 24 Blue Jays he faced. However, he also walked three of them and only lasted five innings, which was still plenty good enough for our purposes. He moves to an unfavorable park in Baltimore, but wouldn’t be so quick to call this a bad matchup because the Orioles plan to swing at everything this year if their approach against Phil Hughes last night was any indication.

Francisco Liriano was also very like himself on Sunday and that too was mostly a good thing. He started off dominant, especially against the unfortunate left-handed bats placed in the St Louis lineup against him. Then his control went. He either walked or struck out 15 of the 26 batters he faced with twice as many Ks as BBs (I’m going to make you do the math). Seven of his ten non-bunt batted balls were on the ground. At his worst, he’ll walk the park and then give up a bomb. At his best it’s all strikeouts and ground balls…..and even then probably a few walks. He gets a tougher park, but an easier lineup in Cincinnati for start number two.

Jaime Garcia at the back of your rotation is pretty strong. He’ll find it hard to sustain his ERA from last year, but is one of the top weak ball generators in the game. Last year, only Tyson Ross and Dallas Keuchel had a GB% north of 60 and a K% above 20. Garcia matched them almost exactly with a 61.2 GB% and if we relax the innings qualifier to 129 and the K% to 19, he’d be the third in that group with nobody else close. That’s a pitcher that can incredibly useful in any format. He takes on the Braves in Atlanta, a great matchup against a team that makes a lot of weak contact anyway and had a league average K% (20.5) vs LHPs.

Marcus Stroman started his season with eight solid innings against Tampa Bay, only striking out five of 32 batters faced, but generating 17 ground balls with just a 26.9% hard contact rate. He faces a Boston team he may have trouble striking out in a hitter’s park, but we’re already passing on so many pitchers, I wouldn’t feel comfortable grouping him among them.

Matt Shoemaker was a flawed minor league pitcher, which is why it surprised so many when he burst onto the scene in 2015 and put up an ERA just over three, supported by his peripherals. Last year started with a drop in velocity and though that rebounded (he still only throws 90 mph) and he was slightly better in the 2nd half, last season was not a success by any means. The chief reason was a HR/FB that went from 9.4 to 14.0. That would seem like slightly comforting news as he pitches in a big park and it could rebound. If it does, his other indicators, including a league average strikeout rate, believe he might be able to push his ERA below four once again. However, that key flaw throughout his minor league journeys: the home run ball. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt (because we don’t have many choices) against a decent Texas offense in a spacious home park.

Ross Stripling was ranked the “(classname)21st prospect(title tooltip)”:http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/evaluating-the-2016-prospects-los-angeles-dodgers/ in the Dodger system on Fangraphs last month after returning from Tommy John surgery last year. His upside seems to be a fourth or fifth starter, but with mechanics that keep him at risk. Two pitches (the fastball and slider) have the potential to be above average, but that means he’ll need to further develop another one to get lefties out. He has not pitched above AA, but has had at least a 20 K% at every level (though just barely at the highest level). It’s a tough offense he faces, but a great park.

Scott Feldman doesn’t miss enough bats and pitches in a very tough park tonight, but against a rebuilding team with a lot of swing and miss in their lineup. He’s made a career of minimizing hard contact with both a Hard% and Hard-Soft% well under league average each of the last seven years. He allowed hard contact just 22.9% of the time last year, despite a 23.6 LD% and 13.3 HR/FB.

Taijuan Walker has the opposite problem last year. He threw a lot more strikes, but possibly too many fat ones. His K% remained above average, but his BB% was cut in half, I mean exactly to 5.7%. His HR/FB also nearly doubled from 7.4 (in limited action in 2014) to 13.0 last year, which is not something you’d expect in Seattle, but Iwakuma too. He starts in a good spot against Oakland at home, though they haven’t struck out much over the last few years.

Yordano Ventura had a 2nd half surge last season that saw his K% jump from 19.4% to 24.9% and his Hard-Soft% drop from 21.1% to 10.1%. If he can maintain those levels and stop throwing at people’s heads we’d all enjoy a big heaping of Yordano for daily fantasy this year. He’s in a great spot at home against a weak Minnesota road offense to start the new campaign.

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)

No candidates today.

NO THANK YOU (In alphabetical order today)

A.J. Griffin – I have literally nothing on him for the past two years (which he spent injured) aside from BrooksBaseball.com showing that he’s maintained his 90 mph velocity from two years ago this March. He was league average, at best, before the injuries, but had a couple of years beating his estimators.

Alfredo Simon – Didn’t they rip off….I mean trade him to the Tigers last year. In 2014, he had a low BABIP and high strand rate. Last season, he was just flat out awful.

Chase Anderson has some upside in a couple of secondary pitches (namely his change-up, which Eno Sarris loves) and getting out of Arizona would help him if he weren’t going to Milwaukee. He looked good for the first two months of last season, allowing just two HRs, but then regression knocked on the door and he allowed 16 the rest of the way, driving his ERA up over four. He faces a team with power in a tough park.

Chris Tillman struck out five of the six batters he faced on Monday before the Gods laughed so hard that rain fell from the sky and they had to call off the game. His fastball was up a tick and a half from last year, but that may have been Opening Day adrenaline. He’ll have to prove more than striking out five of six Twins. Tampa Bay in a hitter’s park might be a little tougher.

Erik Surkamp is 28-years old and has thrown a total of 57 major league innings with just seven starts over parts of four seasons and none since 2013. He has an ERA with estimators well over five.

Ervin Santana goes from pitching two innings against the O’s, who we’ve established like to swing at everything to the Royals today, who also swing at everything, but make much more contact. Some fun super short sample size stats from his two innings on Monday. He struck out three of the 10 batters he faced, getting six swinging strikes, but also walked two. Of the five balls in play, none were on the ground, two were line drives and two were labelled hard hit.

Jason Hammel is not a bad pitcher at all, but was only allowed to go more than five innings four times over his last 15 starts. And Arizona….it’s the new Colorado!

Joe Kelly – Does not generate swinging strikes and is facing the Blue Jays in Toronto are two things you don’t want to hear about your daily fantasy pitcher.

Matt Cain used to be the poster boy for an ERA that beat his estimators by a good amount and many chalked it up to HR suppression skills in a great park. He hasn’t been healthy since 2013 (151 innings combined last two years) and he hasn’t been really good since he threw a perfect game in June of 2012. A night game in possibly the most pitcher friendly park in baseball (especially in April) might benefit him, but the Dodgers are spanking the baseball and he has much to prove.

Matthew Wisler has some talent, but allowed a 419 wOBA to LHBs with 10 HRs in 237 plate appearances. He did allow just a 5.8 HR/FB at home and generated 21 pop-ups (13.7 IFFB%) overall, but he has to figure out a way to get lefties out. In the meantime, his K% was way too low to speculate on for DFS purposes and throws too many fat pitches. He need to locate better more consistently.

Robbie Ray misses enough bats to be interesting, but over-achieved immensely through his first three months in the majors. Anyone who looked closely enough knew a sub-five HR/FB was likely to explode in Arizona and that it did over the last two months, well into the double digits. He still finished with a 7.3 rate, but Chicago is a team that can punish him at home like all other Arizona pitchers have been punished so far. It helps that he’s from the left-side and might neutralize a guy or two, but Anthony Rizzo pounds LHP too and the Cubbies have plenty of RH power. He might be able to generate a few Ks, but I learned my lesson pondering de la Rosa for the same reason in this spot yesterday.

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.

We’re not really going to into the guys who’ve already made a start, but good lord some of those SwStr numbers!

I have great confidence that Chris Tillman is going to keep that up, like I have great confidence I’m going to make at least $1 million playing daily fantasy baseball this year.

Matt Cain only pitched about a third of the season last year, but hit his career SwStr% right on the nose. He’s been fairly consistently between 19-20% for a strikeout rate almost his entire career and could get back there if all goes well this season.

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.

Jaime Garcia – Despite the nature of the contact made against him, including the high ground ball and low line drive rates, he’s very unlikely to generate a BABIP that low (.267) again. The LD% is descriptive, not predictive and would have been the 3rd lowest mark in the majors last season. He has a .301 career mark. His 78.1 LOB% and 7.1 HR/FB are likely to be a bit worse going forward as well. His ERA could go up a full run and he’d still be a very good pitcher.

Marcus Stroman only threw 27 innings last season.

Matt Cain had a 14.8 HR/FB last season, representing a career high. His number has climbed four straight seasons from a 3.7 mark in 2011, though the velocity has remained at 91 mph each year.

Matthew Wisler has some talent, but allowed a 419 wOBA to LHBs with 10 HRs in 237 plate appearances.

Robbie Ray – It’s all in the 7.3 HR/FB, which grew as the season went on.

Taijuan Walker – You’d think being a fly ball pitcher with bat missing stuff would reap great rewards in Seattle, but not so much last year. Aside from the 13.0 HR/FB, he stranded just 67.8% of his runners last year. That’s the most likely number to bounce back making him at least a formidable pitcher in 2016 with potential for so much more.

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).

There are no oddities worth further mentioning today.

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.

Chris Archer is where your bread is buttered today. He’s the most expensive pitcher on the board, but he should once again rack of the strikeouts. He has an amazingly high floor even when things go wrong and he only lasts five innings like last time. I can’t wait to see how many swings and misses he generates against the Orioles tonight.

Francisco Liriano is aptly your next highest priced pitcher as he carries the next highest upside, but with significantly more risk. He’s been known to occasionally walk the park and not missing enough bats to compensate. It’s a risk a lot of people should still be willing to take with a decent amount of exposure.

Jaime Garcia – I swear we’re going alphabetically and not by cost, but Garcia is number three today and in perhaps a better spot than the first two, at least from a run prevention standpoint. The Braves should play right into his ability to generate weak ground balls at an extremely generous clip.

Marcus Stroman is a pitcher I can take or leave at current cost today. I’m not sure he has the strikeout upside in this spot for an expensive pitcher, but there should be a few and that ground ball rate mitigates some of the risk.

Matt Shoemaker is high risk and I wouldn’t touch him on FanDuel, but has a low enough cost with enough strikeouts to garner some attention on DraftKings. I can already see Prince Fielder launching one, but only five of his 24 HRs last year went to LHBs at home.

Ross Stripling isn’t a high upside guy and faces a tough offense, but the night air at whatever they’re calling the park in San Francisco now is about as friendly an environment as there is in baseball and there’s often a bonus for unseen pitchers through the earliest stage of their career. He’s the lowest priced pitcher on DraftKings.

Scott Feldman is low upside, but also fairly cheap in a very good spot. Milwaukee could swing and miss enough to increase that low upside into still not good, but at least not as low upside.

Taijuan Walker is probably going to be more popular just because of his name than I’d like to see, especially at a much cheaper price on FanDuel. If he can combine last year’s walk rate with better contact generation, this could be his breakout year. He opens at home against a lineup he should have success again, though there may not be a ton of strikeouts there.

Yordano Ventura is in a very good spot at a reasonable price. Hopefully he picks up where he left off in 2015 and continues to build on that success.

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

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