Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Friday, May 1st

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2015-05-05 14:37:36

We’ll continue to use the new Fangraphs stats in the notes today to see if we can build some additional advantages on a Friday which features a Max Scherzer versus Matt Harvey matchup at the top of your board.

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. Hm/Rd xFIP is since the start of the 2014 season. Opp team offensive stats are wRC+. Combo stats are explained below.

A.J. Burnett has allowed exactly one ER in each of his last three starts, but has only struck out five over his last two with four walks. He hasn’t allowed a HR in three starts either, while the Cardinals own a 3.7 HR/FB at home. Never the less, they should prove a tough assignment who don’t strike out often and take their walks with the highest home hard hit ball rate in the majors.

Alex Colome is the Rays #3 prospect according to Fangraphs, but is 26 years old and has been on that list forever. He throws hard and has three usable secondary pitches, but has just a 3.6 K-BB% in five major league starts. He has the misfortune of tonight’s worst matchup. The Orioles are the second best home offense as well as vs RHP and are the hottest bats over the last week. They have a 17.8 HR/FB at home and 18.7 HR/FB vs RHP.

Anthony DeSclafani had a rough outing last time out, but most of the runs were unearned. We’ll talk about that and his BABIP today. The Braves represent a neutral matchup, but without much upside for a pitcher. They have the day’s lowest combined strikeouts rate at home, vs RHP, and over the last seven days.

C.J. Wilson has allowed more than three two runs in just one of his four starts, but has just an 8.2 K-BB%. Control has always been the issue with him as he has a decent matchup in a great park tonight.

Carlos Carrasco took a beating last time out. We’ll look at what that means for the overall picture later. His peripherals remain elite in our main chart today. He has a 29.2 K% at home since the start of last season and the Blue Jays have struck out 25.9% of the time over the last week.

Carlos Frias is next up for the hurting Dodger rotation. He’s worked mostly out of the bullpen for the big league club and is 25 with no prospect status. His peripherals have been about two runs better than his 5.74 ERA in limited work out of the pen. The Dodgers have put him in a spot to succeed, though the Arizona offense hasn’t been bad lately.

C.C. Sabathia had that thing going on after two starts where he was missing bats and not giving up extra base hits, but allowing lots of runs so we thought there might be something there. Well, not so much in his last start, when he allowed three HRs. While the K’s and SwStr% is down over the last two starts, it hasn’t been terrible. The thing is, without his velocity, he can’t fall behind and be forced to come over the middle with inferior stuff. I suspect, if you can find out who’s umpiring, C.C. might be a sneaky sleeper play with a generous strike zone. Sure, every pitcher is, but he more than most. The Red Sox have picked up the offense. They have an 18.7 HR/FB vs LHP and 17.7 HR/FB over the last week.

Chris Heston has been good outside his dusting in Colorado last start. Though he has no prospect status at 27 years old and there’s little to be said about his minor league numbers, most of his major league rates have been around league average so far with a 13.1 K-BB%. Put “mostly league average” in a great park and you may have a pitcher worth something. The Angels seem to have started the engine on offense a bit lately

Chris Tillman has just been terrible. We knew his peripherals didn’t agree with his ERA last season, but several smart people wrote about his ability to limit hard contact. Not only is that not happening this year, but he’s walked as many as he’s struck out.

Eddie Butler has a 13.3 K%. That’s not good. Even worse, it’s also his BB%. The Padres are cold offensively, but have a 32.10% hard hit rate at home, fifth-best in the majors with nearly the same rate vs RHP.

Ian Kennedy left his first start in the third inning with a hamstring injury and then returned in Colorado to allow three HRs, the effects of which you’ll see in the ERA chart today and in the HR/FB column of the main one. Why would you ever want to come off the DL to pitch in Colorado? He gets them at home today, where he hopes to even things up, but the Rockies have the fourth best hit hard rate (32.9%) on the road this year.

Jose Quintana has some problems. We’ll talk more about them below. Minnesota represents somewhat of a neutral spot for him, though they haven’t been particularly good vs LHP.

Justin Masterson looks like nothing has changed since last year on the surface, but he’s only really had one bad start. Walks and HRs have been an issue for him, which makes this a tough matchup for him because the Yankees will take them and hit them, though they are closer to the bottom than the top in hard hit rate both on the road and vs RHP.

Kyle Gibson is a frustrating pitcher as he seems to have some unharnessed talent, but just can’t finish hitters off or throw enough strikes. He has an abysmal -5.9 K-BB%. It’s a shame because he faces the coldest bats in the majors. The White Sox haven’t hit a HR in a week and have the lowest hit hard rate (22.1%) on the road.

Lance Lynn is off to a great start despite a rough last outing where his peripherals were much better than the results. He has a 3.94 xFIP at home since the start of last season, but his FIP and ERA are better more better due to a 3.0 HR/FB. That’s a tough park to hit the ball out of, so it’s probably not entirely a fluke. The odd thing is that he’s started three of his four games on the road so far. The Pirates have combined lots of strikeouts with few walks and have just a 2.4 HR/FB over the last week. They do have the top hit hard rate 34.5% on the road in addition to a 30.0 Hard% vs RHP.

Mark Buehrle has not been good. He’s not missing any bats and has absolutely no upside vs a Cleveland team that has struggled against LHP the last few years. They have just a 5.3 HR/FB against them and at home this year, but have struck out in just 12.4% of plate appearances over the last week.

Matt Harvey was sick two starts ago and still pitched ok, but looked human. He regained his super powers against the Yankees. The Nationals have been more mediocre than terrible lately with everyone except Rendon back now. Harvey dominated a depleted Washington lineup opening week and has a stunning 22.3 K-BB% this year, including just three walks, which is the same number of HRs he’s allowed.

Max Scherzer has been dominant for his new team and struck out at least eight in all but his last start after which it was revealed he had an issue with this thumb that forced him to be pushed back a few days. He has a massive 27.7 K% over the last two calendar years. Pitching in a cold Citi Field tonight, he should keep the ball in the park against a Mets team who’s 5.9 HR/FB vs RHP matches the number in the main chart today. And I’m buying his low BABIP for reasons that will be explained later.

Mike Foltynewicz is a shipment from the Astros in exchange for good over the winter. He currently occupies the #5 spot on the team’s prospect list (Fangraphs). He throws gas, but command issues cast doubt on his future as a starter. The Reds don’t do much, but have hit some HRs, including a 17.7 HR/FB vs RHP and a 21.1 rate over the last week.

Roenis Elias wasn’t bad last year with the Mariners, but struggled with walks. He made his first start of the season in a solid outing vs Minnesota over the weekend. Houston will take those walks and hit the ball out of the park, though they haven’t hit at home yet (23.9 Hard% – fifth worst) and have the day’s highest combined K% (at home, vs LHP, and last seven days). Beware their HR/FB rates in the Batted Ball Chart below (all above 12.0).

Rubby de la Rosa has seen a rise in his K rate and has a strong 18.9 K-BB%, but has allowed some HRs in extreme pitchers’ parks as well as at home. The Dodgers do HR’s well with all their rates in the Batted Ball Chart above 17.5. They generally have just smoked RHPs at home.

Scott Kazmir struck out 10 Rangers in his first start of the season and has allowed just three earned runs this year. The Rangers have one of the worst home offenses in baseball, but with a 30.5 Hard% on batted balls despite just a 5.3 HR/FB. They’ve also had some of the coldest bats in the majors with just a 1.8 HR/FB over the last week.

Tom Koehler has just stopped missing bats. More about that later, but it would take a whole additional article to tell you all the things the Phillies reside at the bottom of the league in. They haven’t, however, struck out (12.2 K% over the last week). That’s going to limit your upside. The ball should stay in the park though.

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.

C.J. Wilson has a career 2.62 K/SwStr, so there’s some precedent for this in the past, but not to the extremes of, say, a Bartolo Colon or Vance Worley. Maybe batters are just so surprised when he throws a strike that they don’t realize they’re supposed to swing. Both K% and SwStr% are down for him.

Jerome Williams has a career 8.9 SwStr%, but just a 15.0 K%. So, yeah, this just seems to be something he does that I never really noticed before or just forgot about because it’s Jerome Williams.

Justin Masterson has alternated good and bad SwStr marks in his four starts, which makes it difficult to evaluate right now, but the overall picture is that it’s well below his career mark and would be a career low by far, yet his K% is right around his career mark. Maybe it’s the SwStr% that rises.

Kyle Gibson – What is this? What in the world is going on here? He’s failed to record a strikeout in two of his four starts and had three in each of his other two. His SwStr has been at least 7.3% in three of his four starts. He pulled a similar stunt last year, though not to this extreme, with nearly a league average SwStr% that had me hoping on him for this year. I still think he has potential, but might need someone else to bring it out of him.

Lance Lynn is missing just as many bats has he did last year when he had a league average K rate and there’s nothing wrong with that, but when it drops, that will affect his ERA estimators in the next chart too.

Tom Koehler has seen his SwStr% cut exactly in half and has induced just three swings and misses over 156 pitches in his last two starts after peaking at 6.5% in his first start. Koehler struck out 19.1% of batters to face him last year, but doesn’t even deserve his 13.0% rate this year.

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.

A.J. Burnett has stranded at least 83% of his runners in every starts and 88.2% altogether. In addition, only one of his 19 fly balls have left the yard, but if his next one does, then he’s perfectly league average. That’s how these small sample size things work.

Anthony DeSclafani – There are a couple of things going on here. We’ll save the BABIP for the chart below even. Here we’ll discuss unearned runs. He’s allowed four of them and only three earned. So if a pitcher gives up a bomb after the error with two outs, maybe he’s not responsible for the run scored on the error, but what if the fielder wasn’t there in the first place? It’s a hit, which we know are not all created equal. And the HR is a real thing that happened that he allowed.

Carlos Carrasco – First of all, that Cleveland defense. Go ahead and take a look at their team allowed BABIP in the chart below. Additionally, it was just one start where Detroit hammered him last time out (.563 BABIP) that really skews the numbers because he had that one short start where he ate a line drive. His awful 14.3 HR/FB consists of a single HR because he’s only allowed seven fly balls (3.29 GB/FB). Five of his nine line drives were allowed in his last start as well. His 29.9 K-BB% leads the major leagues. For now, we’ll say he had a bad day and move on.

C.C. Sabathia – Aside from what we talked about in the open, the walk rate (3.7%) is the lowest of his career paired with a league average K%, but he’s only stranded 59.2% of his runners. After the three HRs in his last start, he now has a 16.0 HR/FB and that might just be something that’s going to happen to him sometimes now. It’s been above 12.5 since 2012 now, so I may buy into the FIP more than the other two for him. As far as his BABIP, he has a 15.2 LD%, so that’s a bit more baffling.

Chris Tillman – His strand rate, which was probably the only thing that wasn’t smoke and mirrors about him last year, has fallen to 64.6%, but hey, when you’re walking the entire and then giving up bombs, that’s going to happen. Four of his 25 fly balls have left the yard. Last year he excelled with an 8.3 HR/FB, which seemed too good to be true in Baltimore because he holds an 11.3 career HR/FB.

Eddie Butler has just magically stranded 85.2% of his runners.

Jose Quintana – At first look, you see an inflated BABIP and deflated 59.8 LOB% and assume that’s that, but there seems to be more here. He’s lost the ability to make batters miss. He was never really elite, but did so at a respectable rate. That’s gone so far, as is nearly a mile off his fastball. It may return and it might not even mean all that much, but the two could be connected. He also has a 27.0 LD% in addition to his fly balls being up and his ground balls being down significantly. The good news was that his last start was his best by pretty much all aspects.

Max Scherzer – This is where we get to use some of our new toys, but first, Scherzer hasn’t allowed a HR over 36 fly balls. He’s had issues with them in the past, but has had a rate of 7.5 over the last two years. He also has a career .300 BABIP, but it was just .259 two years ago and now we go into batted ball rates. He’s induced six pop ups and his IFFB% is the same as his LD% (16.7). His zone contact rate is likewise exceptional and right at his career mark of 82%. If you need further validation, he leads the league with the best hit hard rate at just 13.9%. Only one other pitcher is below 17%. It’s hard to take issue with his BABIP.

Scott Kazmir has pitched well, but has been doing some unsustainable things with just one HR, a .215 BABIP and 93.2 LOB%. He has just a 14.1 LD%, which goes well with his 21.2 Hard% among the league leaders. However, his 16.7 Soft% isn’t really significant as it’s the 62.1 Med% that rates 11th best in the majors. It’s surprising that he hasn’t induced a pop up yet in that park, but his zone contact has always been much better than league average. In other words, there’s nothing wrong with his ERA estimators. That’s still a great pitcher.

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).

Anthony DeSclafani has really excelled at limiting hard contact with a 10.3 LD%. It was nearly 2.5x that mark last year. He’s also #2 in the majors in Z-Contact%. That’s pretty special and you start to wonder if there’s something there, but also why he was perfectly average last year. There’s are hints that he deserves a very low BABIP right now, but will he sustain the things that make that such? Probably not, at least to the extent he has so far. He could be interesting to watch though.

Lance Lynn – The high BABIP is predicated on a 26.7 LD%, but nearly half of them came in his last start, so it could be, and probably is, a fluke.

Mark Buehrle is just getting smoked. They are hitting everything he throws in the strike zone hard (27.0 LD%). While his Hard and Soft hit rates aren’t among the league leaders, both are trending in the wrong direction with a large gap in between.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

NOTE: Button for pitcher salary chart above opens in popup window.

Anthony DeSclafani – It’s hard to come up with the words to really push him today, but it’s simply that the price is ok and I think he earns additional value here more times than not, though the Braves don’t strike out enough to give him that much upside. He’s not my top guy, but there’s a steep drop-off after the top few and everything just seems “ok” here.

Carlos Carrasco – Take a look up top again at the K/BB charts (second and third charts). The lowest K rate of the six is Toronto’s 22.1% vs RHP. Their exceptional RH power should be neutralized by a tough LF for HRs from that side in Cleveland. He’s not that expensive after his beating last time out. There’s a great chance he bounces back strong and the Ks give him a great floor regardless.

Carlos Frias – I don’t know how far the Dodgers are going to let him go, but he has thrown into the 6th inning in the minors this year. He’s at the bottom of the board against the Diamondbacks in a pitcher’s park and probably worth a shot if you’re going dumpster diving today.

Chris Heston – Is also probably worth a shot if you’re going dumpster diving. There’s nothing exceptional about him, but at that price in a great park, there doesn’t have to be. The Angels can be dangerous if they put it all together, but get past the first couple and there’s not much that should scare you, especially in that park. You don’t need much at his price tag.

Lance Lynn – The Pirates have hit the ball hard, but there’s rarely anybody on when they do because they don’t walk. While I don’t buy into Lynn’s K% at all, the Pirates strike out a lot, so he may be able to sustain it for one more start. He’s been really good at home by FIP and ERA because he doesn’t allow HRs. He’s a solid alternative to the top two if necessary and while I like Carrasco’s upside much more at the same price, Lynn offers some stability at home.

Matt Harvey – Because he’s Matt Harvey. He’s struck out at least seven in every start.

Max Scherzer – Only the thumb issue concerns you a little bit, but if he’s ok, he should be really good, even great. Everything is clicking so far and we talked a lot about the weak contact to top it off.

Scott Kazmir – The Rangers are bad and he’s pitched well. Sometimes it’s that simple.

Tom Koehler – I’m only mentioning him because I’ve touted the pitcher facing the Phillies every day so far, but I’m kind of neutral on him today and it’s all because of the lack of strikeouts on both sides. There just doesn’t seem to be enough upside to give him much positive value.

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