Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Mon 6/16 [NEW Column]
Hello, Grinders.
I’m excited about the opportunity to share my pitching charts with the community starting today and on Mon, Tue, Wed, and Fri going forward. Though the charts were developed for and published by another website, I started my daily fantasy playing life here at Rotogrinders and am happy to be back home. This initial article will be longer than future articles due to its introductory nature. After today, we’ll be heavier on the analysis and less on the intro.
I’m going to assume most of you are seeing these charts for the first time and give a brief explanation for each one. Please bear with me while I settle into the new format here and get the train running smoothly. I hope the information provided here is useful to your Daily Fantasy Baseball experiences.
What you won’t see here are pitchers being evaluated by some of the more traditional stats like Pitcher Wins (NEVER) or ERA (rarely). What you will see are a lot of stats not commonly used by many Daily Fantasy players (SIERA, SwStr%, Z-Contact%), at least until recently. The theory is that looking at the process over results can give you an edge over the more casual player. Don’t worry, it’s not very complicated and there’s no math involved.
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
For those already familiar with the charts, the only recent change was switching from Fangraphs to Seamheads.com 3 year park factors. Team Def = UZR/150. L2Yrs is a rolling calendar. 2013+ is since the start of that season. Combo stats are explained below.
Carlos Martinez – has a lot of green in his chart, but he’s a bullpen guy who isn’t stretched out and is likely to only last a few innings.
Cole Hamels – looks like he could get the K’s and has been dominant in June, but the Braves crush LHP.
Jered Weaver – has long been an out performer of his peripherals, but hasn’t been pitching well lately and walks into a rough situation in Cleveland.
Julio Teheran – seems to have a lot of green in his favor today.
Trevor Bauer – has had a rough go of it lately and could struggle on the other side of the Weaver in a tough matchup
Tyson Ross – dominated Philly in his last start and has a great matchup today.
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.
Cole Hamels – has his K-rate pretty well spread out.
Justin Verlander – combines his recent performance with the Royals ability to put the ball in play.
Kevin Correia – combines his inability to miss bats with the Red Sox patience at the plate.
Tyler Matzek – hasn’t started a road game yet, but now you can see that there are some decent K-rates in his favor.
Tyson Ross – looks good across the board.
Combo Batted Ball Chart
Ditto for the Combo Batted Ball stats in the Main Chart above.
Chris Young – is a popup machine.
The Braves and Royals seem to be polar opposites in terms of batted ball authority.
The Rays and Red Sox seem to have a few batted ball issues as well.
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.
Jake Odorizzi – seems to be least deserving of his K%, but does feature some great framing behind the plate.
Hyun-Jin Ryu – has missed fewer bats, but seen an uptick in K% over the last month.
Justin Verlander – still continues to amaze because these are numbers we don’t expect to see beside his name. His last start (6K’s) was his first SwStr% (11.5%) in double digits since 5/4 and his 4th total for the year. It also marked his hardest avg velocity (94.8) of the season.
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
Brandon McCarthy – is really liked by his peripherals, but needs to figure out how to keep the ball in the park. That’s why the FIP is higher than the xFIP & SIERA, but still well below his ERA.
Chris Young – has been breaking sabermetrics his entire career. At this point, it’s not a stretch to call him an outlier. Maybe he’s too tall for FIP.
Drew Pomeranz – has a .235 BABIP and 90.9 LOB%, both unsustainable despite Oakland’s strong overall defense.
Jake Odorizzi – has a total of 3 BB’s and 2 HR’s allowed with at least 5 K’s in each of his last 4 games. Two of those starts had ugly results, but also featured a .500+ BABIP and more than 50% of his runners scoring despite 14 K’s and 1 BB.
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).
Colby Lewis – can’t sustain that BABIP despite the Rangers having the worst team mark in the majors.
Cole Hamels – profiles as a pitcher who could see his BABIP decrease with strong IFFB & Z-Contact rates plus a decent 18.9 LD%.
Tom Koehler – has a fine BABIP without much to support it.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
Brandon McCarthy – is fairly cheap across most sites due to the HR’s and you don’t like the park, but the Brewers are a heavily RHB team who are about average offensively in this spot. Two additional things to worry about are that he has 4 or fewer K’s in 4 of his last 5 starts (9 vs K prone Atlanta) and his velocity dropped to 90 last time out.
Cole Hamels – may be expensive and facing a tough team against LHP, but should get enough whiffs to off-set the Atlanta power. In Daily Fantasy, enough K’s can offset a lot of damage. He’s only allowed 4 HR’s on the season, gone at least 7 in each of his last 7 starts, and struck out 26 over his last 22.2 IP with just a single earned run allowed.
Jake Odorizzi – may not be able to support his K-rate and faces a tough Baltimore lineup, but his home park is great and the Orioles haven’t been as hot lately.
Rubby De La Rosa – only has 3 starts with mediocre results, but has been in some tough spots (Det, Bal). He has 20 K’s to 4 BB’s though. The Twins have been hitting, but aren’t a team you should really fear if you’re getting a decent price.
Tyson Ross – isn’t cheap, but isn’t the most expensive either and could put up the best performance of the day if he can keep his BB’s under control. He has imploded a few times this year, but is in a great spot today and his profile looks solid across all charts.
Wei-Yin Chen – could be a sneaky mid-range pick. His control has been excellent, he strikes out enough batters, and has a solid matchup against a team that struggles to hit LHP this year. He has 23 K’s and just 1 BB over his last 4 starts. The long ball can be a problem as he’s returned to being more flyball heavy this month again, but this park should hold them.
As I finish up, the news is exploding on Twitter that Tony Gwynn has passed away. It’s so sad to lose such a legend, who truly seemed like a great guy, too young.
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.