Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Mon 6/23
A few notes about this week’s posting schedule to start. After today, the next post will be Wednesday, taking tomorrow off due to previous commitments. Then Wednesday, due to the early start time, I’m considering an early posting of charts only, same as last week, for the benefit of those who want to play the day games starting at noon, with notes to follow for the night games. We’ll finish off the week with a normal posting of a full slate on Friday.
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. Team Def = UZR/150. L2Yrs is a rolling calendar. 2013+ is since the start of that season. Combo stats are explained below.
Alex Cobb – has gotten back on track lately, always pitches well at home, and the Pirates bats have come back down to earth. We’re also looking at one of the top K-rates for today, which we’ll examine below.
Alfredo Simon – The Cubs are tied for worst in the majors vs RHP and we’ll look more at that HR/FB below too.
Chris Sale – is always going to be one of your top guys. The more surprising aspect is Baltimore having the 3rd worst Home wRC+ in baseball.
Felix Hernandez – is the top guy in a number of circumstances tonight.
Gio Gonzalez – gets a red hot Milwaukee team, although it must be mentioned that they’re just coming off a trip to Colorado. Gio struggled in his return from the DL.
Jeremy Guthrie – has a lot of dark red in his charts, including facing the 2nd best hitting team vs RHP in the majors.
John Lackey – looks solid most of the way through his line.
Matt Cain – has the best of circumstances to try and straighten his performance out.
Nate Eovaldi – hasn’t been pitching well, but has a favorable matchup.
Odrisamer Despaigne – is a Cuban import, replacing Andrew Cashner today. He’s gotten hit hard in the minors this year, but does have a 25 K% in just over 30 innings. He may not be available on your chosen site as it was a late scratch.
Roberto Hernandez – gets a cold team, but combines bad pitching with bad defense for his own part.
Wei-Yin Chen – shows little to be overly concerned about on a tough day.
Zack Greinke – has a lower K-rate than you’d imagine.
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.
Chase Whitley – has shown an ability to abstain from the BB, but faces a team with patience, though it must be noted that they may be missing a few bats, making his job a little easier.
Chris Sale – aside from being a top K option, combines his own excellent control with the Orioles unwillingness to be patient.
Edinson Volquez – combines one of the day’s worst K-rates with some potential BB problems as well. The Rays offense excels in places where he struggles, making for a potentially bad matchup.
Felix Hernandez – his own awesome K-rates meet little resistance from the Red Sox, although they do wait RHP out well, keeping his BB-rate from being tops today.
Jhoulys Chacin – is likely to experience a lot of contact today.
Marcus Stroman – faces a very patient team which makes a lot of contact.
Wei-Yin Chen – in addition to his own excellent control, the White Sox lack the ability to take free passes as well.
Zack Greinke – comes in surprisingly low on the K-meter today and while a lot of that is the Royals hitting the ball, some of it is his own doing.
Combo Batted Ball Chart
Ditto for the Combo Batted Ball stats in the Main Chart above.
Alex Cobb – has occasionally struggled with HR/FB, but allows so few fly balls and has a decent enough home park, that it’s really not that much of a problem.
Alfredo Simon – has not allowed a HR over the past 2 weeks, and only 3 on the road all season in a mix of pitcher and hitter ballparks, though it really depends on how the wind blows at Wrigley.
Chase Whitley – it’s more that the Blue Jays have popped up a lot than anything the pitcher has done, though they also counter his strong anti-HR tendencies well.
Felix Hernandez – combines his own strong HR/FB tendencies with the Red Sox below average ones to get the top mark of the day. He has gone 11 consecutive dongless starts.
Gio Gonzalez – the batted ball line above is just interesting because it’s all over the place.
Jeremy Guthrie – the Dodgers don’t pop up enough and hit a lot of line drives.
John Lackey – has allowed 6 of 8 HR’s on the road this season, although 4 of those came in one start at Yankee Stadium. He hasn’t induced an IFFB in 5 starts.
Roberto Hernandez – gives up lots of HR’s and generally strong contact all around.
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.
Chase Whitley – is all we really have today. In 7 starts, he’s only struck out more than 4 twice and maxed out at 6, but has had a SwStr exceeding 12% in 4 of those. This is his 2nd straight start against a Toronto team that doesn’t miss a lot, but may be missing some key bats today. Whitley had at least league average or better K-rates at every stop in the minors.
Wei-Yin Chen – has exactly a league average K/SwStr, but a much higher one over the last 30 days. That means that his K-rate must have looked a bit low for his SwStr not too long ago. It’s really only his last start that did him in, with 2.8 SwStr% at Tampa Bay. Prior to that, 8.8% had been his lowest over 3 starts. The fact that the White Sox are a high K% team as shown in the above charts makes it less worrisome for today specifically.
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
Alex Cobb – has already straightened it out with just 1 ER over his last 2 starts. His BABIP is .333 and LOB 65.9% over the last month. As an extreme ground baller, he may be prone to streaks where a lot of them find holes.
Alfredo Simon – was better than his indicators, now he’s been worse. The point is, whether it’s for the entire season or just the last month, they all think he’s about a 4.00.
Chase Whitley – walked his 1st batter in 5 starts last time out. He still has only allowed 1 HR. His SIERA & xFIP see that normalizing. His FIP shows that his ERA is right where it’s expected to be if it doesn’t.
Gio Gonzalez – may have a lot of noise in his numbers due the injury that caused him to miss quite a few starts.
Jeff Samardzija – has been getting a lot of whiffs over the last month (7+ in 4 of last 5), but not that results to go with it, although there’s really only been one terrible outing.
Jeremy Guthrie – has beaten his estimators for .4 to .5 runs over the course of his career.
John Lackey – has allowed just 1 HR over his last 5 starts with 31 K’s and 5 BB’s.
Lance Lynn – has walked exactly 4 in each of his last 3 starts, but has been able to strand most of them due to his ability to keep the ball in the park. Now he’s in Colorado.
Marcus Stroman – the L30 days columns represent all 4 of his starts, while the season numbers mix in his early bullpen work. His last start, also against the Yankees, was by far his worst, lasting just 3.2 innings with 3 BB’s and 2 K’s, allowing a HR.
Matt Cain – has allowed 4 HR’s with 7 BB’s and 10 K’s in June. His estimators are better due to a 51.7 LOB% this month. It’s still bad.
Wei-Yin Chen – has allowed a total of 7 HR’s and 11 ER’s over his last 5 starts with a 94.1 LOB%. Part of that is excellent control.
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).
Alfredo Simon – the BABIP is part of the reason his ERA is lower than his predictors.
Chris Sale – has always had a better than league average BABIP, but leads the league by almost a full % point in Z-Contact (which means contact allowed in the strike zone) among pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched. That means that 1 out of every 5 swings at a strike is a miss, making one assume that contact made is potentially weak as well, positively affecting BABIP in a pitcher’s favor. At least, that’s the theory here. He’s just hard to hit.
Edinson Volquez – has a career .301 BABIP on some good defensive Reds teams.
Felix Hernandez & Gio Gonzalez – both have BABIP’s a fair amount higher than their teams’ allowed, though not obnoxiously so, yet both share better than average Z-Contact rates. Neither induce an above average amount of pop ups, but are polar opposites in terms of GB/FB. But with nothing alarming in either profile, both could potentially see a decrease in BABIP?
Jeremy Guthrie – perhaps a career .278 BABIP is the reason he’s beaten his peripherals?
Marcus Stroman – we can easily say that his BABIP has to normalize with nothing alarming in his batted ball profile, but we don’t yet know for sure that he’s a major league caliber pitcher.
Matt Cain – has a career .263 BABIP, which is why he normally beat his peripherals in the past, but he also always had well above league average IFFB rates. So, yeah, it could be worse.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
Alex Cobb – combines ground balls with strikeouts and a good home park. He has an average matchup today and, as mentioned, is back on track with 13.1 IP – 1 ER – 6 BB – 17 K – 54 BF over his last 2 starts. You may need a pitcher from the 2nd tier today.
Alfredo Simon – if you think he has a special talent keeping the ball in the park today (we covered that above), he does face a team tied for worst in the league (wRC+) vs RHP. He’s allowed at least 3 ER in 6 of 9 starts, but exactly 3 in 4 of those (exactly 5 in the other 2).
Chase Whitley – again, his matchup looks a little better without Bautista (and Lawrie), but Reyes did get into the game yesterday. It’s still a tough matchup though and he could be a bit under-priced, at least in terms of his K-potential.
Chris Sale – has been roughed up a bit in terms of ER’s in 2 of his last 4 starts, but the peripherals are still excellent. The concerns would be the park (although Baltimore has struggled at home this year), his own defense, and some powerful RHB’s opposing him.
Edinson Volquez – has few redeeming qualities today. The Tampa offense? Better than you’d think in this spot.
Felix Hernandez – gets all the money again? Red Sox are a better matchup than they usually are and it might keep some players who aren’t aware of that off his steep price. Dare I even say hidden value here?
Gio Gonzalez – is too scary to trust right now. Rust or is he still injured. If it goes bad, it can really go bad against these RHB’s.
Jeff Samardzija – is another viable option from the 2nd tier. The Reds just finished pummeling Toronto pitching, but really aren’t that good aside from a couple of mid order bats. Samardzija has under-pitched his peripherals lately, but has at least 7 K’s in 4 of his last 5 and 6 of his last 9.
Jeremy Guthrie – is never really a great fantasy option and has perhaps the toughest matchup tonight outside of Colorado.
Jhoulys Chacin – even against a weaker hitting Cardinals team, this is still Colorado.
John Lackey – is yet a 3rd decent option from that 2nd tier. He’s pitched into the 7th inning in each of his last 6 starts (allowing 1 HR), has a good matchup in a great park. There’s nothing really exceptional here, but little to worry about either.
Lance Lynn – Colorado.
Marcus Stroman – if you were going to bottom dip today, you may lean towards the highly thought of, unproven rookie over the vets who normally get pasted.
Matt Cain – this should be where you take a shot with his track record with such a great matchup and a tempting price, but he’s been soooooo bad. He has 4 K’s or less in 8 of 11 starts this season.
Matt Garza – I’m not sure he’s been mentioned at all, but since we’re getting to everybody today (shorter schedule), there are some positives. He’s gone at least 6 IP in 7 straight, has walked just 1 over his last 2 and struck out more than 1 for the first time in 3 starts last time out. It’s still hard to put trust in him, but the matchup isn’t terrible either and we’d basically call him a mid-tier guy today.
Nate Eovaldi – has a nice matchup, but has gotten hammered in his last 2 starts and his K-floor is too low to depend on (5 or less in 7 of last 8). If it goes bad, it could go really bad.
Roberto Hernandez – has not gone further than 6 IP in 5 starts and allowed 4 HR’s over his last 3. He’s exceeded 5 K’s just once this season and not since April 9th.
Wei-Yin Chen – has pitched into the 7th in each of his last 3 starts, but HR’s can be a problem in this park. There’s not a ton of strikeout upside either. The good news is he’s reasonably priced and has only walked 2 in his last 6 starts. As mentioned above 7 HR’s, but only 11 ER’s over his last 5 starts. If he can keep them solo, it’s not terrible. He’s only allowed more than 3 ER twice in his last 12 starts.
Zack Greinke – is perhaps the most troublesome Ace today due that red number in the K department. We don’t know that facing his old team really means anything to him and while he’ll likely be fine at run prevention, the fact remains that the Royals (15.3% total) strike out far less than any other team. It’s not always good contact, but they deny you those extra points, making them a sub-optimal fantasy matchup most days.
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.