Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Mon 6/30
I must be some kind of weird because Monday is one of my favorite days of the week, at least during baseball season. Mondays usually offer a plentiful enough schedule to give you options, but not overwhelm you with choices. With 11 games instead of 14 or 15, the dedicated player might have that extra bit of time to find those deep sleepers.
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 Wood – has been good when starting, but the Mets have been a little better than you think against LHP and overall recently. That’s a little less worrisome without David Wright in the lineup though.
Anibal Sanchez – hasn’t been at his best in recent starts and gets a tough assignment for RHP.
Corey Kluber – stands in front of the 2nd worst defense in the league every 5th day and has one of the least favorable matchups today.
Dan Haren – is the guy who may be most likely to allow HR’s tonight.
Danny Duffy – a great defense and cold bats can do a lot for a pitcher, but this one may be over-valued currently.
David Phelps – faces a hot offense in a bad park.
Hector Noesi – has been a bad pitcher in a bad spot.
Jake Arrieta – has been great against an offense that hasn’t clicked all year.
Jake Peavy – is on the other side of that with a great matchup, but bad results all season long.
Jesse Hahn – has been better than anybody thought and follows with another favorable matchup tonight.
Joe Saunders – as with most nights, could be in trouble again.
Jordan Zimmermann – has been killing it this year and we all know the Colorado bats aren’t as mighty on the road.
Mat Latos – has the best matchup in town to try and get healthy.
Scott Kazmir – coming off a beating, has maybe the toughest of matchups tonight.
Taijuan Walker – makes his 2014 debut against the same team he made his major league debut against last year, although an improved one.
Ubaldo Jimenez – one thing is usually a given….walks.
Zack Wheeler – comes off a rough start right into a decent matchup on the road.
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.
Alex Wood – carries the best home K% since the start of last season of all of today’s starters (some of it from the bullpen remember) against the worst road K%.
Anibal Sanchez – really stifles his K% with that 0 K performance 2 starts back, but Oakland doesn’t make it any easier.
Corey Kluber – faces a fairly tough Dodger team to strike out.
Danny Duffy – often struggles with control issues and the Twins can be patient.
Garrett Richards – has walked 11 of his last 82 batters (19 IP).
Jake Arrieta – we’re going to look at his strikeouts more below, but the Red Sox, despite replacing the normal pitcher he faces in the NL with David Ortiz, may not hinder him as much as you’d think.
Jesse Hahn – we’ll examine his K-rate too below.
Taijuan Walker – should be able to rack up a few K’s at least.
Ubaldo Jimenez – the Rangers don’t like to walk, but he may not give them a choice.
Combo Batted Ball Chart
Ditto for the Combo Batted Ball stats in the Main Chart above.
Dan Haren – serves them up frequently (at least 1 in 9 straight starts and 2 in 5 of those) and this Cleveland team has some pop.
Jesse Hahn – has just 10.2 home innings in which he’s allowed 2 HR’s, both in his first start.
Joe Saunders – may end up with whiplash by these numbers. The O’s excel where he fails worst.
Mat Latos – gets a lot of popups and the Padres just don’t often make strong contact.
Taijuan Walker – Houston has the day’s top Home/Road HR/FB.
Yohan Pino – whenever someone complains about offenses not being aggressive enough today, the other party should show the Royals. Plenty of aggression, not a lot of results, or good ones at least.
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.
Danny Duffy – may be getting results, but the K-rate went from being a little shaky to downright tough to buy. His strikeouts have increased over the last month (5 K’s in 3 starts in June and a season high of 9 in another – 4 or less in 5 prior starts in May), but his SwStr rate hasn’t really budged. In fact, his SwStr rate has been 7.1% or worse in 9 of his 10 starts.
David Phelps – can now say the majority of his work has been in a starting role and McCann is a good framer, but he has only exceeded a 6% SwStr in 2 starts. This includes a start a few weeks back where he got 4 K’s without a single swing and miss.
Jake Arrieta – is on fire. He’s thrown exactly 7 innings in each of his last 3 starts with a total of 29 K’s. He’s had a double digit SwStr% in 5 of his last 6 starts. He’s not going to continue striking out 9 batters in every start, but there’s some solid work being done here.
Jesse Hahn – has only started 4 games, exceeding a double digit SwStr% only in his last start (15.8%). He’s come out of nowhere and not really faced the top of the league yet (SF, SEA, NYM, PIT), so I’d be a little bit cautious with his K expectations going forward.
Ubaldo Jimenez – last week it was repeated several times that he had only 2 swinging strikes the entire game against the Yankees. He at least followed that up with 8 in his last outing, but it’s been rough.
Yohan Flande – turned 6 swinging strikes against the 22 Cardinals he faced into 4 strikeouts in his major league debut. His minor league strikeout rates hung around 16% at most stops in the minors. His only rates above 17.5% were in the low minors.
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
Alex Wood – has only had 1 start over the last month.
Anibal Sanchez – this is still about his BABIP (.060 below his career rate).
Chris Archer – has had the same K and BB rates in June, he just hasn’t allowed a HR and his BABIP has dropped around 50 points.
Danny Duffy – has a .217 BABIP for the year, .210 in June, although as we mentioned above, his strikeouts have increased. His estimators only take into account actual K%, not that his SwStr hasn’t moved.
David Phelps – same effort it seems, with worse results. Of the 4 HR’s he’s allowed as a starter, 3 came in June. His strand rate is only 58.8% this month as well.
Jake Peavy – while it’s been bad all season, at least it seems that it’s the same bad with worse results. Way too many HR’s is what’s driving this. And while we’d like to say he’ll fix this by returning to his career rates, this is the 3rd straight season he’s seen his HR/FB grow as his velocity decreases.
Jordan Zimmermann – is having a career year in terms of results and peripherals. It’s not like he’s been bad, but nobody runs a 1.18 ERA out there over the long run.
Mat Latos – has always been a lower BABIP and HR/FB type of guy, keeping his ERA a little better than his xFIP and SIERA, but right on his FIP for his career. He’s still 25 points below his career BABIP so far in 3 starts. The velocity remains well below last year as well. And with the greatly reduced K% so far, he has to rely even more on that BABIP.
Ubaldo Jimenez – in June: 4 HR’s – 22 BB’s – 18 K’s.
Yohan’s squared have 3 combined starts.
Zack Wheeler – has been inconsistent. Except for when a superior offensive team (OAK) just pounded him last time out, when he gets ahead and can throw his secondary stuff for strikes, it works and when he doesn’t, it doesn’t. That said, he should improve upon the .332 BABIP and strand a few more than 66.3% going forward.
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).
Anibal Sanchez – we just said it above, well below his career rate.
Chris Archer – has the healthiest, among some healthy fly ball rates today. It’s the 23.8 LD% that’s likely hurting him.
Collin McHugh – shows potential reasons for his low BABIP.
Danny Duffy – was mentioned just above also and while he’s generating a decent amount of pop ups which may lead to a better BABIP, that number is just outrageous.
Jesse Hahn – has not induced a single pop up yet and has allowed line drives at a higher than league average rate (23.6%), but batters seem to have some difficulty connecting with strikes and 52.7% of his contacted balls in play are on the ground.
Joe Saunders – has a career mark of .300 on the button. You’d think he’s improve in this department, but hasn’t had a single start with a BABIP below .333 and only one below .357.
Jordan Zimmermann – has a league average LD% and hasn’t had a BABIP above .291 in 3 full season since Tommy John surgery. We see some indicators that may show why that’s true here.
Zack Wheeler – has a 1.98 GB/FB and 19.5 LD% this year. A .714 BABIP vs Oakland hurt last time out, but this should improve.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
Alex Wood – went 7 innings, but only 79 pitches in his most recent start. He should be good for closer to 90 I would think this time out. Against a patient Mets team, that could be more like 6 innings, but we already talked about some of the strikeout numbers and Wright on the bench lessens the NY offensive impact greatly vs LHP.
Anibal Sanchez – I’ve mentioned several reasons already today why I might be hesitant to buy high right now.
Collin McHugh – sometimes it’s just hard to say why you don’t completely buy into a guy. A lot of it does have to do with the price tag today. Seattle does have some LHB’s that can hit the lesser park.
Corey Kluber- is probably going to be fine overall, but you’re paying a lot for a tough matchup today and need a lot of K’s to justify it because the Cleveland defense turns a lot of outs into hits.
Dan Haren – used to be worth a flyer when it was HR’s and K’s. Now that it’s just HR’s lately, not so much.
Danny Duffy – BABIP and a K% that may be on shaky ground are reasons for caution. His positive results have taken place against some rather good offenses lately (LAD, DET) though.
Garrett Richards – hasn’t really been hurt much by the increase in walks we mentioned above, but that’s because he’s hanging a .229 BABIP and 92.6 LOB% over those 3 starts. I don’t see why he’d be more expensive than Zimmermann today though.
Hector Noesi – you’d wish more pitchers would be courteous enough to have NO right there in their name.
Jake Arrieta – even if we don’t expect him to keep going 7 innings and striking out 9 without giving up any runs, he’s got it all together right now. On sites where he’s not the top price, it’s looking good against an offense that just isn’t that fearsome anymore. Last 4: 27 IP – 13 H – 3 ER – 1 HR – 2 BB – 36 K.
Jesse Hahn – isn’t dirt cheap anymore and the reasons to be cautious at this point is lack of quality offenses faced, but what are the Reds in Petco? Tonight probably isn’t the night to expect his run to end.
Jordan Zimmermann – should be the top price on the board. While it’s not all dark green in his chart lines, there’s little to be concerned about either. He’s thrown at least 7 innings in 4 of his last 5, allowing a total of 5 ER’s on 36 K’s and 5 BB’s.
Mat Latos – is probably facing the only team I’d side with him on at this price. I’d bet more against the Padres than Latos at this point. He hasn’t shown the same skills this year yet, but they haven’t shown any.
Scott Kazmir – the matchup may be just too tough.
Taijuan Walker – looks to be cheap where available. He struck out 8 in a complete game shutout against Houston’s AAA team in his most recent start and could rack up a few vs the major league version now.
Zack Wheeler – is always a bit risky, but one maybe worth taking at a decent price in this start. His previous starts against ATL this season weren’t all that great (11 IP – 14 H – 7 ER – 1 HR – 3 BB – 12 K), but both were at a point in April where he was rarely getting ahead and getting strikes with anything other than his fastball. Atlanta is 4th worst in the majors vs RHP via wRC+ and the mighty Gattis may be sitting this one out.
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.