Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Mon 7/21
As we have the first full week back from the break, remember that we’re still dealing with a 4 day gap in some stats and that means 1 start or even none over the last 14 days for a good number of today’s starters so take the smaller sample sizes with an even bigger grain of salt. I also want to note that tomorrow’s article might be a bit later than normal, so bear with me for an hour or two if you don’t see it posted at the usual time.
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.
Bud Norris – has compensated for a reduced K% with a reduced BABIP this year, but that’s not something we can depend on to prevail. He faces a team that pounds RHP at home.
Chris Sale – is green across the board with the exception of his defense. He may have the day’s best ballpark neutral matchup with KC slightly below average on the road, 4th worst in baseball vs LHP, and not good over the last week. He should get some K’s, even against the Royals, won’t walk many, and keep the ball in the yard.
Cliff Lee – hasn’t thrown a major league pitch in 2 months and hasn’t shown much in 3 minor league high A rehab starts, the longest of which went 25 batters , but just 4.2 innings. He struck out 8 of 49 total batters.
Doug Fister – as if we didn’t have enough reasons for concern, he has to deal with Colorado as well today.
Drew Hutchison – has been pitching some of his worst ball while the Red Sox have been looking a bit alive lately. He has the day’s reddest BB%.
Edinson Volquez – has a tough matchup with one of the best hitting teams on the road and vs RHP. Why not to buy his revival in the ERA chart below.
Franklin Morales – has what could be the day’s toughest matchup when you include park factors. The Nationals have been hot since the break.
Hyun-Jin Ryu – has been on fire around a trip to Detroit lately and has both the day’s greenest K% and HR/FB.
Jeremy Guthrie – has nothing but defense on his side today. He has been soundly thumped by good offenses recently.
John Lackey – has has a rough go of it lately and has the day’s park neutral toughest matchup against a Toronto team that has put up some impressive offense post-break without their cleanup hitter. They are best in baseball vs RHP.
Jon Niese – has the day’s best matchup when you include the park against the 2nd worst offense vs LHP in baseball. He looked ok, going 5 innings in his last rehab start vs AA batters.
Julio Teheran – hasn’t been at his best in recent starts, but is still one of your best bets for K’s today.
Justin Verlander – has struggled again in recent starts, while the D’Backs have come out of the break hitting. If you take the longer term view, the rest of it doesn’t look so bad though.
Kris Johnson – pitched 4.1 innings in May and 4 innings 2 weeks ago. That’s his major league career. He’s allowed 2 HR’s and walked 6 with 8 K’s.
Mat Latos – really comes down to BABIP magic today and whether he can regain his K% before it runs out.
Matt Shoemaker – faces the 2nd toughest road offense in the majors. He’s been decent or better in most of his starting assignments. He sneakily has the 2nd greenest BB% of the day.
Miles Mikolas – has been mostly BABIP’ed (.431) in 14.1 MLB innings. The 28.3 LD% doesn’t help, but his 12/3 K/BB isn’t too bad. He’s allowed 2 HR’s.
Roenis Elias – has been getting thrashed lately. It shows in some of the numbers in his line today. The park is in his favor though.
Ryan Vogelsong – has a great matchup, though not today’s best, but hasn’t been trustable on the road.
Shane Greene – has looked much better in 13.2 major league innings than his minor league record would have suggested.
T.J. House – can’t keep the ball in the park very well. Otherwise, his underlying skill numbers scream (or whisper?) sleeper if you think he can normalize that. It’s not really a problem he had in the minors.
Tom Koehler – like the Black Widow, has a lot of red in his ledger. He has 6 K’s to 6 BB’s and 10 ER’s over his last 2 starts (9.1 IP).
Vidal Nuno – has pitched better in recent starts, but wants no part of the 2nd best hitting team vs LHP.
Wily Peralta – followed up his worst outing of the year vs Philly with his possible best against the Cards. He may have today’s best park neutral matchup against the 2nd worst road hitting team in baseball and one of the worst vs RHP.
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.
Chris Sale – has such dominant K rates that even if the Royals bring that down a bit, he should still get enough to satisfy buyers, while the walks are green all across.
Cliff Lee – unseen in the main chart, but you would expect a healthy Lee to strike out a few batters and walk virtually none of them.
Doug Fister – will not receive much help in the K department from the Rockies.
Drew Hutchison – has turned himself into a BB machine (5 in his last start) and faces a very patient lineup today.
Hyun-Jin Ryu – one of the drivers here, aside from Ryu’s last start (10 K’s), is the Pirates high rate against LHP.
Jeremy Guthrie – the unsurprising low K% of the day is driven entirely by Guthrie.
Jon Niese – the Mariners provide favorable K and BB matchups.
Julio Teheran – the Marlins K% at home easily leads baseball and they are only 2nd (barely) to the Astros vs RHP.
Kris Johnson – the Indians neither hit well nor strike out vs LHP.
Matt Shoemaker – keeps the ball in the strike zone, while the Orioles will drag down both a K and BB rate. They’re like a version of the Royals that hits the ball harder.
Roenis Elias – though they’ve tended towards aggression over the last month, the Mets have been a very patient team overall, which could complicate things for a pitcher with suspect control.
Combo Batted Ball Chart
Ditto for the Combo Batted Ball stats in the Main Chart above.
Bud Norris – has allowed 2 HR’s in his last 2 starts which entirely makes up his L30 days and pushes his main chart HR/FB up. The Angels hit them vs RHP at an above average rate.
Chris Sale – pitches in a small park and therefor might give up HR’s, but the Royals just rarely hit the ball hard, relative to other teams in the league at least.
Edinson Volquez – his HR/FB today has all to do with smaller recent sample sizes for both him and the Dodgers. That’s one of those grain of salt things I talked about in the opening paragraph. The park will help him today though.
Hyun-Jin Ryu – although recent performance plays a part in the lowest HR/FB today, we see green across the board. It’s tough for RHB’s to homer in that park.
John Lackey – while all of the HR/FB numbers are impressive (read bad for Lackey) today, his 19% rate on the road takes the cake. That’s 10 in 9 starts.
Jon Niese – would probably have one of the lower HR/FB’s on today’s chart if viewable.
Roenis Elias – allowed 8 LD’s in his last start and it’s really red across his entire line in that category today.
T.J. House – the HR/FB is all him today with 7 in 45 IP.
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.
Doug Fister – when you’ve only walked 8 batters all year, it probably helps you cope with a deteriorating K-rate, but this keeps getting worse. His last month shows you what may happen if he doesn’t pick up the SwStr%. He’s only exceeded 3 K’s once in his last 6 games and only exceeded a 6.3 SwStr% once this year.
Jeremy Guthrie – has seen a 2+ point spike in his SwStr% over the last month without much of a budge in his K%. Considering he’s never had a SwStr% north of 7.7 in his career and his 7.2% this year is the highest since he did that in 2008, I might consider the past month a fluke. It’s a shame he couldn’t even take advantage of it.
Jon Niese – with the injury and break, he’s thrown 12.2 IP over the last month. I’ll repeat once again that with his 18.6 career K%, he’s never had a sub-7.6 SwStr%, so it’s not like he has experience maintaining something like this.
Justin Verlander – bad news. That K% spike over the last month comes with a reduced SwStr%. Then again, he only has 11 total K’s in 3 July starts (8 in each of the previous 2). In his defense, those were 3 low K% teams (KC, LAD, OAK).
Kris Johnson – has the highest SwStr% over the last month of all of today’s pitchers. He’s also only pitched 4 innings in the last month and 8.1 total on the year.
Matt Shoemaker – has maintained the same SwStr%, showing no reason to be concerned about a reduced K% over his last 4 appearances, the worst offender of which came against the Royals.
Roenis Elias – if there’s any good news recently, it’s that his SwStr% has gone up as his K% has gone down. They K’s should rebound.
Ryan Vogelsong – both the K and SwStr rates are new territory for him. The 20.4 K% is a career high. I wouldn’t expect him to go too much farther above it, especially on the same SwStr% over the last 30 days.
T.J. House – has had reasonable K%’s in the minors and a league average SwStr% would assume better, but not yet. The good news is that he struck out exactly 5 of 26 batters in 2 of his last 3 starts. In the other it was 3 out of 27 against guess who again……the Royals.
Vidal Nuno – same boring SwStr%, but a higher K%. You might expect a pitcher moving from the AL East to the NL West might see a small spike, but that would come with an expectation of an increase in SwStr% too. He’s posted 6.6% and 10.6% marks in 2 starts as a Diamondback.
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
Bud Norris – has pitched a total of 9 innings over the last month. His BABIP (below) is the main reason for the gaps on the season.
Chris Sale – has actually seen his BABIP normalize at .289 over the last month as his ERA has gone down as both his K% and BB% (slightly) have gone the wrong way as well, due to a 89.4 LOB%.
Doug Fister – is riding on the back of a career low BABIP and career high LOB% (82.2). His 35.6% fly ball rate is well above his career average too. Danger looms.
Edinson Volquez – has pitched only in pitcher’s parks over the last month, in which he’s put up a .259 BABIP, 94.9 LOB%, and allowed just 1 HR. His K and BB rates are exactly the same as they’ve been for the year.
Hyun-Jin Ryu – saw his K% spike to 24.2 over the last month, but also saw his BABIP soar to .353. One of those may be more likely to remain than the other.
Jeremy Guthrie – .397 BABIP – 62.5 LOB% – 13.8 HR/FB last 4 starts. The K and BB rates barely budged.
John Lackey – .339 BABIP – 61.6 LOB% – 37.5 HR/FB last 4 starts.
Jon Niese – as we already said, he’s only pitched 12.2 IP over the last month, but of note is a BABIP well below his career rate (.310) and LOB (77.3%) well above his career rate (72%), though I’d hesitate to say either were unsustainable.
Justin Verlander – has seen his K-rate improve over the last month, but we’ve already questioned the validity of that. If it’s not real, then we question his estimators and the ERA gets a smaller adjustment for the 66.9 LOB% over the last month.
Mat Latos – we see the ERA slowly creeping up. The BABIP is still sitting at an unimaginable number. His 6.1 HR/FB is off his 8.5 career mark as well.
Matt Shoemaker – has a BABIP and HR/FB (12.7) that are a little high, but he really hasn’t been around long enough to establish a baseline. You assume he’ll fall into line, but one never knows with unproven pitchers. I mean, if he just threw meatballs all the time, he wouldn’t have made it this far.
Roenis Elias – .328 BABIP – 55.2 LOB% last 4 starts.
T.J. House – we’ve noticed his potential K ability, but this boy needs to get the 28 HR/FB down.
Vidal Nuno – after allowing 15 HR’s in his first 12 starts , he’s allowed just 1 in his last 4.
Wily Peralta – aside from the 21.7 HR/FB likely contributing to the 60.5 LOB% over the last month, the underlying skills have been largely the same.
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).
Bud Norris – is sitting on a career low BABIP despite a career low IFFB.
Chris Sale – profiles as a potential BABIP suppressor.
Cliff Lee – we know won’t sustain a .341 BABIP if he’s healthy.
Doug Fister – we already spoke of the career low BABIP. He is generating more fly balls, which may lower a BABIP, but not by 30 points off his career mark.
Edinson Volquez – does have a 16.5 LD%, but it still screams fluke off his .300 career BABIP.
Julio Teheran – has the elite Zone Contact rate going and put up a .288 mark last year.
Justin Verlander – has maintained a strong IFFB rate and actually has a career low 17.2 LD% this year. From the basic numbers alone, it looks like he deserves better.
Mat Latos – I don’t care what his IFFB is. He has a career rate (.275) equal to his team’s allowed rate this year and while they’re very good, half the infield is currently on the shelf. I’d expect regression to at least the .250 mark at some point.
Matt Shoemaker – well there’s that 1.4 IFFB, but the Z-Contact% suggests better and the LD% is normal.
T.J. House – with a fairly normal LD% (22.4) should see his BABIP drop a bit, but don’t expect too much with that defense behind him.
Tom Koehler – has a 17.4 LD%, but no other positive indicators that would suggest he’d maintain that BABIP when the team allows a much higher one.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
Chis Sale – is just about always one of your top options. While KC will hurt a K-rate, his is strong enough that cutting back a few will still probably leave him among the day’s best in that category. The positive to facing a KC is that the ball should stay in the park (6.7 HR/FB on the road). Sale has allowed more than 2 ER’s in just 4 of 14 starts. He is by far the most expensive pitcher on the board.
Cliff Lee – hasn’t pitched in a major league game in a while and didn’t look great in minor league rehab starts against high A batters. My gut says to wait and see if he’s really healthy before paying a costly price.
Hyun-Jin Ryu – fell apart vs the Dodgers 2 starts back, but that has been sandwiched by 13 innings of 2 ER’s and with 18 K’s and no walks. He’s facing a tough home offense, but in a great park for LHP’s and the Pirates have had much less success and struck out much more often against pitchers from that side.
Jon Niese – normally, I stay away from pitchers coming back from injury, but couldn’t fault one for siding with Niese today due to the matchup. It’s a great park against a team that doesn’t hit LHP a lick, and unlike Lee, he pitched better against a higher quality of hitter in his minor league rehab. The Mariners may make up for whatever he lacks in the K department.
Julio Teheran – the Marlins might be just what the doctor ordered to get back on track. They can only help a K-rate.
Matt Shoemaker – got clobbered last time I drooled all over his K-rate. Even being more conservative here, among the inexperienced pitchers going today, he’s shown the most in his major league work so far. Obviously, we’re talking about 2 pitcher sites tonight where you want to roster Sale, but he has some upside.
Miles Mikolas – if you want to go really dirt cheap and bet against the .431 BABIP and on the decent 12/3 K/BB, maybe he sticks around long enough to give you 5 or 6 manageable innings against an over-rated offense.
T.J. House – the last of the low experience pitchers I’d even consider today, we’re looking at a dirt cheap price tag and potentially some strikeouts. The park should play better for his HR tendencies today and it’s not like the matchup scares you. He’s another I would consider pairing up with Sale if you want some room for offense in GPP’s.
Wily Peralta – bounced back nicely from his worst outing of the year with 7 very strong innings. He dominated Cincy in his lone start against them 5/2 (8 IP – 3 H – 0 ER – 2 BB – 7 K) and this offense scares nobody without Votto. Even if they do get one out of the park, they need to get guys on base for it to do real damage.
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.