Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Mon 7/28
Removing the early game leaves us with just 9 baseball games in which we attempt to predict the single day results today for Daily Fantasy purposes. Ah, predicting the events of a single baseball game on any given day. It is said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. We are all insane. There. I just said it. At least we can only be wrong 18 times today (9 games).
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. 2013+ is since the start of that season. Combo stats are explained below.
A.J. Burnett – struggles with walks and defensive support as he takes on one of the colder set of bats in the league.
Bartolo Colon- faces the 4th worst hitting team vs RHP and though they’ve been hitting better lately, you probably don’t have to worry much about BB’s or HR’s.
Brett Oberholtzer – has some dark red (worsts) in today’s chart. He walked 2 without a K in his only post-break start so far.
Chase Anderson – has the day’s best matchup. Not even the ballpark can save the ice cold Cincinnati bats.
Clay Buchholz – walked 4 with just 1 K in his last start against these Blue Jays and has the worst matchup of the day against the best offense vs RHP.
David Phelps – is coming off a solid start against these same Rangers in his own home ban box, now travels to face them in theirs. They are the worst home offense in baseball and 3rd worst vs RHP.
Homer Bailey – has had some very good peripherals at home since the start of last season, but the D’Backs have been a bit more offensive recently. He has some interesting batted ball rates today, which we’ll have to look at below.
Jake Odorizzi – has 23 K’s over his last 18.1 IP and is hasn’t allowed more than 3 ER’s in any of his last 8 starts. Length is an issue for him though, as he hasn’t completed 7 innings since 6/21.
Jesse Chavez – faces Houston for a 2nd consecutive start. He has at least 6 K’s in each of his last 3 starts.
Jordan Zimmermann – has been getting BABIP’d recently, but has only walked 2 batters in his last 20 innings with 21 K’s.
Kyle Lohse – faces one of the better home offenses in baseball.
Nathan Eovaldi – has been awful, but faces a below average offense at home.
R.A. Dickey – has really struggled with his peripherals on the road in a Blue Jay uniform, but hasn’t allowed more than 3 ER’s away from home since April.
Tsuyoshi Wada – hasn’t faced a major league offense yet (CIN, SD), but got beaten for 5 ER’s and 4 BB’s in his last start.
Vance Worley – the Pittsburgh defense is a surprise, but Worley really needs things to fall just right to be effective. There’s not a lot to love or hate here.
Yohan Flande – hasn’t completed 6 innings or allowed less than 3 ER’s in any of his 4 starts, but did allow just 3 in his lone one away from Colorado. He doesn’t miss many bats and the Cubs are the 5th best offense vs LHP.
Yu Darvish – got knocked out by the rain in his last start vs these Yankees, but not before he allowed a HR in his 4th consecutive game and struck out 5 of the other 17 batters he faced.
Yusmeiro Petit *Madison Bumgarner – well this is pretty aggravating and embarrassing. MLB.com had Petit listed last night and I just noticed way too late that he’s not pitching. Fortunately I’ve caught these in time in the past, but not today. So we’ll have really no information about one of the day’s top pitchers today because MLB.com screwed up. Please direct your ire to them. The Pirates have a 91 wRC+ vs LHP though.
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.
A.J. Burnett – could put his already zombie-like fielders to sleep today. He’s walked exactly 4 in 3 of his last 5 starts and sees some pretty ugly rates across the board today.
Bartolo Colon – he’s just not going to walk many and they’re even less likely with the Phillies. More than 1 would be very surprising.
Brett Oberholtzer – unfortunately for him, the A’s aren’t prone to strikeout, walking almost as often over the last week.
Jake Odorizzi – the Brewers aggressiveness often keeps them out of deep count and away from too many K’s, but he’s turned into a strikeout machine.
Jesse Chavez – there’s not a below average K-rate among the bunch. He struck out 7 of 23 Astros in his last start.
Jordan Zimmermann – his ability to keep the ball in the strike zone trumps the league average patience of the Marlins.
Tsuyoshi Wada – the BB rate is all about him walking 4 of 22 Padres in his last start.
Vance Worley – there’s not a single above average BB% across his line.
Yu Darvish – that he’s still easily the greenest K% in the main chart despite how infrequently the Yankees strike out really says something. It’s a stark contrast in wills here today.
Combo Batted Ball Chart
Ditto for the Combo Batted Ball stats in the Main Chart above.
Bartolo Colon – there’s not a double digit number in his HR/FB line. He hasn’t allowed one in 3 starts.
Brett Oberholtzer – if you’re surprised by the 2nd greenest HR/FB on the main chart, he’s allowed just one in 6 starts and while the A’s hit them at an average rate against LHP, all other rates shown are below league average.
Homer Bailey – has allowed just 1 LD total over his last 2 starts, but 3 of the 4 fly balls he allowed in his last start left the yard. HR’s have always been an issue with him.
Jake Odorizzi – doesn’t allow HR’s at home, but faces a team with some thump.
Jordan Zimmermann – a good reason for the high BABIP is that he has allowed more LD’s than any other batted ball type over his last 2 starts.
Vance Worley – the Giants have popped up more of their fly balls than any other team over the last week, nearly 1/5th.
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.
Bartolo Colon – something I hadn’t really noticed before in that both Niese and Colon having a high K/SwStr this year could have something to do with Travis D’Arnaud. I had just assumed that Colon had pinpoint control and might catch more looking strikes than the average pitcher, but then this weekend it was noted on Mets broadcasts that D’Arnaud was gaining a reputation as an excellent framer. I haven’t seen the numbers, but it’s a theory.
Brett Oberholtzer – we know this is a difficult stunt to pull off, but he has just 11 K’s in 26 IP over the last month in 4 starts. Just once has he had a SwStr below 9%. He had 10 whiffs in 99 pitches without a strikeout his last time out, which is similarly very fluky.
David Phelps – we’re finally seeing the winds of change over the last month. His SwStr% has actually increased a bit as his K% has finally dropped below 20% on the year. I still expect more of a correction to come.
Homer Bailey – more swinging strikes and fewer strikeouts over the last month. Interestingly, Bailey’s 11.4 SwStr% this year is higher than his SwStr last year (10.7%), when his K% was higher (23.4). His consecutive 3 K outings in his last 2 starts is preceded by 8 straight starts with at least 5 K’s.
Nathan Eovaldi – isn’t going to be a strikeout machine either way, but really isn’t generating that many fewer SwStr’s than he has the entire year. He’s struck out 3 or less in 7 of his last 8. His SwStr has been above 8.5% in each of his last 3.
Tsuyoshi Wada – we’re working on 2 whole games of data so far, but it’s been consistent. He had an 11.5 SwStr% vs CIN with 3 K’s in 19 batters, following that up with 10.3 vs SD and 4 K’s in 22 batters.
Vance Worley – this has been what he’s done when he’s going good so far (not so much in Minnesota), but he doesn’t have enough of a track record to make me believe it’s going to be a thing he does forever. He’s failed to exceed a 6% SwStr in any appearance this year and has only been better than 15 K% 3 out of 7 times.
Yohan Flande – hasn’t struck out any of his last 45 batters. He had a 1.2 SwStr% in one of those starts. You’re looking elsewhere today anyway.
Yu Darvish – is really one the border of skepticism here. 11.9 is exactly his career SwStr% so far though, while 30.1 is his current career K%. So maybe this month’s SwStr% with this year’s K% seems right?
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
Bartolo Colon – same guy, 56.2 LOB% over the last month.
Brett Oberholtzer – only has 11 K’s to 7 BB’s over the last month (even though we’ve speculated he should have probably had more), but has thrived on the back of a 2.2 HR/FB.
Clay Buchholz – has only had a BABIP above .273 in 1 of 6 starts since returning from the DL. He’s still having some issue stranding runners however, as that stands at 65.5% on the year.
David Phelps – over the last month has just a .235 BABIP and 92.9 LOB%. He’s allowed just 8 runs in 5 starts, but 5 HR’s (16.1 HR/FB).
Homer Bailey – has only had a BABIP above .143 once in his last 4 starts and has stranded 90% of his runners in 3 of his last 4 as well.
Jesse Chavez – the estimators are pretty similar throughout, but the ERA is up about a run and a half over the last month. A .397 BABIP will do that to you.
Jordan Zimmermann – similarly has the same peripherals, but the ERA has jumped. There was a bit of an injury concern in there and just 20.1 innings, but his BABIP has been above .350 in all 4 starts while he’s allowed 3 HR’s in his last 39 batters. Velocity has been consistent though.
Kyle Lohse – aside from the fact that Lohse has struck out more batters over his last 4 starts and only walked 3, his BABIP has actually been up (.301). We’ll talk more about that below.
Nathan Eovaldi – aside from his atrocious K-rate, Eovaldi has just a 55.3 LOB% over his last 5 starts. It’s ugly either way though.
Vance Worley – first 3 starts – .242 BABIP, 93.4 LOB%. Last 3 starts – .328 BABIP, 59.5 LOB%. How about something in between?
Yohan Flande – has stranded just over half his runners in 4 starts.
Yu Darvish – none of his numbers over the last month that would throw his ERA that far from his Estimators are crazily off, but all are a little worse. His BABIP is 10 points worse, his LOB is 5 points less, and his HR/FB is actually up 50% from 8.1 on the year to 12.5. He’s allowed a single HR in each of his last 4 starts.
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).
Clay Buchholz – we touched on the correction already happening since his return from the DL in the ERA chart above.
Jake Odorizzi – after a 3 start stretch in June with a BABIP under .200 in each, he’s been above .300 in 4 of his last 5. The LD% in those starts is not insignificant, at 23.1 or worse in 4 of the 5, but stands at a reasonable 22% on the year.
Jesse Chavez – also has a high LD% (23.6).
Kyle Lohse – it’s not that there’s a big difference here, but we mentioned above his .301 mark over the last month being closer to his .294 career mark, but it’s been no higher than .276 over the last 4 years.
Jordan Zimmermann – has been really up and down with his BABIP month to month this season and July has been one of the bad ones. The 23.5 LD% doesn’t help, but the IFFB is 4th best in the majors among qualifiers.
R.A. Dickey – knuckleballers and lower BABIP’s. Yup, it makes sense.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
A.J. Burnett – if he can control the strike zone, he keeps the ball on the ground and the HR hasn’t really plagued him this year. The Mets, aside from Duda, have barely hit a lick since the break.
Bartolo Colon – is a mid-range priced, mediocre pitcher with a great opponent today. He’ll throw strikes and should keep the ball in the park.
Homer Bailey – is really borderline for me today. Every time it looks like it’s getting better, he implodes. He had as many K’s (3) as HR’s allowed (3) in his last start. It really comes down to his ability to keep the ball in the yard.
Jake Odorizzi – is at a comfortable home park and has been pitching well. He’s one of your best bets for strikeouts and the one thing you really worry about is length. He’s only completed 7 innings twice in 20 starts, going less than 6 full in 13 of them.
Jesse Chavez – was a great pick last week against these same Astros and that worked out well so why change? The park may be a bit worse, but it shouldn’t matter much.
Jordan Zimmermann – I’m going to bet on the BABIP trend reversing itself. The K’s, BB’s, and velocity all look fine, so I’m not that worried about lingering injury right now and the Marlins are currently a pretty favorable matchup.
Madison Bumgarner – what do you need numbers for? He’s Madison Bumgarner. He’s gotten back on track over his last 2 starts against 2 of the worst offenses in the league (MIA, PHI) with just 1 ER and 13 K’s in 14 IP.
Yu Darvish – you might be able to get a little more bang per dollar from the middle of the board today. He’ll still get his K’s, but the Yankees might drag that down a little and you never really know what you’re going to get lately aside from the K’s. As always, you’ll have to pay a lot.
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.