Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Mon 7/7
Hopefully everyone had a great holiday weekend and is done with their physical recoveries from all the food and drink in time for some Daily Fantasy baseball today. We start the home stretch leading into the All Star break with a large 14 game slate for Monday, all at night. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the heavy trade activity in July doesn’t wreak havoc with the daily charts over the next few weeks. Keep an eye out though because it could happen if I miss one.
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.
Adam Wainwright – uncharacteristically had 2 BB’s and 0 K’s in his last start which will hurt a SIERA. Pittsburgh has been hitting well and are the 7th best wRC+ vs RHP.
Charlie Morton – has been pitching well, but the Cardinals are a better offense at home. Both sides of this matchup are the most likely to keep the ball in the park today.
Chase Anderson – may be most likely to give up some hard hit balls and long balls today.
Chris Tillman – can’t miss bats anymore and faces the 2nd hottest set in the majors.
Clay Buchholz – faces a cold set of bats and we’ll talk about why he could make a good buy low candidate later.
Daisuke Matsuzaka – is on borrowed time. He gets a one start reprieve with Niese landing on the DL over the weekend.
Edwin Jackson – has a great matchup, but is a bit of a mess.
Hisashi Iwakuma – has the best set of estimators and park on the board today.
Ian Kennedy – faces one of the best home hitting teams in the worst park in the majors. The upside is that they were shut down there over the weekend.
J.A. Happ – has what appears to be easily the worst matchup of the day. It hardly matters what his own numbers are.
Jake Odorizzi – had a roughish start his last time out and takes on the fantasy buzzkill Royals.
James Shields – has one of the surprisingly tougher matchups today when he faces his old team.
Jarred Cosart – just isn’t fantasy relevant with his K & BB numbers, especially today.
Jered Weaver – has seen his K% rise this year, but his HR/FB is the highest of his career as well. He sees the 2nd best hitting team vs RHP today. However, they’ll once again be light in the lineup with injuries.
Jesse Chavez – has cooled down, but so have the Giants ailing offense.
Justin Masterson – would look better today if we were confident about his health.
Kevin Correia – is an unreliable pitcher (said kindly) in a favorable matchup.
Marco Estrada – has the day’s best matchup, even better than SD today. If only he could find a way to keep the ball in the park.
Mike Leake – has one of the better matchups today with the best BB% and K-BB% or K/BB in today’s chart.
Miles Mikolas – wasn’t terrible in his debut and his 2nd start has more favorable circumstances.
Ryan Vogelsong – faces the toughest home offense in the majors, but has 15 K’s to 1 BB over his last 13 IP.
Scott Carroll – is a bad pitcher in a decent spot.
Shane Greene – pitched to 5 Boston Red Sox, walking 3, on 4/24. That is the extent of his major league experience. Going into Cleveland as a RHP is likely not a warm welcoming way to make the 1st start of your career.
Stephen Strasburg – dominates at home, but has a really rough matchup vs the best road hitting team in the majors.
Tom Koehler – has really upped his game from a peripheral standpoint lately and has a solid matchup today.
Tyler Matzek – is your Plug & Play vs SD today……oh, wait….Colorado.
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.
Charlie Morton – is having his main chart K% driven entirely by an 11 K effort 2 starts back. Everything else is below average here.
Daisuke Matsuzaka – is just a walk machine.
Hisashi Iwakuma – is a solid strikeout option on a day when they don’t look plentiful overall vs a team that strikes out 2nd most on the road in the majors. He’s going to challenge their ability to take a walk as well.
Jarred Cosart – does not miss bits and faces a team that is tough to strike out. It’s not a good combination.
Justin Masterson – does have 13 K’s to go with the 7 BB’s in his last 7 innings (44 batters). The Yankees make above average contact.
Mike Leake – has seen his K’s trend up this year overall and the Cubs could help him in that regard and neither side of this matchup has an affinity for free passes.
Mike Minor – struck out 5 of 23 Mets in his last start and could be in line for some more today with the top K% in the main chart. The problem, however, is whether you believe in his own rate, which we’ll discuss below.
Miles Mikolas – would actually have the best matchup for K’s, but we hardly know that he brings enough to the table in that regard yet.
Stephen Strasburg – has struck out 29.5% of batters at home since the start of the 2013 season, but Baltimore is not an easy team to whiff. O’s have the 5th lowest K% on the road this season.
Combo Batted Ball Chart
Ditto for the Combo Batted Ball stats in the Main Chart above.
Adam Wainwright – faces a team that has the top HR/FB on the road in the NL, but they haven’t been hitting them lately and he hasn’t allowed a HR in 5 starts.
Charlie Morton – has only allowed a HR in 4 of his 17 starts this year and the Cardinals have the 2nd lowest HR/FB in the majors. Morton doesn’t allow fly balls often, but when he does, it’s often a pop up.
Chase Anderson – owns most of his hard hit ball numbers today, but the Marlins have some power outside that ballpark in Miami. He also has one of the best IFFB rates though. It’s like he never serves up a normal fly ball.
Cole Hamels – the Brewers have surprisingly had the worst HR output in the majors over the last week.
Daisuke Matsuzaka – may be able to get away with some of those walks due to his enviable batted ball rates. The Braves have surprisingly low HR/FB numbers here as well.
J.A. Happ – the Angels below average LD rates would surprise you here.
Jarred Cosart – has to keep it in the park to stick around due to not many other exhibited skills so far, while the Rangers have less power at home than in years past.
Jesse Chavez – allowed 9 HR’s in his first 12 starts, but none in his last 5, which he kind of needed as his peripherals have trended southerly.
Marco Estrada – still displays fantastic LD and IFFB rates. If it doesn’t leave the park, it’s generally not hit that hard.
Stephen Strasburg – has had HR problems, just generally not at home, though he has allowed at least 1 in each of his last 3 home starts. The O’s will challenge him today in the power department.
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.
Adam Wainwright – matches his SwStr for the season in the L30 days, but his K% has dropped by 1/3 over the past month. He has had 1 & 2 strikeout games in his last 4 starts with SwStr marks of 6.5% and 3.3%. In the other 5 of his last 7 starts though, his SwStr has been in double digits, so there doesn’t appear to be any cause for concern.
Charlie Morton – has a career high K% and it’s not really far out of line with his SwStr this year, but that SwStr is also in line with his career number. I wouldn’t expect him to get over 20%, but he’s very fantasy relevant where he is now.
Chris Tillman – is just ugh! He has exceeded 3 K’s in just 1 of his last 12 and has a total of 6 over his last 4 starts. His SwStr has exceeded 5.3% just twice in those 12 starts.
Clay Buchholz – only struck out 2 in his last start again. As mentioned here last time though, his velocity is up and his SwStr was in double digits yet again (11%). I’m absolutely buying low on his K-rate if he keeps this up.
Daisuke Matsuzaka – posted his 1st double digit SwStr in a start this season last time out, but it was against the whiff happy Braves. I don’t expect him to maintain a league average K% going forward.
Edwin Jackson – with an increase in SwStr over the last month, I’d expect his K% to jump back up soon.
J.A. Happ – has a career 19.4 K% as well as this year. His career SwStr (7.9%) is 1.4 points higher than this year’s rate. This is not good news.
James Shields – is somebody who’s K% is legitimately worrisome now and it’s not a velocity thing.
Marco Estrada – had a HR rate that was more than tolerable when he was striking batters out at nearly an elite rate. It’s turned disastrous now. His SwStr was sub-5.0% in each of his last 2 starts.
Mike Leake – is seeing his recent K-rate driven by a single game spike with 12 against the Giants a couple weeks ago. His 18.8% rate is still a career high, even though 7.2% is also his career SwStr% as well as this year’s.
Mike Minor – had a 22.1 K% last year too when he also had a 9.6 SwStr%. He had a 7.8 SwStr% like this year in 2012 when he only had a 19.9 K%.
Shane Greene – has struck out 1 of the 5 major league batters he’s faced. 1 of the 23 pitches he threw was swung and missed on. 15 of them were balls.
Tom Koehler – has the highest K% of any of today’s starters over the last 30 days.
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
Adam Wainwright – well, yeah, we all know he’s great, but he’s also sitting on a .246 BABIP, 81 LOB%, and 3.7 HR/FB, all far from his career levels. In a shocking turn of events, he’s also walked as many or more than he’s struck out in 2 of his last 4 starts, which is always going to hurt the estimators.
Chris Tillman – has 15 BB’s to 10 K’s over the last month. The crazy thing is that neither his BABIP (.270) nor LOB (76.8%) are much out of line with his season or even career numbers over that span. His HR/FB is a different story at 4.8%. His career rate is more than double that and as a fly ball pitcher who isn’t missing bats……even though he’s not pitching in Camden today, that spells trouble.
Clay Buchholz- looks healthier and is a case where I think his recent estimators could be a bit high due to what I wrote in the SwStr section above. They do say that he’s been essentially otherwise been the same guy with a 3.29 ERA lately that he was with a 6+ ERA over the earlier part of the season, which I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on with the injury.
Cole Hamels – has walked 4 and 5 batters in 2 of his last 3 starts. He still has a 3.0 K/BB over the last month, but with a 88.8 LOB%.
Edwin Jackson – in which we have our weekly reminder that his ERA has never met his peripherals throughout his career, but the .354 BABIP over the last month is even out of his normal range.
Hisashi Iwakuma – has a 3.2 BB% over the last month, but a .355 BABIP and 17.4 HR/FB. HR’s are a problem for him traditionally, but not by that much.
Ian Kennedy – with K and BB rates that are career bests, it would seem that a BABIP far from his career and team allowed rate is the main culprit here.
J.A. Happ – if you’re not buying the K% over the last month as we talked about above, then maybe you’re not buying the estimators either, but he’s also only stranded 60.8% of runners over that span.
Jake Odorizzi – has gone from one extreme to another. His .213 BABIP and 94.5 LOB% over the last month won’t sustain.
Justin Masterson – now that we know his knee has been bothering him for nearly the entire season, what do we do here? He has a .403 BABIP over the last month.
Kevin Correia – has struck out just 11 of the 127 batters he’s faced over the last month, allowing just another 1 to homer off of him. If you’re buying that and a .257 BABIP over that span, then sure, go for it.
Marco Estrada – has now allowed 26 HR’s on the season. I think a Marco Estrada pitch just landed in my iced coffee.
Mike Minor – his .351 BABIP and 16.9 HR/FB for the season are far from his career numbers. Those numbers jump to .447 and 21.9 over the last month.
Ryan Vogelsong – has seen a slight rise in K% along with a drop in BB% over the last month that has coincided with a .364 BABIP and 59 LOB%. He hasn’t allowed a HR either, but pitched 4 of 5 games at home in SF. He gets another pitcher’s park tonight.
Stephen Strasburg – had a .222 BABIP in his last start, his 2nd lowest of the season, so he’s on his way. His season LOB has finally hit 70% too.
Tom Koehler – has seen his K% explode over the last month, while cutting his BB% in half. Earlier in the season, he was getting by entirely on an unsustainable BABIP, which was a reasonable .291 over the last 30 days. He was also stranding over 80% of his runners early, which has sunk to 62.1% over the last 30 days. The strange thing is that he had allowed 8 HR’s over his first 12 starts, but just 1 over his last 5. It’s like in his last 5 starts, he just did the extreme opposite of everything he did in his first 12, most better for his long term well-being.
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).
Adam Wainright – we’ve already discussed his BABIP being well below his career rate.
Clay Buchholz – has had a .214 BABIP in his 2 most recent starts since his return from the DL. Expecting a return to his .285 career mark, if healthy, is not unreasonable.
Cole Hamels -profiles as a low BABIP guy and his career mark is .284.
Daisuke Matsuzaka – is helped out with a low Z-Contact%, but has a .289 career BABIP.
Edwin Jackson -is a high BABIP guy, but .342 is a little too high for the long run. However, he’s not helping matters with a 27 LD%.
Hisashi Iwakuma – does have a .270 mark in 426 innings (including this year), despite not having any of the indicators that would suggest a low BABIP. The Mariners have the best team mark in the majors.
Ian Kennedy – as discussed above has a career .288 BABIP while his team has allowed a .284 one this year. The only difference in his batted ball profile is a career high 41.3 GB% and an IFFB below his 10.3% career mark.
Jake Odorizzi – gives up a few more LD’s than usual, but nothing that should hurt his BABIP too much.
Jered Weaver – has the 2nd lowest IFFB of his career, but also the lowest Z-Contact%, a mark that leads the majors among qualified starts. Low BABIPs are nothing new to him (.271 career).
Jesse Chavez – has a 22 LD%, which is a bit above league average.
Justin Masterson – has never had an IFFB% above 9.1 before this year. The defense kills him.
Marco Estrada – what he keeps in the park, usually finds a glove. His career mark is .277 and the Brewers catch the ball so along with his positive indicators, a low mark is not surprising.
Mike Minor – has a 25.6 LD%. That’s gonna raise your BABIP, but his career mark is .296.
Ryan Vogelsong – has a .299 career mark, so if it decreases much, a lot of that will be due to his defense.
Scott Carroll – has an elite IFFB rate, but also a pretty terrible Z-Contact rate.
Stephen Strasburg – may be more likely than any pitcher in the league to see his BABIP drop.
Tom Koehler – we already mentioned a bit about his BABIP rising last month above. He still has a ways to go.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
Adam Wainwright – is by far the most expensive pitcher today and I don’t really have a problem paying for him as he’s still one of the top overall guys, but with his ERA far out performing his peripherals as of late, I can hardly call him the top value of the day.
Charlie Morton – is on the top half of the board, but reasonably priced today. The Cardinals are middle of the pack at best vs RHP and don’t hit for a ton of power anymore. I don’t expect Morton to keep striking batters out and the Cards make contact, but he’s had at least 5 in each of his last 6 starts.
Clay Buchholz – is an interesting buy low today if you believe in his health and the SwStr as an omen to an increased K rate.
Cole Hamels – with Milwaukee not being the terror you’d expect vs LHP this year and Hamels being kinda “meh” over the last couple of weeks, I’m really up in the air about what to do with him today, which usually means look for safer options? With not many top options today though, it’s hard to fault going with a known name.
Hisashi Iwakuma – faces the team with the lowest HR/FB in baseball over the last week in his home park which should negate some of the long ball fears. Once you’ve confidently addressed that problem, you’ve pretty much addressed every reason you’d hesitate to use him. His price tag is pretty much 4th guy on the board today, but I think he has a chance to be the day’s top performer in this spot.
James Shields – is more a guy than THE guy these days, but a price drop, significant in some places, makes you start to wonder if he has anything left in the tank. He may be worth a flyer at a Pitcher #3 where his price is really low.
Justin Masterson – hasn’t gotten through 5 innings in 3 of his last 4 starts. He may or may not still have a bum knee, otherwise I’d actually consider buying in a better than most people want to believe spot against the Yankees at a low price.
Mike Leake – had a string of rough starts at the beginning of June, but usually gives you a quality start. He has allowed a single HR in each of his last 4 starts, but not much else. His strong ground ball rates keep him playable in this tough park, especially with the increased strikeout rate. The Cubs have been hitting well lately, but are an otherwise enviable matchup. He’s a little pricey compared to other options, but like we said, it’s not full of studs today.
Mike Minor – you’re buying fairly low on him if you believe in the BABIP rebound. Make no mistake that he’s made his own bed. The Mets are an above average team against LHP and David Wright is back in the lineup, but still doesn’t look entirely healthy. Even if we don’t entirely buy into his K-rate, the Mets should help keep it one of the top ones for today at least, where it may prove hard to find strikeouts.
Miles Mikolas – if you want to go dirt cheap and hope, the Astros always provide some K’s.
Ryan Vogelsong – provides some upside today if you aren’t adverse to a lot of risk. He’s striking out more than he ever has and the estimators seem to like him much more than his ERA lately. Sure the A’s scare you at home, but one of their top LHB’s (Moss) is banged up and they’ve been more mediocre without him, putting up just 10 runs in the weekend series with the Blue Jays and not scoring more than 5 runs in any of their last 7 games.
Shane Greene – is nothing to get excited about. He’s not on any real prospect lists and at 25 yrs old and has some cringe worthy minor league BABIPs well over .300 with roughly average K & BB numbers. He has allowed only 3 HR’s this year.
Stephen Strasburg – rebounded in his last start and my first instinct is to jump all over him at some reasonable prices, but the Orioles are a tough matchup in any park right now. They don’t even strike out as much as you’d think they would. Strasburg does have at least 8 K’s in 7 of his last 9 home starts and really seems to excel on his home field in Washington though.
Tom Koehler – maybe has to be considered based on the recent K-rate alone on such a tough day. You’re kind of reaching for positives on some guys today and don’t love the park, but the team that plays it’s games in it has not been scary at all this year.
Tyler Matzek – what do you do with the Padres facing an unproven rookie in Colorado?
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.