Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Mon 9/8
Now as we all recover from our hangovers from the opening weekend of the NFL, we get back to the business that is baseball, giving all you DFS players another chance to make up for all that went wrong in the sports world yesterday. After punting the 2 day games, there are a nice even 10 left on Monday night including likely the Cy Young winners in each league.
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.
h2=. 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.
Brad Peacock – has a decent matchup and solid results in his last few outings, but the underlying numbers say different.
Brad Penny – has been beyond terrible and I have no idea what benefit a major league team gets from having him in their rotation.
Clayton Kershaw – this isn’t fair. He’s your greenest just about everything today. I mean, he usually would anyway probably, but a matchup with the Padres just about enhances all.
Doug Fister – gets an ice cold Atlanta team near the bottom of the ML rankings offensively both on the road and vs RHP. He’s had some rough outings most recently, allowing 11 ER over his last 16.2 IP with just 8 K’s.
Dylan Axelrod – surprisingly, he hasn’t been all that bad in 3 starts. The HR/FB is more a him thing than a Cardinals thing this year.
Felix Hernandez – has only had one really bad outing, but has struggled a bit more than usual recently. He’s struck out 4 or less in 3 of his last 4. In fact, those last few performances drag his K% way down in the main chart as we see in his line below that the other 5 marks are above 22.5%. All of the HR/FB marks are in double digits and he’s been allowing them at an alarming rate in recent starts.
Hector Noesi – has turned into an occasionally useful pitcher or at least not a sure thing target for opposing offenses any more. The A’s have had their issues both on the road and recently, but are still near the top of the ranks vs RHP.
Jacob Turner – his last start (6.1 IP – 1 ER – 1 BB – 7 K) was his best of the season, but now he gets the 5th best offense at home and best vs RHP. The strikeouts could be hard to come by with not a single mark above 20% in his line below.
Jeff Locke – has been a walk machine with 19 of them over his last 5 starts (just 13 K’s). It’s an issue he’s had in the past too.
Joe Kelly – faces the powerful bats of Baltimore. He’s allowed all 7 of his HR’s this year in his last 8 starts and you can see some alarming HR/FB numbers in the batted ball chart below on both sides. All of them are above 10% and the O’s have left the yard on 18.2% of their fly balls over the last week.
Jon Niese – the Rockies are ice cold, the Rockies are red hot. They are not at home today though and are the 2nd worst road offense in the land. The overall results haven’t been good, but Niese has walked just 1 batter over his last 2 starts (9 K’s), while the Rockies have one of the lowest road walk rates in baseball. Their most fearsome bats are done for the season.
Jordan Lyles – it’s a matchup of the 2 hottest offenses in baseball over the last week, but the park could have some say in that. His walks can be an issue against a patient team with all marks in his line below higher than league average, while the Mets as a team have walked at an 11.4% clip over the last week. A high HR/FB is something he’s had to live with even on the road.
Kyle Kendrick – the Pirates are now the 2nd best offense vs RHP and have been hitting the ball well. Kendrick allowed fewer than 3 ER’s for just the 3rd time in 14 starts last time out. He hasn’t struck out more than 4 in any of his last 7.
Marcus Stroman – I didn’t expect to find this much dark green in his line, but his last 2 starts have been good after a rough patch. Today he gets one of the worst hitting teams vs RHP with a 23.1 K% against them. All the K% marks on their side of the K/BB chart directly below are above 23%, which should really help him out today. He’s been great at limiting hard contact with low LD rates so far. While the Cubs have some pop if they have anything, he’s allowed just 2 HR’s in his last 12 starts, really saying something considering the parks and teams he’s had to navigate.
Miguel Gonzalez – is coming off of a couple of studly performances (16 IP – 1 ER – 2 BB – 14 K). No, he’s not this good, and we’ll look at that later, but he has little red in his line today with a decent Boston matchup.
Mike Minor – has been pitching well lately, but has a tough task against a Washington offense in the top 1/3 of the league at home and vs LHP.
Odrisamer Despaigne – his most recent work has been his best of the season from a pure skills perspective (13 K – 1 BB – 14 IP). It’s not going to be easy today against the 4th best offense vs RHP.
Shelby Miller – is coming off 2 starts with good results even if the underlying numbers are still lacking. The Reds, one of the worst offensive teams against RHP, could make him slightly more enticing.
Sonny Gray – has struggled over the last month and has to deal with a tough park tonight, but the home team has been cold.
Yovani Gallardo – was hit hard his last time out and even though it followed 6 shutout innings, that start (the good one) had 3 BB’s and 0 K’s.
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.
Combo Batted Ball Chart
Ditto for the Combo Batted Ball stats in the Main Chart above.
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.
Brad Penny – peaked with a 4.2 SwStr% in his 1st start. It’s been worse in each one since. He shouldn’t even be striking out the few batters he does. Maybe they are just in too much shock that he’s actually on a major league mound to swing.
Jeff Locke – this is something strange he’s been doing all season. He has a league average SwStr%, but can’t seal the deals. Over the last month however, it’s only been above 6.6% in 2 of his 5 starts, but above 9% in each of those. Still, the K’s aren’t coming, with just 6 total over his last 3 outings. Last year, he had a very close to league average 2.12 K/SwStr (17.6/8.3), so it’s not like this has been a thing.
Joe Kelly – hasn’t shown himself to be a big strikeout guy yet in his major league career. That he’s increased his K% since going from the Cards to the Sox, especially without increasing his SwStr% sits as just a little bit fishy.
Kyle Kendrick – the SwStr% over the last month actually fits better with his K% for the year.
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
Clayton Kershaw – his 30.3 K% and 5.3 BB% over the last month are actually worse than his season numbers and even he can’t maintain the .213 BABIP and 89.6 LOB% over that period. His 84.1 LOB% for the season would be the highest since 2009 and since 2001 if we extended the qualifier to 170 innings.
Doug Fister – this metric beating thing is new for him, but it seems to be inevitable that it’s where he ends up this year. The BABIP is reasonable and the HR/FB (10.7) is league average. The 82.3 LOB% is 9 points higher than his career rate and his K% is his lowest since 2010. He’s made up for part of that by just not walking ANYBODY (3.2%). Over the last month he’s struck out just 11.8% of batters. He’s probably over-valued in the daily fantasy world more often than not now.
Felix Hernandez – I just had to look into that FIP. He has a 25.8 HR/FB over the last month (8 in 32.2 IP), but has kept his ERA near his other 2 estimators by virtue of a .220 BABIP and 96.6 LOB%. If you’re going to get taken deep, he prefers to do it with the bases empty.
Jacob Turner – his metrics mostly as a starter with the Cubs over the last month have been more in line with his ERA, but he still has a .360 BABIP on the season.
Jeff Locke – maybe the metrics close the gap a bit if the K% meets the SwStr% in the preceding chart, but with a -5.1% K-BB over the last month, not a lot of people should be buying. A 16.1 BB% is nothing to be rewarded. That said, the BABIP (.262) and LOB% (77.1) aren’t entirely trustworthy, but not that unreasonable. As he found out last season though, you can’t get away with walking the park forever.
Jordan Lyles – a 21.7 HR/FB (5 HR in 28.1 IP) over the last month along has helped his ERA meet his FIP. I don’t know that we can expect Colorado pitchers to regress all the way back to a league average rate as xFIP and SIERA assumes.
Marcus Stroman – has only been able to strand 59.6% of his runners over the last month along with a .333 BABIP, despite just 1 HR allowed in 28.1 IP.
Miguel Gonzalez – has been amazing over his last 3 starts (20.2 K% – 2.4 BB%) since returning to the rotation after a couple of weeks off. He’s also been rocking the .190 BABIP and 98.5 LOB%, facing such offensive juggernauts like the Reds and Cubs.
Mike Minor – season BABIP: .323 – last 30 days: 221. His HR/FB has normalized to 9.4% over the last 30 days as well. He’s still a talented pitcher when he keeps the ball in the park. If I had more time, I’d look into what, if anything, he’s been doing different. Suffice to say though, that he’s probably somewhere in between what he was and what he’s doing now.
Odrisamer Despaigne – what we try to do here is strip the defense and mostly the environment out the equation here and tell you who these pitchers would likely be with normalized luck, defenses, and park effects. Except that with a decent defense behind him, the BABIP might not go up so much and the 6.8 HR/FB is not so nuts in San Diego. He’s probably closer to his estimators on another staff, but here, the ERA might be closer to what he is under current conditions. You just have to take it on a park by park basis.
Sonny Gray – his last month hasn’t been good by any measure, but the 62.8 LOB% has made things worse. It might be worth remembering that he’s never thrown 180+ innings before.
Yovani Gallardo – has had a favorable schedule in favorable parks (4 road starts) over the last month which has helped him to allow just 2 HR’s in 31 IP (6.3 HR/FB) despite a previous season mark nearly double that. As we saw earlier, the strikeouts have become almost non-existent.
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).
Brad Penny – is pretty bad at this point and often behind in the count. He hasn’t induced a single pop up yet and batters have no problem making contact. I’m not sure that BABIP, especially with that defense, is something we can expect a ton of regression from.
Clayton Kershaw – I don’t know about the .213 over the last month, but I’m fine with his season mark of .268 with those indicators.
Dylan Axelrod – has been doing some good things in a small sample this year, but the BABIP is one thing he won’t sustain.
Jacob Turner – has to see that BABIP regress. His LD% is under 20 for the season and he holds a 1.81 GB/FB. Some of those ground balls should turn into outs.
Miguel Gonzalez – had he qualified, he’d have the 2nd best IFFB% in baseball. It’s a necessity to pitching as a fly ball pitcher in Baltimore. That and the defense have helped keep the BABIP low, but reasonable.
Shelby Miller – does have an above average IFFB and 19.5 LD% with a good defense, but the BABIP may still be a few points out of a confident range.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
Clayton Kershaw – might be a good option even if you had to punt every other position tonight. He’s the best pitcher in the best spot.
Doug Fister – obviously, I’m not as high on him as some others might be and we’ve seen some rough results begin to roll in most recently, but he’s still at least a decent pitcher in a good spot on a short night.
Felix Hernandez – I can’t put him in Kershaw class tonight with his recent struggles, but he’s still right there below him both in price and probably expected performance. The Astros should help pump up his recently lower K-rate, but they do have some power that probably should be considered with Felix’s new HR issues.
Jon Niese – I’ve expected regression from him all season, but think he’s a bit better than recent results. He’s reasonably mid-range priced today and take the Rockies out of the park and you usually take the offense out of the Rockies. The lineup is not real scary on the road without their 2 top bats. What you end up with is an average pitcher at an average price, but in an above average spot.
Jordan Lyles – yes, the Mets are the hottest offense in the league and Lyles has had issues, but if we’re talking about value beyond price tag, there may be some of that here. He’s at or near the bottom of most boards, which is what you’ll need for a #2 behind Kershaw or even Felix, and gets out of Colorado for only the 3rd time in his last 8 starts. Of course, this could also go walk, walk, BOOM, but risk must be assumed tonight on 2 pitcher sites.
Marcus Stroman – the price is surprisingly low (as in mid-range or better) in a good spot for a guy who’s pitched well in his last 2 outings. The Cubs do have some power, but strike out a ton and he’s been able to keep the ball in a tough park this year. This seems to be a nearly ideal matchup for him and probably where I’d go with my #2 behind Kershaw for the most upside tonight.
Miguel Gonzalez – he has a history that tells you to be cautious, especially as his price has risen, but you have to consider how well he’s pitched and now facing a less than formidable opponent, even if some of the recent numbers (BABIP, LOB) are nowhere near sustainable.
Mike Minor – if you want to forgo the top guys tonight for someone otherwise solid, but not spectacular, this might be one of your guys. The Nats aren’t an easy assignment, but that may be accounted for in the price tag that hangs around the upper middle of most boards. He’s had some consistency with at least 6.2 IP and 3 ER or less with 5 or more K’s in each of his last 5 starts.
Odrisamer Despaigne – has had some struggles on the road, but Dodger Stadium is still a pitcher’s park and he’s currently pitching some of his best baseball as a major leaguer. The Dodger lineup is potent, especially against RHP, but not all together terrifying and the price tag is reasonable if not much better in some places.
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.