Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Monday, April 13th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2015-04-15 17:19:19

I guess I should try to establish some rules here. Generally, for the season, I’m going to attempt to include all starting pitchers in each day’s charts, but only contribute write ups for those pitching in night games. The primary benefit of this being promptness of the article each day. The exceptions may occur when start times are before 1pm ET as those may cause too much of a squeeze.

We finally have some meat in our baseball sandwich. All charts are now covering 2015 stats, except where noted in the column label or short into paragraph. That’s a good news, bad news situation because while having the stats is nice, there’s not much we can rely on from just a week’s worth of data or single start. Some teams are playing their first home or road game this week, so we’ll still experience some blank spots in those scenarios or when a pitcher makes their first start.

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. Hm/Rd xFIP is since the start of the 2014 season. Opp team offensive stats are wRC+. Combo stats are explained below.

NOTE – Team defense stats are still 2014 as they’re not available for 2015 yet.

Andrew Cashner seemed like he went back to an older version of himself in his first start against the Dodgers. He sacrificed a few ground balls for more missed bats and some velocity. The results weren’t exactly what he was looking for, allowing three home runs. He’ll likely find the confines or his home park more comfortable with a better matchup against the light hitting Diamondbacks.

Brandon McCarthy was touched up for two HRs and four ERs in his Dodger debut, but the underlying metrics speak to a much more exciting performance. The new Seattle offense has been much less than exciting so far.

Jake Odorizzi made me look good for suggesting good things for him in 2015. He came out of the gate dominant against the Orioles, allowing only two of the 22 batters he faced to reach base, while striking out seven. He faces a stiffer test today against the Blue Jays in their home opener.

James Paxton had a solid start with a 17.4 K-BB% in his opener vs a tough Angels offense. He didn’t have the ground balls going for him as often as in the past, but it worked out for him none the less. He faces another tough Los Angeles offense tonight.

Jon Lester had a rough debut by traditional numbers and if you were watching the game on Opening Night. He looked a bit stale after missing most of the spring. It was mostly a case of command though, as the velocity and missed bats were still present when he was able to execute. It’s likely just a matter of getting settled and he has a more favorable matchup tonight.

Mat Latos – his arms weren’t the only thing tattooed in his last start. This wasn’t one of those things where luck played a big part either. Latos came out flat and nearly every pitch that was swung at was hit hard by these same Braves. There were no positives to come out of that outing and he’s a big red AVOID until further notice.

Matt Shoemaker allowed two HRs to the Mariners in his opening start, but was otherwise flawless with five strikeouts and no walks. He gets a weak hitting Rangers offense in Texas today. The park isn’t as intimidating as it was in the past since they’ve amended the jet stream issue in right field.

Michael Pineda was sharp against the Blue Jays, which is to say, you saw a lot of what you saw from him in an abbreviated 2014. The Baltimore offense has hardly suffered from the loss of Nelson Cruz so far.

Mike Leake had a start to forget vs Pittsburgh last week. He walked six of the 28 batters he faced and allowed more solid contact than you’d like, though he was able to keep the ball in the park. It’s off to Chicago to face an offense that struggled to open the season at home, then went to get healthy in Colorado over the weekend.

R.A. Dickey escaped only allowing a single run to the Yankees to start the season, but the underlying results (3 BBs – 4 Ks) was much less impressive. It’s possible that early April weather played a part and while Toronto is not the friendliest park to their pitchers, the knuckleball does enjoy the controlled environment. Tampa Bay has hit well early in the season.

Ross Detwiler had a rough Texas debut and has little daily fantasy value except at the lowest of prices. The American league offering from Los Angeles hasn’t dazzled on offensively so far.

Rubby de la Rosa may have been a tad better than the results appeared in his initial start, though the batted ball portion of his evening was unfortunate. He gets a shot in a great park tonight, but the offensive component to the new San Diego Padres, has delivered so far.

Scott Feldman threw strikes and had good results against Cleveland, allowing a single run through 6.2 innings. Billy Beane is trying to prove that whoever he puts in an Oakland uniform will hit and is so far exceeding.

Scott Kazmir flat out dominated, striking out 10 Rangers in his season opener, while his velocity was in line with most of 2014. It gives you more confidence that his crash landing to end the season had a lot to do with fatigue. The Astros have hammered LHP in an extremely small sample to start, but are still your preferred source for strikeouts.

Shelby Miller had a successful debut with Atlanta, though did still not miss bats at a league average rate and went with fewer curveballs than normal. The Marlins have struggled in the early going.

Wei-Yin Chen missed more bats than he normally does against Tampa Bay and kept the ball down and off the middle of the plate more often than he has in the past. If this is going to become a trend, maybe we can expect more ground balls, which could help him at home.

Combo K/BB Charts

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 originally were due to size 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 K/BB Charts – Opponent

Combo Batted Ball Charts

See the explanation for the K/BB chart above.

Combo Batted Ball Charts – Opponent

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 and other factors may 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.

As noted in the open, there’s not much to be surmised from a single start in most areas and possibly even less so here. There’s a lot of variance in game to game SwStr%. Let’s talk about a few things that really stand out from the late games though.

Brandon McCarthy allowed two HRs to the Dodgers, but really iced them by getting 13 swing and misses in his 97 pitches.

Mat Latos – an abysmal all-around performance was perhaps capped off by the fact that he got just a single swing and miss on his 38 pitches. Since I was watching the game, I happen to know that swing and miss was on a check swing, making it even sorrier.

Matt Shoemaker – this is not to suggest he’s going to stay there, but it’s fantastic to see him come out of the game with a double digit SwStr% performance against a Seattle team that is supposed to be dangerous this year.

Mike Leake threw 51 balls among his 107 pitches, yet tallied six strikeouts among his 28 batters faced with his six walks. Lest you think there was some kind of silver lining here, it was the same old Leak with a well below SwStr%, fairly close to his career rate.

R.A. Dickey earned just three swinging strikes in his open day assignment against the Yankees. That’s atypical of the knuckleballer who’s been above 9% in each of his last 3 seasons.

Rubby de la Rosa – there was not a lot to like when the Giants made contact, but a double digit SwStr% was encouraging.

Scott Feldman struck out five of 25 Cleveland batters he faced, but his SwStr% was almost right on his career rate.

Scott Kazmir was dominant in striking out 10 of 25 Rangers. We know that is an entirely unsustainable pace, but he certainly had swing and miss stuff.

Wei-Yin Chen didn’t have a successful first start considering the results, but the 13 swing and misses he got against the Rays was a mark he topped only once last year.

ERA Estimators Chart

How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.

Most pitchers are going to have discrepancies between their ERA and Estimators in a single game. We’ll discuss just the largest ones among the night starters.

Andrew Cashner allowed three HRs, so there you have it.

Brandon McCarthy allowed two HRs, but otherwise was brilliant as we already spoke of with the 13 swinging strikes.

Jon Lester – I don’t think we expect a .571 BABIP against him this season, but there were five line drives among 14 batted balls. It’s not like he didn’t deserve some of that despite the ability to throw strikes and get batters to miss. It might mean you don’t feel that bad about it.

Mat Latos was terrible, as we’ve already covered, and even expecting regression from him this year, doesn’t mean this. If he continues to look this bad, it will be a very short stay in the Miami rotation.

Ross Detwiler got hammered in Oakland and didn’t pitch well by any means, but half of his batted balls were on the ground. Some of those are going to find gloves and more runners will be stranded than 38%.

Rubby de la Rosa was hit hard when contact was made, allowing two HRs and another five LDs of his 19 batted balls, but there were otherwise some positive signs, which we pointed to in his SwStr%.

BABIP Chart

A couple of years ago, 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 a pitcher has a much lower BABIP than his team’s allowed (red), then you look for some factors that may support it and maybe you’re onto something (check batted ball profile too).

Brandon McCarthy – Eight of the 15 batted balls allowed were on the ground. When you remove the two HRs and one pop up, it becomes eight of 12 with only three line drives. Seven of those 12 went for hits.

Jon Lester had his issues with contact management a week ago as we’ve already alluded to, but did have good success with getting batters to swing through pitches in the strike zone.

Mat Latos – I think he’s taken enough abuse today, but yet another numerical reinforcement to how ugly it all was.

Ross Detwiler – It’ll be better, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be good.

Scott Kazmir was incredibly dominating and got some swings and misses at pitches in the strike zone. The balls that were put in play were not hit particularly hard, with only two line drives to show for it. He didn’t induce a pop up, but all five of his fly balls stayed in the yard. That leaves just four ground balls among the 11 batted. Regression is obvious, but a great start backed up by most numbers.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Andrew Cashner is not the cheapest of today’s pitchers, but despite the results, you like the velocity and bat missing for daily fantasy purposes and the matchup, along with the park, are much more favorable this time.

Brandon McCarthy is in the same price range as the pitcher above, but had an even more impressive debut from a peripheral standpoint. Seattle will lose their DH, which may mean more of a negative to their defense (Cruz in LF?) than their offense.

Jake Odorizzi is an EXTREME fly ball pitcher going into a tough environment. Despite the great 2015 debut and high hopes for the season, you may want to exercise some caution here, though he does come at a very reasonable price with some upside on some sites.

James Paxton pitched well enough and isn’t expensive, but is in a scary spot tonight.

Jon Lester is your top priced pitcher for the evening. While he didn’t dazzle in his Chicago debut, there were some positive signs that it may have been rust and he should be fine.

Mat Latos shouldn’t be that bad again, against the same team no less, but for now: DO NOT WANT!

Matt Shoemaker showed much of what he did last year, which is a great sign. The price tag is mostly mid-range in a good spot in a park that doesn’t instill the same fear it once did.

Michael Pineda is also a mid-rage cost and is in a tougher spot than the pitcher directly above, but has done nothing except pitch well since coming back from his two year lay-off.

Mike Leake is cheap, but struggled with his control and offers little daily fantasy upside in the first place.

R.A. Dickey should be better in the controlled environment of Toronto, but it’s still a tough park against an offense that is probably better than most people think.

Ross Detwiler is the bottom of your board on Monday night. That’s pretty much where he has to be to generate any value. The Angels haven’t hit much yet, but this would still be a big risk. That said, the bottom pitcher on the board will occasionally give you a quality start.

Rubby de la Rosa is also near the bottom of the board. He’s in a semi-favorable spot against an improved offense, but in a great park. He did show some positive signs in the first start. He’s very risky, but with some concealed upside.

Scott Feldman rounds out our bottom of the board trio tonight and though he had the best results of the three in his 2015 debut, there’s just not much that excites you here. He could be worth his price, though not much more, but he could also get blasted.

Scott Kazmir looked better than all of Monday night’s pitchers in his first start. He faces a team that strikes out a ton. They do have some dangerous right handed power bats, but there’s a lot of potential here at not too high a cost.

Shelby Miller isn’t expensive, but you’d like to see him miss a few more bats before paying much.

Wei-Yin Chen showed some interesting things against Tampa Bay, but you might want to make sure he’s going to keep them up before rostering him in a dangerous spot. The Yankees do lean LH though, which could be an advantage.

You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.

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