Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Monday, April 20th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2015-04-22 14:50:08

After skipping the incredibly early one in Boston, we’re left with just eight games on Monday, all at night. That’s just the way we like it. Eight seems like a perfect number of games to get some work done without feeling rushed or at all overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices. There may not be a lot of games tonight, but there’s a lot of craziness in the numbers.

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

NOTE – Team defense stats are still 2014 as UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) is not available for 2015 yet.

A.J. Burnett has started like that year in Philadelphia with the sports hernia didn’t exist. He faces a slightly more imposing Cubs lineup in the comfortable confines of his favorite home park tonight.

Alfredo Simon is performing magic tricks again. We’ll look behind the curtain and expose the magician today. The one thing in his favor is that the Yankees have been striking out quite a bit (see Opp K/BB chart).

Anthony DeSclafani was terrible last year. The guy got hammered virtually every time I saw him brought into a ball game. Sure BABIP regresses and all that, but I watched him consistently throw very hittable pitches to major league hitters who hit them hard. Now, he’s missing bats and inducing weaker contact. His 0.88 GB/FB is identical to last season’s mark, but his LD rate has gone from 24.3% to 9.1% so far. The data says he’s significantly dropped his four seamer in favor of his two seamer and change up. It’s worked. He has what may be, surprisingly, today’s healthiest matchup against a Milwaukee lineup that hasn’t hit a HR in a week and has been the worst in the league over the last seven days.

Asher Wojciechowski got a start the first week of the season that didn’t go well, then came into long relieve the day before he was supposed to start a week ago and hasn’t pitched since. He went just four innings in each stint and was much better in the second one. He’s no longer much of a prospect and doesn’t throw hard, but has four pitches counting his cutter. Unfortunately, it would seem from the SwStr chart below, that nobody really swings and misses at those four pitches much. Just over half of his 27 batted balls have been in the air, but he does have three infield flies to his credit. This will be his first attempt to pitch away from Houston, and you would expect Seattle to be a great environment, but the Mariners have some of the hottest bats in the land and 20.8% of their fly balls have left the yard over the last week.

C.C. Sabathia aside from the velocity drop through two starts sending you into a panic, the other stuff looks good, even great. If you just look at the results, you’d probably see that he’s only throwing 87 mph and think he’s toast, but it’s not that simple at all. We’ll be taking a much closer look at him throughout. The Tigers have mashed at home and vs LHP in the early going, but not so much in the most recent week, when they’ve settled down.

Edinson Volquez looks like a different pitcher. He’s missing bats and not walking anyone. Is this possible? He has a great matchup at home against the 2nd worst road offense so far, who have struck out in 24.6% of their plate appearances vs RHP.

Hisashi Iwakuma has allowed a 16.0 HR/FB at home in Safeco since the start of last season. The Astros have some power, but have struck out in exactly a quarter of their plate appearances over the last week. Is he still trustworthy in his current state?

Jake Arrieta hasn’t missed bats with his slider as often in the early going. I’m a little more concerned than maybe I should be this early because he doesn’t have much of a track record and his success was mostly because of that slider. Pittsburgh hasn’t hit as well as expected to start the season.

John Danks is better than 99% of human beings at throwing a baseball, but not very good compared to other major league pitchers. This is where we’ll save some time today. Cleveland continues the tradition from last year of being terrible vs LHP. They are 3rd least efficient in the league against southpaws so far. They’ve failed to homer against one, despite having the 3rd most plate appearances against them.

Jorge de la Rosa makes his season debut and has somehow been successful at home in Colorado in recent seasons. I won’t dissect that here because you’re still not using him. The Padres are better and have hammered LHP to start the season.

Kendall Graveman has a BABIP that isn’t too out of control and has been able to generate a few swing and misses in his first two starts. That wraps up the positive portion of his commentary today. He failed to strike out more batters than he walked in each outing. The Angels should hit better than they have.

Kyle Gibson had an awful debut to the season, but picked it up some against these Royals in his last effort. The Kansas City offense has calmed down, but is still amongst the top in the league at home and vs RHP. They still rarely strike out.

Matt Shoemaker has pitched similarly to the way he has last year in terms of peripherals. If he continues to do so, he should be fine. The only really strange thing is his 0.39 GB/FB through two starts. The elite walk rate continues to be a stable of his success. He’s walked just a single batter so far.

Odrisamer Despaigne is not being used in your daily fantasy lineups in Colorado. There are some major discrepancies in his numbers in today’s charts, but due to this fact, I’ll wait to see if they continue and talk about them another day. The Rockies struggled against some good pitching on the road in LA, but coming home usually heals the offense.

Trevor Bauer could best be summed up as insane if you were looking for a single word to describe the start to his season. It’s consisted of a lot of strikeouts, walks, and pop ups, with little else occurring. None of these things are nearly sustainable at the rates with which they are happening. We’re going to talk a lot about him today. He gets his second straight start vs the White Sox, who have a 15.4 HR/FB at home through just 102 plate appearances.

Wily Peralta has had an underwhelming start to his season, though that could pick up tonight with a solid matchup. Ground balls and strikeouts have been down after two starts, while BABIP is way up.

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 (2014 LG AVG – 20.3 K% – 9.3 SwStr% – 2.18 K/SwStr)

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.

A.J. Burnett is getting a lot of called strikes through his first two games. You wouldn’t expect it to continue. His SwStr% sits not far below his 9.9% rate, but a bit above last year’s 8.4% mark. The current K% is a little over his head right now, but he could find some swings and misses in this Cubs lineup.

Alfredo Simon has gotten a total of six swings and misses at his 184 pitches this season. No other qualifier so far in this young season has a SwStr below 4%.

Asher Wojciechowski got just one swing and miss in his first try (88 pitches), but then five more in 60 pitches the second time around. Neither result should lead to something as good as the still well below league average K% he’s attainted.

C.C. Sabathia has the 16th best SwStr% and 21st best K% among starting pitchers. Does that reek of a pitcher who’s done?

Edinson Volquez hasn’t produced a double digit SwStr% since 2012 and has never produced one above 11%, but if this is going to become a part of his game again AND he isn’t going to walk batters, he could become interesting. He should also strike out more than the league average amount of batters he has in his first two starts. It should be noted that, although it’s not a huge difference, his velocity is higher than it’s been since 2012.

Jake Arrieta has struggled to miss bats in both his starts, yet continues to strike out batters at an above average rate. The slider that got whiffs close to 15% of the time last year has only succeeded in doing so 7% of the time this season.

John Danks – that he should be striking out nearly twice as many as he has still does not make him daily fantasy useful.

Kendall Graveman does miss bats at nearly a league average rate, so his K% shouldn’t be so low, but he can’t seem to throw enough strikes to get to the point where he has an opportunity for strike three.

Kyle Gibson significantly underperformed against his SwStr% with a 1.6 K/SwStr last year, allowing me to hope on him being a sleeper this season. This year, he starts off by even further underperforming against a worse SwStr%. At least I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pitcher with a K% lower than their SwStr%.

Trevor Bauer has the sixth best SwStr% among starting pitchers and leads the majors in K%. He did face Houston in one of those starts (these same White Sox in the other), although we wouldn’t expect him maintain that strikeout rate no matter who he faced.

Wily Peralta hasn’t missed bats at a rate you’d like to see from him and even less than last year so far, but his current SwStr% should still equate to more than just three strikeouts so far (26 BF).

ERA Estimators Chart (2014 LG AVG – 3.80 ERA – 3.72 SIERA – 3.80 xFIP – 3.80 FIP)

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

Alfredo Simon BABIP’d his way through 2014 and is now doing it even more miraculously in front of the Detroit defense to start 2015. None of his 14 fly balls (0 IFFB) have left the yard.

Anthony DeScafani has improved, but even the best won’t sustain sub .200 BABIPs and 93.8% strand rates.

C.C. Sabathia has allowed just two extra base hits and his only HR to a red hot Adam Jones in Baltimore. An astounding 25 of his 33 batted balls have been on the ground and despite 13 of his 15 hits being singles and only walking a single batter, he has only stranded 48% of his runners. I’m starting to have an inkling that this man might have an idea how to pitch with reduced velocity. It’s not like he’s getting hammered out there.

Hisashi Iwakuma – it’s all about them bombs. His career HR/FB now sits at 13.7%, which is just flat out concerning in Seattle, but this year’s 27.3% rate is still twice that (3 HRs from 11 FBs). He’s stranding just 65.2% of his base runners as well. Nobody really mentioned the 81.9 LOB% in each of his first two years in the league, but those things don’t tend to last and it hasn’t. That doesn’t mean there’s an over-correction to something far below league average either. He should eventually settle in somewhere around the normal range in most measures, but you may want to pay a bit more attention to the FIP if he continues to further establish that elevated HR rate.

Jake Arrieta – aside from a slightly depressed BABIP, he’s kept all 13 of his fly balls in the park. Also, his estimators are going by his K% and not even noticing the decreased SwStr%. This might be a little more akin to Baltimore Arrieta than Chicago Arrieta.

John Danks has stranded just 54.8% of runners, but an adjustment would simply make him bad rather than really, really bad.

Kendall Graveman has actually done a good job of keeping the ball on the ground. The BABIP hasn’t been a problem, but two of his nine fly balls have left the park and with the walk rate plus plunked batters (three so far), that’s usually going to mean more than one run when it happens.

Trevor Bauer has faced 49 batters and only 21 of them have hit the ball into fair territory. His batted ball rates are right around normal for him, so there’s nothing off there. None of his nine fly balls have left the yard, but five of them remained near the infield. He can’t excel walking 18.4% of his batters though.

BABIP Chart (2014 LG AVG – .295 BABIP – 9.5 IFFB% – 87.2 Z-Contact%)

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).

A.J. Burnett has not induced a pop up yet, but has only allowed six fly balls and also five line drives of his 30 batted balls (simple math makes the other 19 ground balls). So although the IFFB and Z-Contact indicators haven’t been favorable through two starts, this almost has to be a case of too many ground balls through the infield right now. The BABIP has been so far canceled out in his ERA through an 87.3 LOB%.

Alfredo Simon has a couple of ridiculous things going for him. One is the Detroit defense limiting hits on balls in play so far. Another is that his BABIP is lower than his LD rate (24.4%) so far. It’s not like he’s getting all these pop ups and weak ground balls.

Anthony DeSclafani – there are some great things here through two starts. He has a good defense and has induced nearly as many pop ups (2) as line drives (3). In addition, he has the fourth best Z-Contact% among starters. But again, nobody sustains a sub 200 BABIP.

C.C. Sabathia – I usually don’t repeat things I’ve already said above, but this needs to be emphasized: 25 of his 37 batted balls have been on the ground and 13 of his 15 hits allowed have been singles. He has allowed just four line drives. Employ some more shifts?

Edinson Volquez has been allowing a lot of fly balls (0.85 GB/FB) and has a great outfield defense with a low line drive rate so far, I repeat, sub 200 BABIPs are not a real thing.

Hisashi Iwakuma – it seems the defense hasn’t helped, but he’s sporting a 25.6 LD% as well. Also, more pop ups and less HRs would be to his benefit, as it would any pitcher obviously……but especially him.

Kyle Gibson – the enormous BABIP is somewhat predicated on a 34.1 LD%. The good news is that he had a decent rate last year, but while his FB% has stayed the same, the increase in LD% has come directly out of his GB%.

Trevor Bauer – you can’t say he’ll sustain an incredibly low BABIP (especially with the Cleveland defense behind him), but you’d have a hard time saying he hasn’t deserved it. Nearly a quarter of his balls in play (5 of 21) have been infield flies! He’s also done a great job of getting swing and misses in the strike zone.

Wily Peralta – sadly his .340 BABIP is right in line with what his team has allowed. They have the worst team defense BABIP in baseball.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

A.J. Burnett – I’m seeing some variance in his price tag on different sites. I expect the K% to drop, but also the BABIP to somewhat even it out. The Cubs offense is a bit tougher than last year, but he’s in a great park and there probably aren’t many pitchers you can trust tonight.

Anthony DeSclafani is missing bats at a strong rate and though there will be some adjustment to the BABIP, he’s been doing some things that may ensure overall success this season. You may be scared of the park or some of the “names” in the Milwaukee lineup, but he looks like a new pitcher, the Brewers are without perhaps their top offensive weapon, and haven’t hit a lick this season.

C.C. Sabathia is definitely a pitcher I’m going to personally watch tonight. His numbers are just so intriguing that I really want to see what it looks like and what’s going on. Against a Detroit lineup stacked with dangerous right handed bats though, I probably still don’t have the guts to throw him in more than a single GPP because I don’t expect anyone else to have him. He is still a bit more expensive than I would have suspected tonight.

Edinson Volquez is another pitcher with some cost discrepancies across the sites. He’s the 2nd highest price on the board on one of the big two, but on the lower half on the other. In the past, he’s been of the “pay no mind” category, but things have looked somewhat different (improved) early this season. He has a good matchup with a great defense behind him in a good park.

Hisashi Iwakuma is not cheap and has the HR problem, even in Safeco, against an offense with some power. He shouldn’t be as bad as he’s looked in his first two starts against tough offenses from LA (Angels then Dodgers). My belief is that he’ll get it under control somewhat and continue to be a good (maybe not great) major league pitcher. He should see a boost to his K% tonight and may even be a contrarian play due to his rough start.

Jake Arrieta has a decent matchup in a great park against an offense that has started slow. Despite solid results, I’m not sure I trust him as implicitly as last season unless his slider starts missing more bats again. He’s the highest priced pitcher on most sites.

Matt Shoemaker is just cheaper than Iwakuma in most spots and has done little to show anyone that he can’t repeat his rookie season yet. He actually may be one of the more trustable arms out there tonight considering your other choices.

Trevor Bauer is doing some amazing things, but that walk rate is scary. This will also be his first road start in a tough park for pitchers. As a daily fantasy player, you love the rate at which he’s missing bats, but walk, walk, boom is a definite possibility to put you in a hole tonight. That said, there is also some variation on cost among sites for him as well tonight. Take your shots where you can find him cheaper, but you may wish to exercise caution where more expensive.

Wily Peralta might not be terrible or even bad, but hasn’t shown enough to lead me to believe he offers much, if any, value beyond his price tag tonight with the lowest K% and one of the lower SwStr% on the board.

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

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