Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Monday, August 17th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2015-08-19 13:44:15

Ten games to kick off the week on Monday and while we don’t have really have any of the super-elite DFS pitchers on the mound tonight, there are several from just the next level down. Most of those guys have tough matchups and/or other drawbacks tonight though, so it might actually be a very tough pitching night with nobody coming up as a clear cut top rated pitcher.

Don’t forget to watch for lineups, umpire assignments, and Kevin’s weather report as they are released later in the day, all of which may change the equation and help you decide between two pitchers of otherwise equal value in a pinch.

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.

NOTE: C.C. Sabathia has been scratched and will be replaced by Bryan Mitchell

Starting Pitching Main Chart

We’re using Seamheads.com three-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.

Andrew Heaney has allowed more than two ERs only once in nine starts, but hasn’t completed six innings in any of his last three. He may be one of those workload limit guys we have to start looking into at this point in the season and may only have 90 or so pitches to work with. He comes in with an average 13.7 K-BB% due to excellent control, but has an ERA much lower than his estimators. That doesn’t always make a pitcher unusable after taking all other factors including price and matchup into account. The White Sox are the 3rd worst offense vs LHP (15.7 K-BB%, 8.3 HR/FB, 5.6 Hard-Soft%), which is actually a great improvement from where they had been. They are one of the top park adjusted matchups tonight.

Carlos Rodon is coming off the best game of his short major league career, striking out a season high 11 of 26 Angels, but perhaps more surprisingly only walking one. He still has a 12.3 BB% for the season but has dropped it down to a more league average 7.5% over his last four starts. Obviously, walking fewer batters is going to allow him to get deeper into games and make him more effective for daily fantasy players. This was the first time he’s completed seven innings though, so he’s not there yet. He has a -6.6 Hard-Soft% over the last two weeks. The Angels are a good home offense, but not below average vs LHP, and have not hit well over the last week (5.8 HR/FB, 0.5 Hard-Soft%). Overall, they park adjust favorably for the pitcher.

Bryan Mitchell has had many multiple inning relief outings and has gone at least three innings each of the last three times out this month, but has just one four inning start this month allowing four runs, but striking out five of 20 White Sox batters. He has a 16.7 K-BB% for the season in 19.1 IP with an 18.2 HR/FB, but 2.64 GB/FB and 1.8 Hard-Soft%. Minnesota is the worst road offense in the majors (22.2 K%, 8.0 HR/FB).

Chris Tillman has had a strange season. He was getting regularly pounded through June, then started pitching better for a while, followed by a period of his ERA looking better than the underlying numbers for a few starts before not making it out of the 3rd innings against Seattle last time out. You just don’t know what version you’re going to get. For the season, he has a well below average 8.1 K-BB%, but also just a 6.7 HR/FB at home since last season, though I’m slightly skeptical of his ability to maintain that. He faces a below average Oakland team on the road, but fairly neutral vs RHP and with the positive park adjustment. They have just a 17.3 K%, but 5.1 Hard-Soft% vs RHP.

Cole Hamels hasn’t exactly impressed Ranger fans yet, allowing five HRs in his first two starts, but the strikeout numbers are just about where they usually are. To go along with an 18.2 K-BB% he still maintains a 4.5 Hard-Soft% for the season despite that number jumping to 38.5% over his last two starts. Seattle is a mostly neutral offense here, but have been hot over the last week and become a tough matchup with the positive park adjustment. They have a 15.2 K%, but 13.0 HR/FB vs LHP with a 13.4 HR/FB on the road.

Colin Rea was very mediocre in his first start against the Reds, allowing three ERs in five innings, striking out four of 22 batters, but getting just two swinging strikes and a 58.8 Hard-Soft%. It doesn’t get much easier against the Braves, in the strikeout department at least (17.9 K% on the road, 17.1 K% vs RHP, 16.8 K% over the last week), but it’s totally different from a batted ball perspective. Atlanta is poor on the road (7.8 HR/FB) and vs RHP (7.7 HR/FB, 5.3 Hard-Soft%) and park adjust to one of the top matchups tonight.

Danny Salazar has struck out at least six of his last seven, but no more than eight. He’s allowed a total of 3 runs over his last three starts and has a 20.5 K-BB% despite a season high five walks in his last start. He has a 12.3 HR/FB on the road and faces not only a pretty strong home offense in a tough park, but they rarely strike out (17.1 K% at home, 16.7 K% vs RHP, 15.3 K% over the last week) and are probably the hottest team we’ve seen over a single week span this season. They are easily the worst park adjusted matchup tonight.

Erasmo Ramirez pitched seven shutout innings in his last start after getting roughed up in each of the previous three. He gets a lot of swinging strikes that he has trouble converting into strikeouts, but maybe the Astros help him out there (23.9 K% at home, 23.8 K% vs RHP). Houston is a very tough home team (18.0 HR/FB), above average vs RHP (14.9 HR/FB), but cooled down over the last week. In a fairly neutral run environment, they turn into a slightly unfavorable matchup.

Gerrit Cole hasn’t pitched more than 6 innings in any of his last three starts, but still has only allowed more than three ERs once this year (though he did allow four total runs in his last start). He’s been remarkably consistent in not only run prevention, but has also struck out between five and eight betters in all but five of 23 starts. He has a 19.2 K-BB% this year and an 8.3 HR/FB for his career. Strangely, he allows more HRs at home (six of his eight this year). Arizona has been hot (30.9 Hard-Soft%), but are otherwise very average in strikeouts and HR/FB on the road and vs RHP. They park adjust down to slightly favorable matchup here.

Jeremy Hellickson is coming off his best outing of the season with eight shutout innings against the Phillies with six strikeouts. It has otherwise not been a good season and it’s not just the park in Arizona, as 11 of his 18 HRs have been allowed on the road. The park shift may help him slightly today, but the Pirates are a good offense who have been hitting the ball well seemingly since the All Star break. They hit for average power (10.0 HR/FB) in a tough home park with the park adjustment making them a neutral matchup tonight.

Kyle Gibson has wrapped two good starts around a terrible one in Toronto over his last three, but who don’t the Blue Jays bludgeon? The K% is up to at least respectability if not average, but I still think there’s some upside there considering a league average SwStr%. He has just a 7.3 K-BB% on the road since last season and faces an extremely strong home offense (9.0 BB%, 14.8 HR/FB), but they are actually better vs LHP than RHP this season, though still formidable either way and not a favorable opponent after park considerations tonight.

Matt Garza has pitched well over his last two starts (14 IP – 3 ER – 9 K – 50 BF), though he has just a 7.9 K-BB% and 15.8 Hard-Soft% for the season with a 12.7 HR/FB at home in his Milwaukee career. He has a great matchup tonight though, against a team poor road team (14.3 K-BB%) and the worst offense vs RHP in baseball (6.4 Hard-Soft%). They remain a favorable matchup even with the upward adjustment for park.

Michael Wacha has allowed a total of two ERs over his last 20 innings with 20 Ks. He has an above average, but not elite, 14.8 K-BB% for the season and just a 7.0 HR/FB at home since last season, which seems par for the course in St Louis. He has a really tough matchup against the top road offense in baseball (13.0 HR/FB) and also the best vs RHP (18.0 K%). They do it more with line drives than HRs, which fits them nicely in this stadium. It’s a poor matchup with little park adjustment necessary for run environment.

Taijuan Walker seems to do the opposite of whatever I expect from him in any given matchup. Three of his last four outings have been fairly mediocre, including one in Colorado, which may actually count as a victory. For the season, he now has a 17.2 K-BB%, which is pretty good. Texas is a neutral offense with some LH power, though a fairly average 11.0 HR/FB and 10.7 Hard-Soft% vs RHP. A boost for park effects makes them a tougher matchup tonight.

NOT AS GOOD AS THEY LOOK

This list is reserved for pitchers who may look attractive because their ERAs are much lower than their estimators. The reason for this is almost always extreme BABIP, LOB, and/or HR/FB deviation from the norm, so we’ll just quote those stats and be done with them.

League AVG (.294 BABIP – 72.3 LOB% – 10.8 HR/FB)
Extreme deviations from league averages are italicized

Scott Kazmir (.249 BABIP – 79.3 LOB% – 7.7 HR/FB) – I believe he’s going to find all of these numbers more difficult to sustain in Houston. His numbers look decent so far, but with just 16 strikeouts in four starts (though is SwStr% suggests better). Tampa Bay is a top offense vs LHP.

Sonny Gray (.242 BABIP – 81.0 LOB% – 6.4 HR/FB) – I’ve written many times before about the circumstances around him, allowing Gray to possibly sustain some of the built in success above his actual underlying performance and that’s still true, but he loses quite a bit on the road sometimes where he’s going to be over-valued, as I believe he is tonight. Baltimore has a 16.6 HR/FB at home and 15.0 HR/FB vs RHP.

NO THANK YOU (In order from least to most offensive)

Chris Heston has unraveled over the last month with a 0.0 K-BB% over his last four starts (11.8% each).

Matt Barnes has relieved all season and all of his 31.1 career major league innings have come in that capacity. He started his last two AAA games before the recall, but maxed out at 4.2 IP in his last start. It would be surprising if he went more than five innings against a very patient team.

Justin Nicolino has gotten seven swinging strikes in 243 major league pitches this season, which is a shame in a matchup this damn good even in a tough park.

Williams Perez

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 (2015 LG AVG – 20.2 K% – 9.8 SwStr% – 2.06 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.

Andrew Heaney has seen a dip in his K% over the last month, bringing it below league average for the season, but his SwStr%, which is actually league average for the season, is down just a point, so the hope is that he’ll revert back up to a league average K%.

Chris Tillman has me interested after seeing his SwStr% shoot up over the last month with no change in his K% at all, but then I noticed it was almost entirely due to a 17.0 SwStr% in a start against Detroit a few weeks back.

Danny Salazar has seen a dip in his SwStr%, not realized in his K% over the last month. While he’s had three double digit SwStr% efforts over the last month, he’s topped out at 11% and bottomed out a 6.3%.

Erasmo Ramirez is the only full season non-conformist on this list, but has just run into his first two start streak with a single digit SwStr%, topping out a 6.1% over his last two starts.

Jeremy Hellickson has some upside in his K%. He’s not going to get the pitch framing he enjoyed in Tampa Bay. Welington Castillo (-6.5 RAA in just 2980 innings) might be the worst at it in the league.

ERA Estimators Chart (2015 LG AVG – 3.85 ERA – 3.78 SIERA – 3.85 xFIP – 3.85 FIP)

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

Andrew Heaney has a .266 BABIP that wouldn’t be completely unsustainable in his current environment if he had more of a profile to back it up, but even with almost perfectly neutral batted ball rates (21.8 LD%, 1.06 GB/FB) he doesn’t generate many pop ups or miss bats in the strike zone. A 21.8 Hard-Soft% is the opposite of encouraging as well and calls into question a 7.6 HR/FB despite a good home park. Lastly, we can’t forget expected regression in his 83.6 LOB%.

Carlos Rodon has a .356 BABIP that you can probably trace right back to a 27.2 LD%. He’s otherwise a ground ball pitcher (although, he’s almost a line drive pitcher with that number) with only four pop ups and a league average Z-Contact% despite his strikeout prowess. The plain and simple of it is that he’s going to have get that LD rate down first and then maybe get a better defense.

Chris Tillman has actually improved his K-BB to 12.5% in four starts since the break, but a .178 BABIP and 81.4 LOB% including his last horrible start had allowed him to go 23.2 innings with just one run in the three starts prior.

Cole Hamels allowed seven HRs in his first three starts, five more over his last two, and just five more over the 17 starts in between. That has him at a 13.8 HR/FB for the season.

Jeremy Hellickson – This is where the 13.0 HR/FB comes into play, with an ERA closer to his FIP than other estimators.
Kyle Gibson has a .382 BABIP, 57.6 LOB%, and 14.8 HR/FB in five starts since the break, a lot of it deserved with a 22.4 Hard-Soft%, but actually an improved K% and 22.0 LD% that isn’t that bad with a 1.63 GB/FB. The picture looks better outside of the Toronto start.

Micahel Wacha is one of several St Louis pitchers who’s ERA and FIP are lower than other estimators due to a home park that suppresses power.

Taijuan Walker is a lot of ups and downs, but overall has just a 68.3 LOB% that probably has something to do with a 0.95 GB/FB and 13.5 HR/FB. That leaves his FIP higher than the other estimators, but still some distance below his ERA. His control has improved greatly since the end of May.

BABIP Chart (2015 LG AVG – .295 BABIP – 9.4 IFFB% – 86.9 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).

Danny Salazar has seen a nearly 80 point drop in his BABIP this season. Some of that is in an improved defense, but his Z-Contact% is much better than average and both his LD% and hard contact rates have dropped noticeably. He probably has a few points of regression in him, but a lot of the improvement has been real.

Erasmo Ramirez has some great underlying skills (IFFB%, Z-Contact%) and a LD rate just below 20% in addition to a great defense behind him. These seem like the necessary criteria to sustain his low BABIP.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Here we rank pitchers by value tiers with their overall rank in parenthesis next to the name for the top five to ten. These are not hard and rigid rankings. Everything is fluid and can changed depending on ever evolving situations throughout the day. This is the more opinionated part. If there are questions, it’ll help show you where my imaginary boundaries are drawn.

This is really tough tonight. My first instinct is to just tell you nobody stands out and all of these guys concern me with more risk than upside and, in fact, I’m removing a value tier from play tonight. Ultimately, I guess you can’t play daily fantasy baseball without a pitcher though.

Value Tier One

Carlos Rodon (1t) – There are four or five pitchers I project for a K% much above average tonight and all well below usual for the top mark, but he’s the only one with a reasonable price tag attached. There’s good reason for that in a guy who’s control issues often prevent him from pitching even six innings and I’m not going to get carried away because of one start, but he has cut down on the walks over the last month and today is better than ever to endure the risk that comes with him.

Value Tier Two

Colin Rea – The cost is rock bottom and the Braves can’t hit. I really can’t find much to say positively about his part in all this, but Atlanta should help him along a bit. It’s not too hard to be worth more than his price tag today.

Gerrit Cole (1t) – This is an incredibly weak endorsement, but I’d have trouble trusting any of the other top priced pitchers tonight, all in bad parks and/or matchups aside from him. He seems more accurately priced than under-valued against a hot offense that hits the ball hard, but an advantageous home park should keep the matchup in his favor.

Value Tier Three – These guys seem basically in line with their price tag. They are either useable and shouldn’t hurt you too much, but might not help you much either or have such a wide range of outcomes that you can’t see much benefit beyond the risk.

Matt Garza is having a terrible year and pitches in a terrible park, but is coming off two good starts and faces the worst offense vs RHP at low cost.

Cole Hamels (3) probably hasn’t endeared himself to the Texas fans yet and faces a team that hits the ball hard, but there should be some strikeouts in that lineup too.

Chris Tillman – There’s not much upside against the A’s and in a concerning environment, but they make a lot of weak contact and he’s good at forcing that.

Erasmo Ramirez should get a bump in strikeouts, but is in a dangerous spot at either a low or mediocre price.

Andrew Heaney – He’s much more accurately priced on FanDuel and perhaps well over-priced on DraftKings.

Scott Kazmir – (4t) On second thought, I’m going to give him a bit of a bump here, just because most of the high priced options are in trouble spots tonight and even though his estimators are much higher than his ERA, he’s not a bad pitcher. Actually, this may be more about pulling everyone else down than pushing him up.

Michael Wacha (4t) is generally good at home, but faces the top offense on the road and vs RHP.

Jeremy Hellickson – I can’t even remember why I found it worth even mentioning him today. Was it the park upgrade? Maybe the low price on DraftKings (but not FanDuel).

Taijuan Walker – I have no idea what to expect from him tonight, but it will probably involve a HR and hopefully at least a few strikeouts.

Kyle Gibson has a very reasonable price tag for someone who’s been better than the numbers look over the last month and against perhaps an over-valued offense vs RHP at the moment, but who has the intestinal fortitude to start a mediocre RHP against the Yankees in the Bronx?

Danny Salazar – Can you really pay this much for a pitcher without a long track record against the steaming Red Sox right now?

Sonny Gray – (4t) I guess if I’m mentioning everyone else, I have to put him here too. I don’t hate him as much as I hate the price tag.

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

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