Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Monday, May 11th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2015-05-13 18:43:50

Nobody outside the DFS community understands why Monday might be my favorite day of the week during baseball season. I wake up and write about baseball several times per week. That’s not really work (although some days it can be) and Monday is the best day because it’s not a full schedule, but a perfect number of games, allowing players to dig in, but not be over-whelmed. Such is the case tonight, where we look into 20 pitchers for 10 games and get a chance to dig a little bit deeper into the details where it might be necessary.

Before getting to the meat of our sandwich, just a reminder that the new Hard% and Soft% (and Hard-Soft% or H-S% for short) seems to correlate less with BABIP and more with stats like wRC+ and overall production because singles aren’t equal to HRs anywhere else except batting average. That’s how we’ll continue to try to use that information from now on.

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.

Alex Colome got 11 swings and misses in 60 pitches in his first start against the chase prone Orioles, but was perfectly league average (7 SwStrs in 79 pitches – 4 Ks in 20 batters) against the Red Sox and there’s nothing wrong with that. He takes on his 3rd different divisional foe in as many starts. The Yankees are a patient bunch, who don’t strike out often.

C.C. Sabathia goes as the umpiring allows now and I’ve said that every time he’s started for the last few weeks. To emphasize, this is a heatmap of his pitch locations when ahead in the count and this is a heatmap of where the pitches go when he’s behind. The results for the latter are not pretty. If you’ll look at the called strike zone from his last start, you’ll see that he got a couple of borderline calls, but missed a few against Toronto RHBs. The result was four runs in 6.1 IP with just four strikeouts. Once you find umpiring assignments, which aren’t available at the time of this writing, you can go over to a site like baseballheatmaps.com that offers umpire strike zone heat maps to try and find out what you’re likely to be dealing with tonight. I’d like to point out one piece of good news that might make all of this matters less and that is that his velocity was up an average two mph (to 91.5) in his last start and bears watching. Tampa Bay strikes out 23.8% of the time against LHP, but have hit lefties well and also Sabathia in the past.

Colby Lewis has pitched well of late, allowing just one ER over 14 IP with 14 Ks over his last two starts, but one of those were against a Houston offense who couldn’t hit anybody last week. The pitches his opponents do make contact with are being hit very hard this season though. His 20.2 Hard-Soft% is worst among today’s starters by a wide margin. He is among the worst 25 pitchers for both Hard and Soft rates. We’ll get into the gap between his ERA and estimators a little later. The Royals have the best road offense with a 27.2 LD% and are 5th best vs RHP in baseball, though they have just a 3.6 team Hard-Soft% on the season. We know they’re a tough bunch to fan.

Danny Duffy couldn’t make it through more than a single inning in his last start, coming off of two decent outings prior. The Kansas City defense remains tremendous. The Rangers have hit better on the road lately, but still have the 2nd worst home offense. They have a 27.2 K% over the last week.

Gerrit Cole has allowed six ERs in 10 IP vs Cincinnati this season, but only three ERs total in over the four starts in between. There’s no obvious reason I wouldn’t expect him to bounce back strong here with the top matchup of the day against the Phillies. Cole’s 9.7 H-S% over the last two years plus the Phillies’ 1.7% combines for the day’s lowest 11.4 H-S%. Don’t expect many hard hit balls.

Jacob deGrom inspired some confidence with a bounce back start of sorts against the O’s, whom he got 19 swings and misses against on his way to a season high 9 strikeouts. The big takeaway is that he located much better than in his previous two starts and hopefully, that’s the start of a nice run like he had last year that led him to the Rookie of the Year award. He’ll match up with another team that swings and misses a ton tonight. The Cubs strike out 26.5% at home, 25.9% vs RHP, and 29.7% over the last week. They do possess some power (14.3 HR/FB over the last week).

Jeff Samardizja has been tough to figure out this year, great in half his starts, but terrible in the other half. A sharp drop in his K% by six points has him sitting with a league average 12.9 K-BB%. There’s also been a tremendous shift in his batted ball rates, although not in his contact authority rates. His 0.96 GB/FB is his lowest as a starter by far and he’s allowed a 30.8 LD%, despite a .315 BABIP that’s only 20 points above his career rate. He may be favoring more cutters over his two seam fastball this season as well. He’s difficult to trust this season, but is in a great spot in Milwaukee tonight, though the Brewers have been a bit better of late with an 18.0 HR/FB over the last seven days.

Jerome Williams has the day’s worst combined estimators in the main chart and has allowed nine runs in his last 9.1 innings. The Pirates have a 24.4 K% on the road, where they’re still the 2nd worst offense, but have struck out just 14.1% over the last week.

Jon Lester has allowed just a single ER over his last 14 IP, but also three that were unearned. His line drive rate is down, but still at 30.6% (which helps explain his .343 BABIP). He’s also allowed more fly balls than grounders in each of his last two starts. The Mets have the 4th worst road offense in baseball.

Josh Collmenter faces the hottest bats in the land with a 24.0 HR/FB over the last week or maybe it’s just Bryce Harper.

Marco Estrada almost made it through five full innings in his first start of the season against the Yankees. He’s always had some upside in his strikeout rate, but the fear here is his 12.5 career HR/FB. He’s facing a team that strikes out a lot (24.2% vs RHP), but is also a powerhouse in a ban box (15.8 HR/FB at home, 17.9 HR/FB vs RHP, 19 HR/FB over the last week).

Max Scherzer has been just awesome for Washington. He may have been left in a little too long in his last start, as he gave up a three run homer to Giancarlo Stanton in the 8th in an outing where he lasted a season high 114 pitches and that turned a great start with 10 strikeouts into one that looked a bit worse. That shouldn’t affect him here as he takes the day’s best Hard-Soft rate (-4.4%) among pitchers with more than one start into Arizona tonight to face the team with the top H-S rate today (15.3%). Scherzer is top seven in the majors in each of those metrics (Hard and Soft%) and has at least eight strikeouts in five of his six starts. The Diamondbacks are swinging some hot bats and have a 21.6 HR/FB over the last week.

Mike Leake has pitched at least seven innings in each of his last five starts and hasn’t allowed a run over 16 innings in his last two, but with just five strikeouts. We’ll get to his BABIP and contact authority rates later. He has struck out 22.8% of batters at home since the start of last season, but the Braves have the lowest combined K% of the day (16.5% on the road, 15.6% vs RHP, 14.2% last seven days), though they’ve hit for very little power.

Rick Porcello has increased his strikeout rate about league average and his 15.1 K-BB% is a career high. He’s struck out at least six in each of his last five starts and exactly that many in four of them. It seems he’s using his four seamer and slider a bit more at the expense of his two seamer and change-up, sacrificing a few ground balls for whiffs. His four seam fastball generates an extremely high 15.4% whiff rate for the pitch, so why not use it more? He has allowed six HRs this year, but none in his last two starts. The A’s strike out just 14.9% at home and 16.9% vs RHP, but have just a 5.3 HR/FB in Oakland this year.

Scott Kazmir is coming off his worst start of the season in Minnesota, but comes home to face the cold Boston bats. They do have a 16.4 HR/FB vs LHP, though the park could temper that.

Shelby Miller have us a Maddux (complete game shutout under 100 pitches) his last time out with eight strikeouts, but that was against the Phillies. He did strike out nine in the start prior too vs these Reds and has 31 SwStrs in his last 211 pitches (14.7 SwStr%), bringing both is SwStr and K rates above league average for the year. The Reds have been hitting the ball well and have an 18.1 HR/FB at home and 14.6 vs RHP.

Tom Koehler has the likely displeasure of being mashed by the Dodgers tonight, who simply maul RHP at home.

Ubaldo Jimenez saw his charade begin to collapse against the Mets in his last start, lasting just four innings and allowing three runs. He does maintain an impressive 1.4 H-S% on the season, but allowed a season high seven fly balls in that start. Toronto generally does not hit as well on the road, but does take their walks, have been hitting well, and should enjoy the park in Baltimore.

Wily Peralta has been pitching well, allowing just five ERs over his last 20 IP with 16 Ks. The White Sox have finally picked up the offense and have just an 11.2 K% over the last week. They’ve been terrible on the road with just a 6.6 HR/FB, but maybe the hitter’s park in Milwaukee will be kinder to them. Peralta has an 18.0 HR/FB at home since the start of last year.

Zack Greinke has allowed one ER or less in four of his six starts and owns a solid 16.1 K-BB%, though less than last year’s 20.0%. He’s pitched very well, but there’s some regression expected. We know how much he likes pitching at home, with a 2.78 xFIP and 26.2 K% at Dodger Stadium since the start of last season, while the fish strike out more than the average team in every category today (on the road, vs RHP, and over the last week).

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 – 20.1 K% – 9.3 SwStr% – 2.16 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.

Jerome Williams is the rare outlier that I can let go here with a career 1.68 K/SwStr and I don’t think anybody is interested enough to find out why that’s so.

Tom Koehler had a respectable 8.4 SwStr% last year and 19.1 K%. His 10.2 SwStr% in his last star is his season high vs Washington when he had just a single swing and miss in his previous start against them. None the less, he ties for the day’s lowest SwStr% with this next guy.

Ubaldo Jimenez got just four SwStrs and a single strikeout in his last start. That was a bit extreme, but more in line with what you should expect with the rate he’s been actually missing bats.

ERA Estimators Chart (2015 LG AVG – 3.89 ERA – 3.80 SIERA – 3.89 xFIP – 3.89 FIP)

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

C.C. Sabathia – Unfortunately, instead of seeing improvements in his results to match his early season SwStr and K rates, he began missing fewer bats and saw his estimators climb closer to his ERA, which has remained static. His 15.2 H-S% this season is worse than his career average and the BABIP is elevated 50 points above his career rate, but also right where it sat in his abbreviated 2014 season. His 17.1 LD% is the 2nd lowest of his career, but he’s never had a Z-Contact above 89%. As mentioned earlier, when he’s forced to throw strikes, they’re very hittable now.

Colby Lewis is not awesome now. As a matter of fact, his career xFIP is 4.28 and his career SIERA is 4.11. Do those numbers look familiar? It’s much better than last year and while his BABIP doesn’t seem out of line, it’s 30 points below his career rate and his strand rate is 11 points above his career number. Just three of his 53 fly balls have left the yard when he has an 11.0 HR/FB for his career.

Josh Collmenter – It’s really just his last start in Colorado separating his ERA from his estimators over the last month. He struck out five without a walk, but allowed three HRs in that start. He’s only allowed one HR total in his five other starts.

Mike Leake – This is all about a sub .200 BABIP and 83.9 LOB%, right? Perhaps, but it must be noted that his contact authority rates have greatly improved. He has a 16.2 H-S% over the last two calendar years, but just 7.8% this year with a sub 30 Hard% for the first time since 2011. What’s more, over his last 16 shutout innings, he has a -10 H-S%. Some credit should be given there, but his IFFB (13.5%) has never been in double digits before and he has a high zone contact rate. The Cincinnati defense has been known in recent years for suppressing BABIP as a team more than others, but Leake sits with a career BABIP just over 100 points higher than his mark this year. Most of that should be expected to show up at some point and then his 10.2 K-BB% will probably push his ERA up about a run or so.

Shelby Miller has definitely been better recently and brought his K-BB rate up to a league average 12.0%. The .206 BABIP and 88.8 LOB% are just unsustainable though. He does have a 1.63 GB/FB vs his career 1.00 mark, but that shouldn’t make a huge difference and could potentially hurt his BABIP, but help his extra base hits and overall line. However, he’s allowing a career high 21.8 LD% and 33.3% of his batted balls have been hit hard. So while the increase in strikeouts has been a great sign, the rest seems more of a fluke.

Ubaldo Jimenez – Considering his K% is a fluke, I’d expect the estimators to rise closer or above four as that adjusts. His BABIP remains below .200 despite a mark above .300 in two of his last three starts. He has a .290 career rate and with a 62.3 GB% and just 21.4 Hard%, he might be able to generate a lower BABIP. The 13.0 LD% has also helped a lot, but is well below his still solid 19.3% career rate.

Zack Greinke – This is all in the BABIP (.211) and the LOB (83.9%). Both are significantly better than his career rates. Although the indicators in the BABIP chart are nothing special, he does have a career low 15.5 LD% that’s more descriptive than predictive and his 27.0 Soft% is 5th best in the majors and only the 2nd time he’s been above 20% in his career. He’s definitely inducing more soft contact than usual, although his 28.8 Hard% isn’t exactly low. It’s the medium hit balls that have really decreased the most.

BABIP Chart (2015 LG AVG – .291 BABIP – 9.9 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 Duffy – Last year, he was all the way on the other side of this with a .239 BABIP, but there have been huge changes in his batted ball profile this year. He still has an elite IFFB, but his GB/FB has doubled to 1.50 from 0.78 and his LD rate went from 18.1% to 30.9%. I’d expect his BABIP to settle somewhere in the middle of last and this year’s points.

Jerome Williams isn’t fooling anybody. When he throws strikes, they get. His LD rate was high last season (23.0%) and is even worse this year (27.7%). Don’t expect the Phillies to do him many favors either.

Max Scherzer has everything you’d expect to see in a pitcher with BABIP suppression abilities this season, but his defense may be keeping him around league average here. I wouldn’t be surprised if it dropped a bit more as the Washington team BABIP improved.

Scott Kazmir – Six ERs in his last start have brought his ERA more in line with his estimators, but it was also his highest BABIP in a game this season at just .278. The Oakland defense has been atrocious by UZR, but still have been able to maintain a .281 BABIP as a team. Kazmir has a .301 career BABIP and hasn’t generated a single BABIP this year with basically a league average line drive rate. There are no indicators that this should continue.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Alex Colome – When you’re looking for bottom of the board options, although most pitchers have a price at which you’re willing to entertain the idea, you’re really looking for upside and Colome has it. He’s been on a bit of a leash, held to below 80 pitches in his first two starts, but the results have been good and he’s struck out over a quarter of the batters he’s faced and this will be his first start in the pitcher’s park at home. His other two were in tough AL East parks in Boston and Baltimore.

Danny Duffy – I wouldn’t hate the thought of him at his current cost. Just as he seemed over-valued for much of last season, it seems the opposite right now, especially coming off a terrible start. There could be some value here in a decent spot.

Gerrit Cole – Stud in the greatest spot today and not even the top or 2nd highest price tag on a single site. Nobody can ever accurately predict results in baseball as the Phillies even gave Matt Harvey trouble on Friday, but this is as close to a gift as you’ll get in DFS.

Jacob deGrom – I liked what I saw in his last start and though the O’s are aggressive and can make a pitcher look good when they’re chasing, won’t the Cubs potentially do the same thing? The do have some power and the park may play a part, which makes this more of a risk than Cole, but the Cubs really haven’t been fearsome offensively and the upside is there.

Jeff Samardzija is a risk and we can’t be sure which version we’ll get tonight. Similarly, the Brewers have been a bit better and it’s a tough park, but this is probably as cheap as I’ve seen him priced in a while. You do have better options though.

Jon Lester – It’s not that I don’t like him today. He should be fine in a good spot, but again, for the price, you probably have better options with more upside.

Max Scherzer – The Diamondbacks are hot and have been hitting the ball hard in a scary park for a pitcher, but Scherzer is basically matchup proof. He’s probably win the NL Cy Young if the season ended today. You can’t hit it hard if you don’t actually hit it and he’s struck out 29.5% of the batters he’s faced this year.

Rick Porcello has shown enough upside in his K rate at a low enough price to be worth a shot here. Oakland could be tough to fan, but that may even out by helping Porcello’s biggest issue this year: the long ball. I don’t love him, but think he might be under-valued at current prices against a cold offense.

Scott Kazmir – Boston has been cold too and going against a good pitcher in a pitcher’s park at an affordable price in most places.

Wily Peralta has been pitching well and does have an impressive 3.40 xFIP at home since the start of last season, though the 18.0 HR/FB has to be acknowledged. The White Sox have been better and the park might worry you, but they’ll be losing a middle of the order bat in an NL park and while not dirt cheap, he’s extremely affordable.

Zack Greinke has some regression coming, but you can seldom go wrong with him pitching at home. He is the 2nd highest price tag on all sites on a day full of good pitching, but has a solid matchup in the Marlins.

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

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