Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Thu 9/4
Eight games makes for a perfect daily fantasy baseball night. These are my favorite kind of nights. There are enough games for diversity among the options, but not so many as to overwhelm and make you feel like you missed something important. This rare Thursday article is a make up for missing yesterday, as mentioned earlier in the week. We should be on a normal Mon-Wed + Fri schedule for the final 3 weeks of the season.
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. 2013+ is since the start of that season. Combo stats are explained below.
Brandon Workman – while at first look, it seems that he’s been pitching better than the sum of his results, we have to look at the batted ball chart and see a lot of dark red. He has only 16 batted balls over the last 2 weeks and the lone fly ball was a HR. Half of them (8) were line drives and that’s going to pull up any number, but those numbers weren’t so good to begin with.
Chris Capuano – has been giving up some runs in the Yankee rotation, but is missing tons of bats. Since walking 4 in his first start, he’s walked a total of 4 in his last 6. The Red Sox are a very good matchup and have been very strikeout prone lately.
Chris Tillman – the last 2 starts haven’t been as good as the rest of the month from a skills perspective, but the results just keep on coming. Having a great defense helps and while you might not like the park, you have to love the matchup. The Reds are the 3rd worst road offense, 2nd worst vs RHP, and worst over the last week.
Hector Santiago – has not allowed more than 1 ER in any of his last 4 starts, but has a really tough assignment in Houston (yes, I just said that). They are the 3rd most proficient offense vs LHP and 3rd hottest over the last week. True, they will strike out some and more, but have done that less than average over the last week. Walk rates are above 8% all the way across Santiago’s line in the chart directly below.
Ian Kennedy – gets to pitch at Petco against the lowly D’Backs. They are tied for 3rd worst road offense and 5th worst vs RHP, while being 3rd worst over the last week. Add in the park and Kennedy may have the best matchup of the night. Despite strong K rates of his own below, the D’Backs don’t actually strike out that much, but this is a different group of guys than they started the season with.
Jake Odorizzi – had a couple of massive hiccups in August vs some top offenses (LAA, BAL), but otherwise struck out at least 7 in each of his 4 non-hiccups. He faces another juggernaut today though as Toronto is the 5th best offense on the road, best against RHP, and 4th best over the last week.
Kyle Gibson – most teams hit better at home obviously. Only 7 teams have a 100+ wRC+ on the road. That the White Sox are one of them is pretty impressive. Gibson is still missing bats, but not normally getting results.
Mark Buehrle – faces a cold offense, but a proficient one at home and vs LHP this year. Although he unsurprisingly has the reddest K%, he also has the greenest BB% and HR/FB. While the Rays may be an above average offense at home, HR’s don’t have a lot to do with that.
Max Scherzer – has gotten BABIP’ed in recent starts, leading to some bad overall results, but he’s also struck out a total of 24 in 18.2 IP in those 3 straight non-quality starts. Cleveland is tied for 5th best home offense and is 2nd vs RHP, so it’s not like it gets easier, but his K-BB% (18.1) in today’s main chart blows every other pitcher out of the water (Capuano 14.8 2nd best). You often have to work to strike out this lineup, but they’ve gone down at a 23.7% clip over the last week.
Michael Wacha – makes his first major league start since 6/17 against the 3rd best offense vs RHP. He faced a total of 8 batters on rehab assignment last week.
Mike Leake – is among the greenest BB rates, both a credit to him and the impatience of the Baltimore offense, but the K’s could be lacking and that’s just about all on him as the O’s will K at a league average rate. They’ve also been the 2nd most potent offense over the last week.
Robbie Ross – makes his 3rd consecutive start in KC vs the 2nd worst home offense. We already know how seldom the Royals strike out or hit HR’s, but the interesting tidbit is that through 10 batted balls in his last start, Ross did not allow a LD, HR, or IFFB.
Roenis Elias – matches up against the best home offense in baseball, but also one of the coldest. The reddest BB rate of the day is an unfortunate combination of his own control issues plus a lot of patience on the Oakland side. He completed 6 innings for the 1st time in 9 starts last time out and the A’s could drive up his pitch count again today.
Trevor Bauer – and the atrocious Cleveland defense take on Detroit again. They are the 3rd best road offense and 4th best vs RHP. They don’t walk much, but Bauer has had major issues throwing strikes.
Vidal Nuno – may be your plug and play vs the worst LHP hitting team in baseball at Petco. He’s gone 3 straight starts of at least 7 innings and 2 ER’s or less. I believe some are calling this a “Super Quality Start” these days.
Wily Peralta – has gotten rocked in his last 2 starts, any way you look at it. The Cubs are tied for the 3rd worst offense at home and are 4th best vs RHP, but have been better recently. The upside is that Peralta’s troubles have come with a batted ball ratio of 19 GB – 11 FB – 4 LD in those 2 starts. He has been known to have HR issues though and the young Cubbies do have some pop. If you look at his line in the Batted Ball chart, all HR/FB marks are in double digits.
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.
Brandon Workman – has only had 3 starts (15.2 IP) over the last month, but only surpassing 6% once didn’t hurt his K% at all. Not that he’s a very good pitcher right now anyway, but the sample size isn’t big enough to warrant much discussion.
Chris Capuano – I’d never guess that he had a 10.4 career SwStr%, but his 12.6% mark over the last month is eye opening.
Hector Santiago – not that he has a long career to draw off of, but he had a 2.52 K/SwStr with a very similar K% and higher SwStr% last season. He’s had at least 5 K’s in 4 straight starts despite a 6.1% or lower SwStr in 3 of them.
Jake Odorizzi – the SwStr% has only dropped slightly, while the K% has basically stayed the same. The ratio is only slightly out of the comfort range over the last month and he has had 9.4% and 9.7% SwStr’s in his last 2 outings. I’m not really concerned here.
Kyle Gibson – it seems like all season long we’ve been waiting for his K% to reap the benefits of his SwStr% and aside from a few spurts, it’s never caught on for an extended period of time. Maybe it doesn’t happen until next year, but he’s had 3 consecutive 10+ SwStr% games and 4 of his 6 highest strikeout games (5 or more) have come in his last 7 starts. I still see the upside.
Mike Leake – not that he’s ever been considered a bat misser, but he’s only had one start with a SwStr% above 5.3% in his last 4 starts and just 1.2% in his last start.
Robbie Ross – his last month consists of just 9.1 IP over 2 starts, while a decent chunk of his work prior to that was out of the bullpen. There’s not enough reliable information to make anything of yet.
Roenis Elias – a 5.9 SwStr% in his last start, which really dragged down his last 30 day’s number, was his first under 10% in 7 tries.
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
Brandon Workman – in 15.2 August IP he had a .408 BABIP and 58.8 LOB% with a 17.6 HR/FB. Not that he has a track record, but he won’t last very long if those numbers don’t improve.
Chris Capuano – has a 21.5 K-BB% over the last 30 days. That’s 9th in the majors, ahead of Price and Strasburg. A 14.3 HR/FB and .330 BABIP have made him look more average.
Chris Tillman – while the .259 BABIP for the season is still a little low for my taste, the defense has been really good. The 8.1 HR/FB is well below his 11.3 career mark pitching in Baltimore. I have to admit that the underlying numbers have gotten better recently, but that’s only to match what he was doing before. The .202 BABIP and 88.2 LOB% over the last month (5 starts) are nowhere near sustainable.
Hector Santiago – the .267 BABIP and 6.9 HR/FB aren’t even that disturbing due to the defense and park(s) he pitches most in. Over that last month though, that’s .240 with an 86.3 LOB%. The HR/FB has remained steady.
Kyle Gibson – the .341 BABIP (63.6 LOB%) over his last 5 starts has certainly normalized his season number. The 27.6 LD% in that span may have had something to do with it, but he also boasts a 52.9 GB% and 2.71 GB/FB. He only allowed 1 HR.
Mark Buehrle – his 9.3 K-BB% in August was his best month of the season. The .411 BABIP (62.5 LOB%) was absurd and his LD rate (22.9%) wasn’t even that high. His 52.1 GB% was another best of the season.
Max Scherzer – maintained his season ERA in August despite his best month with a 26.2 K-BB%. The .327 BABIP and Detroit defense didn’t help.
Robbie Ross – has a .340 BABIP and 61.8 LOB% in his 70.1 IP this season. Unfortunately, that’s not even that far from his team’s allowed rate as you’ll see in the next chart.
Roenis Elias – has had such a strange and inconsistent season. His season ERA matches his Estimators, but how he got there is the real interesting part. His most recently completed 30 day stretch includes a .231 BABIP and 84.6 LOB%.
Wily Peralta – in his most recent 5 starts, he’s been hammered for a .356 BABIP and 16 HR/FB (4 HR’s). If you want real craziness, this has happened with a 16.7 LD% and 55.6 GB%. Let’s play some defense boys. I shouldn’t say that. I don’t know where all those ground balls were hit or how hard.
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).
Ian Kennedy – this is the highest BABIP of his career in any full season. There are no immediate reasons I can find for it in his batted ball profile, especially considering how good the SD defense has been in limiting it with other pitchers.
Kyle Gibson – as mentioned in the ERA chart above, the BABIP has come screaming up lately, but is still below average and can continue to be with an elite IFFB and below average (18.9) LD% this year.
Max Scherzer – has the 3rd best Z-Contact rate in the majors, but his batted ball profile and defense has not led to a low BABIP.
Vidal Nuno – part of the reason he’s been so successful in Arizona is due to a suspect BABIP. It’s been below .200 in half of his 10 starts since the trade. His batted ball indicators are right around league average and he’s played behind poor BABIP defenses in most starts.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
Brandon Workman – is the lowest price on the board in most places because he has gotten shelled in some recent starts. He did sneak in a good one against the Angels 2 back though and basically has to be under-priced right now. This is not to say he’ll be good tonight, but it’s not like the Yankees have been pummeling the ball all year either.
Chris Capuano – is another low priced arm in this matchup. The Red Sox are the worse offense and he has the higher K potential. Capuano has gone at least 6 innings in 6 of his 7 NYY starts and though he’s allowed 4 ER’s on 3 occasions, he hasn’t allowed more than that.
Chris Tillman – while I’m buying into him a little more, especially against this opponent, I can’t yet get on board with believing he offers you anything above and beyond his price tag today.
Ian Kennedy – is in a great spot in Petco and against a bottom offense. He’s struck out at least 5 in 24 of 28 starts this year. He’s likely the cream of the 2nd tier pitching options today.
Jake Odorizzi – there are better options at better prices with his tough matchup today.
Mark Buehrle – the Rays have been cold and as mentioned above, his 9.3% K-BB and 52.1 GB% in August were his best month of the season despite a .411 BABIP that we know isn’t going to continue. That and a very low price tag make him under-valued today. It’s not often I’m going to say that about him.
Max Scherzer – despite a somewhat tough assignment and recent BABIP issues, he’s still missing bats at an elite rate, even having his best month of the season in that department last month.
Vidal Nuno – you can just take both sides of this likely pitching duel and be done with it. Nuno has been fine since the trade and even if some of that has been BABIP aided, it gets cancelled out when throwing a LHP in Petco. His price tag is still very reasonable and even low across the board.
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.