Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Thursday, April 7th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2016-04-08 02:33:33

It’s not something we’re going to do often this season, but with few night games and most day slates starting late enough at 3:30 EST, we’ll go ahead and cover the day games here today. We’re now officially into the slums with each group of pitchers being more and more flawed the deeper we get into the week and the further we get to the bottom of the barrel. This is probably as bad as it will get though because at least we have some of Sunday’s starters returning for another go around tomorrow. We should be able find something though.

New season changes to the article were outlined yesterday which you can find here so we won’t repeat those again today. Park factors should be updated by next week.

Don’t forget to check lineups, umpire assignments, line movement, 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 stats 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 used here.

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 2015 season. Opp team offensive stats are wRC+.

Adam Conley had a pretty successful under the radar rookie season. In 67 innings, he had an above average 21.0 K% and 0.0 Hard-Soft% with an IFFB% higher than his LD%. He generated 16 pop-ups or 20% of his fly balls! It’s a small sample to be sure, but it’s an impressive start to build on. He opens against a tough offense that leans heavily RH with a few lefties that can hit same side pitching.

Alex Wood struggled last year and averaging below 90 mph, dropped a full seven points off his K%. That, in addition to his strand rate normalizing, drove up his ERA a full run, close to four. The encouraging thing though, is that both his “(classname)velocity and release point were up(title tooltip)”: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/welcome-back-alex-wood/ this March. These things are a bit more tangible than stat lines as you can’t fake velocity. It remains to be seen if it translates to April, but he gets a tough offense in a great park today.

Danny Salazar should easily be the top guy on Thursday and he probably still is, but the Red Sox struck out against RHPs at the 3rd lowest rate last year (17.8%). Last year, he generated the same great K-rate, but the BABIP dropped with a drop in line drives and his ground ball rate rose by a over 25%. Defensive improvements behind him no doubt helped him as well. Salazar also has the lowest Z-Contact rate among today’s pitchers.

Mat Latos couldn’t even find a team to let him pitch towards the end of last year. In 2014 he survived a drop in velocity with a 3.25 ERA despite estimators at four. I was calling for a letdown that never happened all season and I warned anyone who would listen that his 2015 would likely be a disappointment after the Marlins acquired him. It was worse than a disappointment, it was a disaster, but the crazy thing was that his velocity and estimators were actually slightly better. Not good, but better. He gets new life in Chicago with no expectations and I think he has a chance to be average. What a change of tune, right? He has to improve on the career high 33.0 Hard% last year (and now a career 30.0 Hard%), but is in a good spot in Oakland tonight.

Mike Fiers has been on a crazy ride the last few seasons. Last year was really the first time his ERA has come close to matching his estimators, but they were still about 30 points off. The funny thing is that his career number align because sometimes he undercuts them, sometimes he overshoots them. His BABIP goes up and down. His SwStr rate often doesn’t suggest as large a K% as he actually has and his Hard contact rate has been well above 30% in two of the last three years. In fact, he led the league in Hard% for most of the first half, above 40% before finishing with a 28.7% 2nd half. You try and analyze this guy! Especially in NY against the Yankees. He has a 10.9 career HR/FB, but that’s another thing that jumps up and down.

Nathan Eovaldi was in that Joe Kelly, Henderson Alvarez mode of flame throwers that couldn’t miss bats. He didn’t have a 2nd pitch. That changed as his splitter usage increased in every single month last season (Brooks Baseball) until sitting above 30% in August (he only started one game in September). He struck out 20.6% somehow in April and then 14.1% in May, but after that, guess what else rose every single month to 21.3% in August. His SwStr% was still just below average and he faces a tough offense in a tough home park, but has always had some success suppressing HRs (7.1 HR/FB career, 7.8 last year). He is one to watch at least.

Rubby de la Rosa dominated RHBs (.266 wOBA, 22.6 K%, 57.2 GB%), but couldn’t get a lefty out to save his life (.404 wOBA, 14.6 K%, 41.6 GB%, 20 HRs). The Cubs LHBs are going to hit some HRs tonight, but his 11.1 SwStr% is reason for some optimism.

Ubaldo Jimenez was a league average pitcher last year with a 4.11 ERA slightly above his metrics. That’s really not that bad in Baltimore. His 13.0 HR/FB was the highest of his career, which is saying something for a pitcher that grew up in Colorado, but he was a much different pitcher then. His 21.2 K% sat right at his career rate, but we’ll talk about how that might have been a bit deceptive later. The velocity at least didn’t drop any further and remained at 90 mph. The two keys seemed to be generating a GB rate (49.1%) above 45% for the first time since 2011 and a career low 8.6 BB%, both meaning the high HR rate wasn’t as bad as it looked. Minnesota struggled to hit on the road last season, but has some talent in the lineup in an offensively oriented park today.

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 (.295 BABIP – 72.3 LOB% – 10.8 HR/FB)

Hector Santiago (.252 BABIP – 79.9 LOB% – 10.2 HR/FB) is the reason for this section.

John Lackey (.296 BABIP – 82.6 LOB% – 9.8 HR/FB) won’t sustain a career high strand rate and pitches in a tough park tonight at a fairly expensive price.

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

Derek Holland hasn’t been healthy the last two seasons and was terrible last year when he was. He stopped missing bats and allowed way too much hard contact. He’s got a lot to prove before he can be considered at current prices.

Jake Peavy is at home in a great park at a reasonable price, but he had the lowest K% of his career last year and non-FIP estimators well over four. Plus, the Dodgers have come out crushing baseballs.

Joe Kelly throws so hard, but can’t miss bats. It’s not like it’s working for him either. Try something else. He’s minimum price on DraftKings, but there are no expensive pitchers that would necessitate the need.

Kendall Graveman does not miss enough bats to be useful to daily fantasy players plus he was one of the A’s that was fell ill this week and was said to have lost some weight. You’d have to be concerned about his energy level. No reason to risk it.

Phil Hughes can’t miss bats or keep the ball in the park now? We can’t even blame Yankee Stadium anymore. I was hoping to at least see a velocity bounce back (he was down over a mph last year) to which we might then be able to blame last year on injury. Brooks Baseball tracked his last spring outing on 4/1, but he was sitting right where he left off last year, exactly at 90 mph.

Tanner Roark somehow has done a decent job of limiting hard contact (4.9 Hard-Soft% career), but when he does allow a well hit ball…..17 HRs in just 111 innings last year. In addition, his poor strikeout rate offers absolutely no upside.

K/BB Chart

Pitcher and Opponent K% & BB% for titled splits, similar to the Main Chart.

K/BB Chart – Opponent

Batted Ball Chart

Pitcher and Opponent Batted Ball stats.

Batted Ball Charts – Opponent

K/SwStr Chart (2015 LG AVG – 19.5 K% – 9.3 SwStr% – 2.1 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.

We’re using 2015 numbers for the first week. As mentioned, we’re showing just starting pitcher league averages in the header information now, which drops K% and SwStr% just slightly from the overall average that includes relievers.

We finally have an under-achiever today! Plus, lots of guys in the 2.4 to 2.7 range.

Mike Fiers fell in line for the first time last year and owns a 2.6 career K/SwStr. I have no way of seeing this, but believe he was out of range in Milwaukee to start last year before being traded to Houston last year as well. His 9.8 SwStr% was a career high.

Rubby de la Rosa had a 21.1 K% before the break, which he saw drop to 15% in afterwards. The velocity held steady and in fact, the only change seemed to be that he threw his slider harder, in line with his changeup. He just got less whiffs with it (from 20% to under 15%). He has the 2nd best SwStr% on the board overall today though. He should be able to generate at least a league average K%.

Ubaldo Jimenez hasn’t had a league average SwStr% since 2010 when he was a flame thrower. In fact, his 8.0% last year was his 2nd best since then. So although his 21.2 K% matches his 21.4% career rate, his 8.5 career SwStr% is just a bit higher. I consider him a borderline candidate to see his K% drop, possibly pushing his ERA up slightly depending on the size of the drop. If it remains in the average range, and it could, it might not be that big of a deal.

ERA Estimators Chart (2015 LG AVG – 4.10 ERA – 4.07 SIERA – 4.00 xFIP – 4.03 FIP)

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

Mat Latos had a BABIP above .300 for the first time in his career, over 25 points above his career average. That happens sometimes and it’s not even the major reason I think he should improve. The other factor was a 63.8 LOB% nearly 10 points below his league average career rate. That is more likely to bounce back even if the BABIP doesn’t. After all, the Cincinnati teams he played for were excellent defensively and played a large part in his BABIP suppression. He may no longer be an All Star, but still may have the ability to be around average.

Nathan Eovaldi had an ERA well above his FIP because of a .337 BABIP. A 52.2 GB% and 2.01 GB/FB were by far the highest of his career. That plus an ability to suppress HRs that we have to consider might be real at this point will do wonders for a pitcher in Yankee Stadium. The well below 10 HR/FB is also the reason his xFIP and SIERA lined up with his ERA despite the BABIP. Everything else seemed close to normal. It seems the Yankees had an issue turning ground balls into outs despite the solid defensive reputation of all of their infielders aside from second base.

BABIP Chart (2015 LG AVG – .295 BABIP – 21.1 LD% – 9.5 IFFB% – 87.7 Z-Contact%)

“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 may be onto something (check batted ball profile too).”

Mike Fiers has the indicators for a lower BABIP (meaning .260 to .280 range) and Houston shifts more than just about any team in the league so this is something to watch for.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Here we normally 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.

Today, and probably for the first week or so, we’re not going to do that though. Instead, I’d like to revert to the previous format of just talking a bit more about the pitchers you might be considering today in relation to their price tags until we get a bit more information about 2016.

Do I really have to write this section today?

Adam Conley would have been one of the lowest prices on the board any of the previous days this week, but today he’s somewhere in the middle. He did a lot of interesting things last season and I doubt even a lot of more than casual fans don’t even know his name. The matchup isn’t great and the weather looks questionable, but I wouldn’t mind a decent amount of GPP exposure here.

Alex Wood is in a great park tonight, but faces a good offense. Are we to believe the March changes are to hold? It’s better than relying on a spring stat line, but who knows? The 3rd lowest pitcher on the board on DraftKings makes him more worth the risk. I’d likely not touch him otherwise.

Danny Salazar – The weather here sucks. The weather everywhere seems to suck according to Kevin’s early report just out and available here on the website. What are you gonna do? Not play Danny Salazar today?

Mat Latos costs little, may be in line for at least somewhat of a bounce back, is in a very good spot today, and perhaps most importantly, appears in one of the few games not on the weather report.

Mike Fiers – Come to think of it, I really don’t want to pay this much for him in Yankee Stadium, but there’s just so much about him I don’t understand. This one is entirely in the hands of you, the reader.

Nathan Eovaldi – I don’t understand why he costs so much on FanDuel. I think he brings some interesting profile changes to the table that many may not be aware of yet. I’d usually take a wait and see approach, but it’s a very weak day and he has shown an ability to suppress HRs throughout his career so far. I’d probably have about an equal amount of exposure to him, Conley, and Latos in GPPs, hoping at least one (maybe two) came through as my Pitcher #2. His upside might be the best of the three.

Rubby de la Rosa is cheap enough with swing and miss stuff where he probably should be in consideration for a GPP slot, but I don’t blame you if his HR rate against a high power team scares the crap out of you because it scares the crap out of me. I expect high ownership of the LHBs for the Cubs in this game.

Ubaldo Jimenez is about as “meh” as you can get. I don’t anticipate him taking a step forward and he could take a step back. There’s not a ton of upside and he could fall apart today, but choices are limited and he’s probably more likely to meet his price tag than not.

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

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