Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Thursday, May 28th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2015-06-01 13:56:48

It’s been an oddly scheduled week for baseball, perhaps due to the holiday Monday. And in keeping with that odd theme, a rare Thursday edition of the Advanced Stats – Pitching Charts article (the first of Thursday edition of the season, to make up for missing Monday and Wednesday).

It’s still plenty strange tonight though. We’re going to skip the double header between the White Sox and Orioles entirely. Neither of the games appear on the daily fantasy program and Chris Sale is the only one of the four pitchers most people have heard of anyway. That leaves us with six night games, five of which begin at 10pm EST. I don’t see this as necessarily bad, just different. It also gives us a chance to dig into some pitchers we normally wouldn’t on bigger slates.

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.

A.J. Burnett has not allowed more than two ERs in a start yet and has pitched exactly seven innings in each of his last four starts with a season-high 10 strikeouts in his last start and at least seven in five of nine outings. He seems to have benefited greatly from the return to Pittsburgh, though not necessarily in the ways you might immediately think. The defense hasn’t been as good as advertised this year, but the park change from Philadelphia has definitely helped him keep the ball in the park (just two HRs). He gets an even better park to work with tonight in San Diego and the under-performing offense that plays in it, giving him one of the top park adjusted matchups of the day. They strike out at least 21.9% and walk less than 6.4% in all three of our situations today (home, vs RHP, last seven days).

Buck Farmer started two games for the Tigers last year, but will be making his first appearance of 2015 today. He’s come from obscurity as a fifth-round draft pick to climb all the way up to #3 on the Fangraphs list of Detroit prospects with three pitches that appear to be at least average and a little bit of swing and miss to his game (23.5 K% at AAA this year). The issue, as with many young pitchers, has been command and control as he’s never had a BB% below eight above A ball. Believe it or not, Detroit owns the top defense on the board today by a wide margin and the matchup is a good one in a pitcher’s park against the third-worst offense vs RHP.

C.J. Wilson is coming off back to back rough outings, including a 24.3 Hard-Soft% over the last two weeks, but hasn’t been too bad overall this year. One concerning thing might be a drop in strikeouts, but a positive to that would be a drop in walk rate to go along with it and some potential in his SwStr rate. In a great park, he has a tough matchup against the 3rd best road offense and 2nd best vs LHP though. The Tigers strike out 23.2% vs southpaws, but walk 11.1% of the time and mash them to a 13.6 HR/FB.

C.C. Sabathia gives us so much to talk about, but the most important thing you’ll want to know is if the umpire will give him the corners and a little bit beyond. Looking at the called strike zones in his most recent starts, I can see that his last start (not good) was pretty neutral, while the previous one (very good) was generous. I don’t have umpiring information at this time, but you’ll want to check. What I can tell you is that as a team, Oakland has the 2nd lowest chase rate (O-Swing) in the majors at 27.9%, so although there are some things greatly in his favor here like the park where the A’s have a 5.4 HR/FB and their 73 wRC+ and 3.3 HR/FB vs lefties, their plate discipline definitely is not in his favor. In fact, they have just a 5.9 K-BB% vs LHP, which leaves me really conflicted here.

Chris Heston has allowed either five or six ERs in four of his last six starts, but has allowed a single ER or less in his other five starts this season. His peripherals and league average 12.5% mark him as essentially a league average pitcher in a great park, but it always seems to be more extreme to one side or the other on a start by start basis. He has just a 5.3 HR/FB at home and an exceptional -2.1 Hard-Soft% in his short major league career. Even over his rough last couple of weeks, he has a -2.9 H-S%, though he allowed three HRs in Colorado last time out. He has a great park adjusted matchup against a weak hitting team that has just a 5.7 HR/FB on the road. They do not strike out much (just 16.6% vs RHP), but have been even more futile with the bats over the last week (23.2 K%, 2.0 HR/FB, -11.5 Hard-Soft%).

Corey Kluber is pretty good. How about his last three starts: 25 IP – 2 ER – 37 K – 1 BB – 88 BF. The Mariners have hit well at Safeco this year with a surprising 12.7 HR/FB, but it’s still a great park and Kluber has a 2.59 xFIP on the road since the start of last season with a 23.0 K-BB%. Seattle will strike out more than the average team (22.0% vs RHP, 23.5% over the last week). Kluber is by far your best bet for strikeouts tonight (and fewest walks too). The Mariners do hit the ball hard, though (16.4 Hard-Soft% overall, 17.1% vs RHP).

Eduardo Rodriguez was the haul for the Red Sox in the Andrew Miller trade last year and is the #2 prospect for Boston behind Blake Swihart, according to Fangraphs. He has a plus fastball that really increased in velocity last year, helping out his secondary pitches (slider, change-up) that have above average potential. The question, again, is command with the young pitcher, but he has turned out an exceptional 19.5 K-BB% at AAA this season. Texas is actually a tough matchup here. Not only have they been hot (131 wRC+ and 23.0 HR/FB over the last week), but they’ve hit LHP well and with authority (16.8 Hard-Soft% and 13.2 HR/FB).

Ian Kennedy has been either really good or really bad depending on HRs and BBs this year. He’s allowed at least five ERs in three starts, but a total of five over his other four. His K% is above average, but he hasn’t achieved more than six in any start. He does have a 24.4 K%, but also 13.3 HR/FB in Petco since last season. The Pirates have been a bad offense on the road with a 17.1 K-BB%, but have clobbered the ball over the last week (133 wRC+ and 17.9 Hard-Soft%).

James Paxton has pitched at least six innings with two or fewer ERs in five straight starts, but has just two more walks than strikeouts over his last four starts. He’s in a great park, but aside from the rough peripherals, Cleveland has just a 4.4 K-BB% vs LHP and have been smoking overall lately (1.1 K-BB% and 15.2 HR/FB over the last week), making this more of a neutral park adjusted matchup.

Kendall Graveman struck out more batters than he walked for the first time in five starts this year the last time he took the mound and has an unattractive 15.2 Hard-Soft% this year, while the Yankees have been hot and have a team 18.4 Hard-Soft% with a 21.0 HR/FB over the last week. You might cite the park as reason for optimism tonight, but Graveman has allowed three HRs in two starts at home this year.

Nick Martinez does nothing you’d want from a daily fantasy perspective. He has just a 5.6 K-BB% and 15.5 Hard-Soft%. I have no earthly clue how he has a 1.96 ERA. The Red Sox haven’t hit on the road. They have a 6.2 H-S% overall and 6.7 H-S% vs RHP, but have just a 16.2 K% against righties. If we get just two Ks from Martinez tonight, it might be a lot.

Shelby Miller is at least finally missing more bats and profiles as a league average or slightly better pitcher this year. The problem is that he’s actually been much better than that according to his ERA. It’s a good thing we have some time to talk today. The Giants have a good offense that plays down to about neutral in a really tough park. They have just a 6.9 HR/FB at home.

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.

A.J. Burnett – Here’s where we’ll get into the biggest benefit of his return to Pittsburgh because it sticks out and we have some time to get into it today. Burnett has an identical 8.6 SwStr% to last year’s mark when he had a league average 20.3 K%. A 2.36 K/SwStr is fine. This year he has a borderline unsustainable 23.1 K% and 2.69 K/SwStr, but I’d like to direct you over to StatCorner.com where you can find “Catcher Framing” under “Reports”. The first name you see on the leader board is Francisco Cervelli at +7.66 RAA (Runs Above Average). Click on RAA to turn it upside down and in very last place is Carlos Ruiz at -6.6 RAA. That’s more than a 14 run difference already or nearly a win and a half on catcher framing alone. Only a fraction of that has been with Burnett pitching, but that’s the kind of difference we’re talking about here and why I’m not going to be concerned with a higher K% despite the exact same SwStr%.

C.J. Wilson has seen his K% drop to a career low and the first thing you see is a career low 6.6 BB% to go with it, so you wonder if he’s intentionally taking something off to throw more strikes after an 11.2 BB% led to a rough 2014. His 44.6 Zone% is up from last year, though still below his career rate and it doesn’t look like he’s lost too much off his fastball other than a small age expected decline at this point. The best news, though, can be found in his SwStr% that is his highest since becoming a starter in 2010 and even a double-digit rate over the past month. I expect at least a little bit of a bounce back in his K%, closer to league average, if not exactly that high.

James Paxton – As if things don’t seem bad enough, his SwStr% has seen a significant drop-off from last year, while he hasn’t lost much off his K%. It gets even worse as his SwStr% has declined in five straight starts from a starting point of 8.5% on 4/25 to 3.3% on 5/23. He’s been throwing more fastballs and fewer changeups over the past month, which validates our observation because the change-up has a 16.0% whiff rate, his highest of any pitch this year. Mike Zunino is an above average framer (4.2 RAA by StatCorner.com), which may help keep him in A.J. Burnett territory here, but I’m not buying his last month.

Kendall Graveman – Well, now we can crap on his season-high six strikeouts in his first start in a month too. He struck out six of the 24 batters he faced, despite just eight swings and misses in 93 pitches that’s a bit below league average.

Nick Martinez – Now that we’ve dumped all over him above, it’s time to tell you that his SwStr% has risen by 2.2 points this year with no budge in his K%. This is the first time I’ve seen anything positive in Martinez since he was called up last year.

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.

A.J. Burnett – Despite everything we’ve talked about today so far, there are still some issues with the ERA that are going to eventually be addressed by the natural progression of things. The good news is that this isn’t a BABIP thing. He’s right on his career number (.292), but with an 88.8 LOB% that will be adjusted. Then we have the 5.3 HR/FB when nothing in his contact authority rates has changed. He has a career 11.1 HR/FB and, sure, Pittsburgh is much better than other parks he’s pitched a lot of games in, but he’s had rates of 12.7 and 9.1 in previous seasons in Pittsburgh. Don’t expect him to keep up the Cy Young form, but do expect the catching situation, park, health, and potentially better defense to propel him back into being relevant again after a season to forget in Philly.

C.J. Wilson – If we account for a potentially slight bump in K%, his estimators could drop to around four. As always, when the ERA matches only the FIP, we’re probably looking at a HR issue here and sure enough, his 6.3 HR/FB is well below league average. Here though, a good park and career 9.0 HR/FB makes me think that fall in somewhere between his FIP and what we think his SIERA and xFIP may look like with a few more strikeouts, which is basically a league average pitcher around the 3.75 range.

C.C. Sabathia has a solid 15.5 K-BB% that is actually better than his career rate, believe it or not. All of the factors not entirely under his control are way out of whack though and we can’t just go blaming all of that on luck though…..or can we? Let’s start by telling you what those out of range numbers are: .349 BABIP, 64.4 LOB%, and 14.0 HR/FB. Nothing in the batted ball chart indicates anything one way or the other for him. His 19.9 LD% is his lowest since 2010, where everything else in his batted ball rates is fairly normal. His 29.9 Hard% and 15.0 Hard-Soft% are worse than league average, but not so far extreme that you would expect these results. Now, his BABIP and HR/FB have been trending the wrong way for the last few years, but it doesn’t look like he’s being consistently hit hard enough to generate these overall results. Going back to the initial statement on him though, and what I’ve said in nearly every start, on a start by start basis, it’s generally going to depend on what he can get away with. If he has to come over the plate without velocity, he’s going to get hit harder than if he doesn’t.

Chris Heston has a 14.6 HR/FB, but four of his six HRs have come in Colorado and another in Houston with only one at home. The BABIP being a bit high is very strange with such a high IFFB%. He does have a 22.9 LD%, but a solid defense and high ground ball rate with a lot of weak contact.

Corey Kluber has a .348 BABIP mostly because his defense sucks. Is it much of a surprise that three of the four pitchers with a SwSwtr above 14% have terrible defenses behind them? His general markers are that of someone with about a league average or slightly higher BABIP, but I don’t expect him to ever get close to that in Cleveland. In fact, he has a career .328 BABIP.

Ian Kennedy has seen nearly a quarter of his fly balls (24.3%) leave the yard and six of the nine have come at Petco. That’s the severity and entirety of the issue. This seems to be the thing with the San Diego pitching staff this year. Try to make them miss, but if they don’t, it’s gonna leave the yard. By no means, leave things up to the defense though. He has a perfectly average 10.2 career HR/FB, so you’d think this would get better, especially since his 29.2 Hard% is the 2nd lowest of his career.

James Paxton has just a .202 BABIP with a 90.4 LOB% and 5.6 HR/FB over the last month with just a 5.3 K-BB%. Those numbers aren’t sustainable in any park. He does have a 13.8 LD% over that span and 14.2 LD% for the season, but there are no indicators that he can keep that up.

Kendall Graveman doesn’t miss bats, gets hit hard (24.1 LD%, 30.4 Hard%, 14.3 HR/FB), and has only generated a single pop up. His BABIP belongs right around where it is above the .300 mark and his FIP looks right on the mark, though you would think the park should benefit him more in his HR rate.

Nick Martinez has a BABIP that’s a little low, but not too crazy. Aside from a solid pop up rate, there’s not much else to support it though. That should rise at least a little bit and his 81.4 LOB% should drop as well. For a guy with a hard hit rate over 30%, I don’t see his 4.8 HR/FB sustaining either.

Shelby Miller has a perfectly fine 12.9 K-BB% that’s just a little bit better than league average. His 5.8 HR/FB is somewhat supported by a 5.5 Hard-Soft% and good home park, but St Louis is an even better pitcher’s park and he’s never been much better than average before. We can give him some room for improvement here, but expect to see a few more balls leave the yard going forward. The .206 BABIP and 87.1 LOB% are not numbers we can get behind at all though. His 1.54 GB/FB is about a 50% rise in that rate and his 17.0 LD% is great, but even with an arsenal that induces frequent weakly hit ground balls now, we can’t expect him to maintain anything close to this.

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).

Nobody – All outliers are covered above today.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

A.J. Burnett is really my borderline guy today. I like him in San Diego and think he’ll pitch well, but there’s a lot of impending regression in his numbers for the high cost. I think he’ll retain some of what he lost due to health, park, and improved framing in Pittsburgh, but he’s not this good because nobody is.

Buck Farmer is the type of dumpster diving punt play you might look for on an average day. He’s shown some upside in his swing and miss skills and is in a good spot tonight. You just might not need him tonight unless you’re teaming him with Kluber in GPPs.

C.C. Sabathia – In his favor would be a great park, a team with little power, who’ve struggled against LHP, and some peripherals that suggest severe regression. Not in his favor would be Oakland’s tendency to be patient and not chase bad pitches, which could present a problem with an unfavorable umpiring assignment. In question, at the time of this writing, is said umpiring assignment, which may ultimately tell whether Sabathia is going to provide reasonable value for your fantasy dollars tonight.

Chris Heston has allowed 12 of his 26 ERs and four of his six HRs in Colorado. He’s only had one bad start in his four at home. He’s not going to miss a ton of bats and faces a team that doesn’t strike out much tonight, but I really wish I could show you the contact authority numbers today. If there were a chart for that, his combined with Atlanta’s would be the pitcher friendliest today. He’s a low priced pitcher #2 I’d probably use with Kluber in double ups tonight. Colorado may have been really bad for him twice this year, but good for our general purposes of keeping him price tag low and his ability somewhat masked. To be clear though, this is not a high-upside play.

Corey Kluber – Yes, of course. Lots of Kluber. In fact, all the Kluber tonight. I can’t see why he shouldn’t be nearly 100% owned in double ups.

Eduardo Rodriguez has all the talent and upside and I wouldn’t hate taking a shot with him if you can find a minimum price tag, but Texas has been hitting the ball very well and there’s a lot of risk here.

Ian Kennedy would probably be my mid-range pitcher of choice today because I probably have to name at least one I’d use in a few GPP lineups. Pittsburgh has been a bad road offense, but have hit very well recently and it’s not exactly like he’s been able to use Petco to his advantage much. He does have the most potential for strikeouts outside the two highest prices on the board though.

Others

Because there are so few games and there are only a few left, why not talk more about everyone today?

C.J. Wilson – Tigers lean heavily RH and are tough on LHP, but is probably the most borderline value of those left.

James Paxton – Cleveland is an especially bad matchup for him, even in a great park, where the peripherals might finally come back to bite him.

Kendall Graveman came back after a month away to have his best start of the season, but carries a lot of risk with very little upside, so he’s probably not what you’re looking for in a dumpster dive.

Nick Martinez – I don’t understand how he doesn’t give up lots more runs, but hey, there may eventually be some upside in his K-rate.

Shelby Miller – I like him just about as much as C.J. Wilson overall and think he can be ok in a great park that should make the SF offense play down to neutral, but he’s essentially a league average pitcher (or slightly better) dressed up in an all-star price tag tonight.

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