Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Tuesday, April 14th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2015-04-16 14:52:11

I took my first look at Tuesday’s probables around 10 PM ET last night. I had to do a double check to make sure I wasn’t on a minor league page. There are four pitchers starting tonight that weren’t even in my database, which I think is a new personal record for a single day. I pride myself on knowing at least a little something about just about every major league starter and most prospects, but there are guys pitching tonight I’ve never even heard of. It’s going to be an interesting (and educational) night.

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.

NOTE – Team defense stats are still 2014 as they’re not available for 2015 yet.

A.J. Burnett looked very good in his first start, but it should be noted that he was facing a Cincinnati team in an early start after they went late into the night in an extra-innings affair that had finished less than 12 hours earlier. The Tigers may be a different story. You don’t want none of them right now if you’re a pitcher.

Anthony Descalfani was the other pitcher who looked good in that hangover game against Pittsburgh.

Brad Peacock is up to make the spot start after today’s initial probable ended up throwing three innings last night. He faces a hot Oakland team.

Carlos Carrasco picked up right where he left off last year. The White Sox haven’t reaped the benefits of all their off-season additions yet.

C.C. Sabathia averaged just 88.4 mph on his fastball in his first start, which is slightly disturbing and something to watch, but most other signs were positive, including a 14.7 SwStr% and eight punch outs with lots of ground balls. In fact, without knowing velocity, you might be encouraged by his first outing.

Christian Bergman has just an uninteresting inning of relief to his 2015 thus far and was also uninteresting at best in 10 starts with the big club last year.

Daniel Norris is the beneficiary of something called the Dickey hangover effect. This is when the entire team goes out and gets drunk after having to deal with the knuckleball the night before. No, it’s actually the researched effect that pitchers pitching after a knuckleballer enjoy the benefit of the opposing offense seemingly being off balance from facing an unorthodox pitch, which isn’t really that much different from the drunk thing. Despite a mediocre first start, Norris is a prospect of some note, with the highest strikeout and walk differential of any qualified minor league starter above A ball last year. That’s usually a pretty decent predictor of future success. Further, here’s a nice, detailed dissection of Norris from just last month.

David Buchanan walked four of the 19 Red Sox he faced, striking out only one. Strikeouts have never been his forte. He has very little daily fantasy usefulness.

Drew Rucinski gets his first major league start. While I can’t find any prospect chatter about the 26 year old, he did have an impressive 148.2 IP at AA last year, striking out 23% of batters faced, walking only 6.7% and allowing just seven HRs.

Hisashi Iwakuma had some underlying metrics that differed a bit from his results in his first start. The strand rate thing he’s been so good at for the first two and a half years of his major league career continued to go the other way to start 2015. He has a tough assignment tonight.

Jake Arrieta looked like he picked up right where he left off to start the year. We’ll talk later about why that might not be so.

Jose Quintana was roughed up in his first outing, which was a little better by his peripheral numbers. The Tribe struggled against LHP last year and it’s continued into early this season.

Justin Masterson is looking to forget last season and his first start this year was a big step in the right direction. That was against the Phillies though. The Nationals are hoping to improve on offense as they gain some of their big bats back starting this week.

Kendall Graveman got hit hard in his Oakland debut and has never really showed swing and miss stuff in the minors. Houston could push those strikeouts up a bit today.

Matt Andriese has one inning of relief this season and is making his major league starting debut. His fangraphs page is entirely a blank slate. We know the Toronto offense is better than its looks thus far.

Matt Harvey is the easy part of Tuesday night. His return to dominance made it seem he only got Tommy John surgery to make pitching in the major leagues more of a challenge (I can’t take credit for that one, read it on Twitter). What’s he going to do next? Tell them what’s coming? Pitch with a broken hand? It’s been said he may be limited to 90 pitches early in the season, which may be more than enough to dispatch the lowly Phillies.

Miguel Gonzalez continues to defy strand rate laws, walking five in his first start and allowing just a single run. The really odd thing is that the normally extreme fly ball pitcher kept 10 of his 13 batted balls on the ground.

Odrisamer Despaigne has some interesting pitches, but failed to make them work for him last year. He was perfect against 14 batters in a long relief appearance last week, but only struck out one.

Shane Greene had successful debut in Detroit and will talk why it could have been both better and worse later. The Pirates are tough at home, just as they were last year.

Tim Hudson – we’re going to go three layers deep right here. On the surface, he pitched into the seventh inning, scattering five hits, and didn’t allow a single run. That’s good. Underneath, he walked five of the 26 batters he faced, striking out only one, and stranding all 10 base runners. That’s bad. Digging deeper, his 8.6 SwStr% was a replica of last season’s rate and 13 of his 19 batted balls were on the ground with just one line drive. Our conclusion: walks are really bad, but everything else was fine.

Trevor Cahill makes his Atlanta debut. I heard the first thing the sinkerballer did was hug Andrelton Simmons upon arriving. The Marlins are waiting on off-season offensive additions to pay off.

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

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.

There’s a lot of variance in game to game SwStr%. Let’s talk about a few things that really stand out from these pitchers’ first starts.

Anthony Desclafani missed a lot of Pittsburgh bats in his first start, but as noted above, it was a hangover game the afternoon after a marathon extra inning affair.

Carlos Carrasco dominated the Houston Astros and should see his SwStr % come down some against teams that are better at making contact. That doesn’t mean he’s not a stud though, after a 13.0 SwStr% last season between bullpen and rotation.

Hisashi Iwakuma matched his SwStr% from last season in his first outing, which is one of the few positives to come from that start.

Jake Arrieta – if you looked at the box score, you probably thought he picked up right where he left off last year. This is the most stunning statistic I’ve seen today. Arrieta induced just 3 swinging strikes on 104 pitches, yet struck out 7 of the 27 batters he faced. I’m not calling for concern after one start, but it’s far lower than any mark he had last year when he only had three games below 7%. It’s not something you would expect with his slider.

Jeremy Hellickson – an 11.0 SwStr% is probably the only impressive thing about his first NL start.

Justin Masterson – the 9.5 SwStr% is just above his mark for the past two seasons.

Shane Greene was impressive on many fronts in his first start. One of those was in inducing 12 swinging strikes in his 85 pitches.

Tim Hudson – as mentioned above, despite just the single strike out, his SwStr% exactly matched last year’s mark.

ERA Estimators Chart

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

Most pitchers are going to have discrepancies between their ERA and Estimators in a single game. We’ll discuss just the largest ones among the night starters.

C.C. Sabathia had some great peripherals despite the disappointing velocity. Aside from the eight Ks without a HR or BB allowed, the Blue Jays managed a .500 BABIP on 12 ground balls out of the 16 batted balls in play.

Jake Arrieta was a BABIP beneficiary, not missing many bats, getting called punch outs, and having everything find a glove. That’s not to say a lot of balls were hit hard that ended up being outs or that they would have hit those pitches that were called for strike three had they swung. What happened was what happened though, and it worked to his benefit.

Jose Quintana has peripherals that suggest a better fate than the one he actually received, but seven of his 20 batted balls were line drives to go along with his .421 BABIP.

Kendall Graveman got smoked and his underlying metrics weren’t very kind either, but the good news is that seven of his 16 batted balls were on the ground with only three line drives and he only stranded 27.8% of his runners. He certainly was far from good though.

Shane Greene did a lot of great things, but was also sort of fortunate to allow 10 non infield fly balls and have them all stay in the park.

Tim Hudson – read the paragraph under the Main Chart for three shades of Hudson.

BABIP Chart

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).

We’ve already spoken about a lot of these numbers in the chart above because they’re closely related.

C.C. Sabathia – I guess it’s easier to square up a guy’s mistakes when he’s not throwing as hard, but aside from 12 ground balls, one of his two fly balls was a pop up too.

David Buchanan – nine of his 14 batted balls were on the ground.

Jake Arrieta seems to be the only pitcher the Cubs are defending for in the early going.

Stephen Strasburg and BABIP issues go together like two things in an analogy I don’t feel like taking the time to make.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Carlos Carrasco is among your top priced pitchers today, but has been proving he’s worth it in every start since the last few months of 2014. He’s in the confines of a pitcher friendly park against an offense that hasn’t shown much life yet.

C.C. Sabathia – I was hoping that the price would be more attractive as everything other than his velocity gave you hope. Guys do learn to pitch with reduced velocity and he can still remain effective, but I’m not sure I want to test it at today’s prices in a tough park vs a tough right handed offense.

Derek Norris is not expensive if you want to put the Dickey knuckleball hangover theory to the test.

Drew Rucinski is really the only of today’s unknowns that shows any real upside in his minor league stats. So if you absolutely wanted to take a shot on one of these low priced and probably low owned guys, he might be the one.

Hisashi Iwakuma – this could turn out well, but I don’t think I want his HR problems against the Dodgers in LA.

Jake Arrieta showed, or didn’t show, enough that I may consider skipping this start with better options in his premium price range today. I still think he’ll be fine, but the track record isn’t long.

Jose Quintana has established who he is over the last few years, although his first start wasn’t up to par. He’s not coming particularly cheap, but faces a team that’s struggled against LHP in a pitcher’s park. I’d consider him as more of a #2 in double ups than a GPP guy.

Kevin Graveman could get the strikeout boost from Houston, but showed nothing that would make me trust him in his last outing, even at a rock bottom price.

Matt Harvey – yup, all the Harvey, even with the pitch count.

Odrisamer Despaigne could be interesting at a low price, but Arizona showed no effects of hitting in Petco last night.

Shane Greene exhibits some variance in his price tag today. On sites where’s he’s cheap, he’s shown enough upside to be worth a flyer. On more expensive sites, he’s not a given against a tough opponent.

Tim Hudson – while I’d tend to go with the good 3rd level things I’ve written about today concerning the most established veteran on the mound tonight, the price isn’t particularly alluring for someone without much upside against a hot hitting team, albeit the Jeckyll and Hyde Rockies in a great pitcher’s park.

Trevor Cahill – the Braves have continued to play good defense (as far as BABIP is concerned) to start the year. I have to admit, I’m curious what a ground ball pitcher can do with Simmons behind him. Of course, not every ball will be hit at him, it just seems that way. The price may be cheap enough to find out if you’re looking for a veteran to pair with Harvey and still afford some offense. The Marlins haven’t hit at all yet.

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

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