Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Tuesday, April 7th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2015-04-09 11:49:51

Perhaps you remember this piece of genius analysis from yesterday?

“If he shuts out the Brewers, this 6K word spectacular may just be the first and last pitching article written by me this year. I shouldn’t say that though because, you know, baseball and now it’s probably going to happen.”

You knew if he didn’t get belted, he was going to embarrass me. So, yeah, if you had Kendrick instead of Kershaw yesterday, good for you. The rest of us get another 161 chances to pull our hair out starting today.

Last season, I didn’t get here (RG) until the middle of June, so many of you may not know what the charts look like at the start of the season when no games have been played yet. Hint: Lots of empty spaces, for the first week or so. We’ll still have all the relevant stats from last season and beyond where labeled, but in the meantime, it might be more words and conjecture than numbers for a week or so.

Some chart intro paragraphs have been updated where necessary, mostly to reflect any changes in the time span covered in the stats presented.

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

Editor’s Note: Cardinals at Cubs has been postponed due to inclement weather.

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 – I’ve decided to leave in the stats for last season’s team defense and opposing team’s wRC+ just as a reference point, although we obviously expect things to change and in some places somewhat drastically due to off-season transactions. I’ll switch over to this season’s stats at the end of the week.

Alex Wood is a guy I used in my games a lot last year, often with success. You look at his 24.2 K% over the last two seasons and have to realize that he pitched in relief 31 times to go with 35 starts, but his skills transitioned well between roles. The Marlins have some tough RH bats, but may still be susceptible in the big park.

C.J. Wilson turned in a bit of stinker last season. His K rate (19.8) dropped below 20% for the first time in his starting career, but he’s only been above 20.6% once in 5 seasons. It was the 11.2 BB% that did him in. The Mariners were the pits vs LHP last year, so they went out and got Nelson Cruz to balance things out a little more. That said, you really have to hit the ball hard to get it out of Safeco to LF during night games early in the season.

Colby Lewis was even worse than Wilson last year, but has similar peripherals in the chart above. He’s a guy that allowed a lot of hard contact (.339 BABIP + 25 HRs). The good news is….well, there really isn’t a lot of positive I can find here, except that he threw strikes. Oakland was the hammer at home last year, but there’s been a lot of turnover in the lineup.

Jake Arrieta improved command of his fastball last year, resulting in a career low 6.7 BB%, allowing him to throw his “(classname)three different sliders(title tooltip)”: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jake-arrietas-one-grip-multi-slider/ out of the zone and get more swings and misses. In fact, he more than doubled his slider rate to 29% last year, which would have been good for 10th in the majors had he pitched a few more innings and qualified. As long as his Tommy John doesn’t snap, there doesn’t seem to be many reasons why he can’t continue to build on his breakout season.

Editor’s Note: Cardinals at Cubs has been postponed due to inclement weather.

James Paxton had his breakout season interrupted by injury, throwing only 74 major league innings. His shiny 3.04 ERA didn’t exactly match his higher peripherals, which all varied in their level of disagreement (ERA chart below). He still has room to improve on his 9.9 BB% and many would like to see him get his K% above league average. He faces an offense that hammered LHP last year, but we’ve already discussed the difficulty Safeco poses to RH power in the cooler weather.

Jesse Hahn comes over from San Diego, where he got himself noticed with a 22.9 K% and 3.04 ERA in his rookie season. His big curveball made his 91 mph look much better, but there was significant falloff in his K rate in the 2nd half as it fell from 28.7% in his first seven starts to 16.2% over his final five starts. He’s going to have to improve on a 10.5 BB% too. The Rangers were terrible against RHP last year, basically because they lacked any LH threats, but they’re hoping that changes with Choo and Fielder healthy.

Jordan Lyles wasn’t really terrible for the Rockies last season, but wasn’t all that good either. While I won’t laugh at Colorado’s starter today, he doesn’t offer much upside either with a mid-teens K rate and middling control. Milwaukee is supposed to be a hitter’s park, but how much can you talk up an offense that got shut out by Kyle Kendrick on opening day.

Lance Lynn changed his pitch mix (more sinkers, fewer off-speed offerings) to improve on his weakness vs LHBs, but “(classname)it’s unclear(title tooltip)”: http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/the-secret-of-lance-lynns-success/ if that will lead to any sustainable success or was just some BABIP variance. His peripherals didn’t change from when he had an ERA over a run higher the year before and in fact, the year before that too. His 12.6 K-BB% in 2014 was his worst mark of the last three seasons. Cardinal starters excelled in keeping the ball in the yard at home, but Lynn had just a 6.1 HR/FB last year. They’re not at home today. I expect him to revert to his mid-three ERA nature this year.

Editor’s Note: Cardinals at Cubs has been postponed due to inclement weather.

Mat Latos saw his velocity plummet two mph last year, but enjoyed a 3.25 ERA in 102 IP due in large part to a .269 BABIP and 7.3 HR/FB. It was really a tale of two halves as his ERA was below 3.00 with a .188 BABIP in the first half, but then sat at 3.53 when it jumped up to .315 in the second half of the season. Where the Reds were concerned, the Marlins saw opportunity. The Braves should represent a great opportunity for most pitchers this year, but Latos may bear some watching before earning your trust. You want to see if he can improve on a career low 8.0 SwStr% and get back to his career 10.2% level with the strikeouts hopefully to follow.

Matt Garza was essentially a league average pitcher last year, but the drop in K% (18.5) to below league average is a concern, especially since it didn’t come with a big spike in groundball rate like some other Milwaukee pitchers. His .268 BABIP was off-set by a 66.6 LOB%, but let’s see if he can repeat a career low 7.0 HR/FB pitching in this park. The difference with this Colorado team and previous versions is they look like they might be able to do some damage on the road when fully healthy.

Nate Karns is a name I’m surprised to see pitching on the second day of the season, but the Tampa Bay rotation has been thinned out with injuries early. He has five career major league starts totaling 24 innings over two seasons. He fits the team profile of a guy who’s not afraid to throw up in the zone, but was ranked as only their 14th best prospect by Fangraphs this off-season, who thinks he may profile more as a reliever due to “command inconsistencies”. He can miss some bats, but hasn’t had a walk rate below 8% at any stop in his professional career.

Rubby de la Rosa throws hard, but doesn’t really strike too many batters out. He struggled in Boston last year and now brings his 11.8 HR/FB in 174 career innings to Arizona. With just an 8.3 SwStr% and questionable control, he’s going to have to start missing more bats to become interesting to fantasy players.

Ryan Vogelsong gets the spot start in place of Peavy on the second day of the season. His ERA and all his estimators sat around 4.00, but he did increase his K rate by 5% points to 19.4% last season, above his career rate, though still below average. He’s probably not very daily fantasy relevant outside his home park.

Tyson Ross broke out in 2014 pairing the 2nd best groundball rate in the league (57% – behind only Keuchel) with a 24.0 K% on his way to a 2.81 ERA. Something he led the league in was slider rate. He threw it more than any starter in baseball (41.2%), not just qualified ones. I mean, everyone who started at least one game last year, he threw his slider more than. You worry about guys with just two pitches, but he was equally effective against batters from both sides of the plate. Like Arrieta, as long as his Tommy John stays attached, there’s no reason he shouldn’t have another quality season. On the road against the Dodgers might not be where you want to put that to the test though.

Wei-Yin Chen throws an average fastball up in the zone in Baltimore and somehow gets away with it. At least in the sense, that he’s been a league average pitcher striking out only 18% of the batters he’s faced. This is in part because he walks very few batters. He gets about one pop up for every HR he allows over his career. Tampa Bay isn’t a bad place to throw high fastballs. After all, all their pitchers do it.

Zach Greinke takes on the Atlanta Braves of San Diego and is the biggest “name” on the mound today. He’d be the opening day starter on most other staffs and is coming off a season where he increased his K-BB from 14.2% to 20% through a 25.2 K%. He was outright evil at home last year with a 27.9 K% and 2.47 xFIP despite a 24.5 LD% and 15.5 HR/FB. The San Diego offense in 2015 is an upgrade from the dark green numbers you see represented in the chart above.

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.

C.J. Wilson is one of two slight outliers today, but his career K/SwStr is 2.6 and it’s really so borderline that it’s not worth making a big deal about because really, how far is he from a guy like Jake Arrieta?

Nate Karns is even less worth talking about because he’s right on my subjective borderline mark in such a small sample of innings (12 last year).

ERA Estimators Chart

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

Colby Lewis had a BABIP (.339) over 30 points above his career level (.303).

Jesse Hahn pitched in a good ball park last year and will pitch in one this year. Maybe the 7.5 HR/FB doesn’t budge too much. We’ll have to see about the .270 BABIP. Even though the chart below says it would have fit perfectly with last year’s Oakland defense, that defense is partially scattered among other teams now.

Lance Lynn is the same pitcher he always was considering his estimators. While two of them think his 6.1 HR/FB will normalize, there is some benefit to pitching in St Louis and the hope is that he comes in closer to his FIP, but it might be wise to expect some regression in his ERA none the less.

Mat Latos had an ERA that was mocking his peripherals for most of the season until the BABIP corrected in a big way.

Nate Karns allowed 7 fly balls in his 12 major league innings last year. Three of them left the yard.

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).

Colby Lewis had a 22.7 LD% and, while not necessarily a terrible defense behind him via the metrics, perhaps a poorly positioned one. These things led to a terrible BABIP, which, with a .303 career mark, may not improve a whole lot without additional help from his defense.

Jake Arrieta played in front of another high BABIP defense. An elite pop up rate helped him towards his low BABIP, but doesn’t explain all of it. With a 22.3 LD% and 1.73 GB/FB last year, there just weren’t enough pop ups (15), even at that high a rate, to make that big of a difference.

Mat Latos had an excellent defense last year. Imagine his ERA had his BABIP been 40 points higher to match these Marlins. An incredibly elite IFFB rate last year means he had some say in the matter. It’s a strong, but not as elite 11.1% for his career.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Alex Wood is certainly an option tonight. He had at least 6 K’s in 14 of his 24 starts last year. The Marlins have some dangerous RH power, but it’s a big park and Wood fared similarly against batters from both side of the plate last year.

C.J. Wilson comes at a decent price in a great park for a LHP in an early season night game, but he could end up walking the park and not lasting much longer than five innings if he’s off.

Colby Lewis probably isn’t safe in any park right now.

Jake Arrieta is actually the highest priced pitcher on a couple of sites today. It’s tough to know how to feel about that because on the one hand, he’s one of the highest K potential guys out there and struck out 26.7% of batters at home last year. On the other hand, he’s facing a tough offense and you can’t just assume he’s going to put up another mid-two ERA.

James Paxton is a risky play with peripherals not exactly matching his ERA last year and facing a lineup that murders LHP. He’s not without his merits though, at a very low price on some sites and in a park that will make RHBs crush it to get out tonight.

Jesse Hahn has some upside here, even though his strikeout rate tanked late last year. That upside being facing an offense that nearly got no hit last night in a great park at a very reasonable price. The Texas offense should be better this year, but it’s not something you’d immediately want to take for granted when dealing with veterans coming off major injuries. If Hahn can get his curveball working and find a way to limit his walks, while rediscovering the magic that allowed him to strike out batters at an above average rate, you might be able to pick some daily fantasy baseball value off these bones.

Jordan Lyles is probably not a pitcher you want to mess around with even after the Brewers were shut down by Kendrick yesterday. The price tag may be appealing, but that counteracts the fact that his ceiling isn’t very high in a tough park.

Lance Lynn should be ok, but the results were a bit closer to the peripherals on the road last year with a 3.05 ERA (3.62 xFIP) to go with a perfectly league average 10.7 HR/FB. Chicago may offer some strikeout upside, but he’s not coming cheap.

Matt Latos has a great matchup in a big park, but hasn’t shown the upside to justify that high a price tag in a while. The risk may out way the reward unless he’s going to start missing bats again. His opponent may offer higher upside at a similar price.

Matt Garza has a mid-range price tag, which makes some sense as a league average pitcher now. However, once you add in the potency of a healthy Colorado offense and the park (which he pitched well in last year), there may not be much extra value to be found above that mid-range price tag.

Nate Karns doesn’t show up in the price chart partially because many sites have him listed as Nathan. It’s also possible some sites may not have a price on him at all yet, though I haven’t checked them all. If he does show up on the bottom of your board, there is some strikeout potential tonight, but what comes along with it is anyone’s guess. The park should hold the baseball, but all 3 of his HRs allowed last season came in his lone home start.

Rubby de la Rosa has shown little in consistency or potential over the last year that would persuade you to roster him in this environment, even at a low price.

Ryan Vogelsong is a tough sell in a hitter’s park. In fact, his road numbers overall inspire little confidence.

Tyson Ross is a tough one today. The upside is there, but while he was dominant at home, he was essentially league average on the road last year. Now he has to fend off one of the best and deepest lineups in baseball with a sizeable price tag on most sites.

Zach Greinke is the obvious choice today. Expect many of your opponents to have him and they’re probably not wrong. He owns the highest price tag on most sites (but not all), though it doesn’t seem to be outlandish. He flat out dominated at home last season, though was occasionally vulnerable when contact was made. If you’re looking for a safety valve on day full of sketchy pitching and unfavorable matchups, this is it.

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

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