Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Wed 7/2
Today is going to be a bit tricky with a good chunk of the schedule taking place during the afternoon and kicking off at 12:30 EST. The notes will be a bit briefer in an effort to get this out in a timely manner. I’ll try to refrain from stating the obvious, like Adam Wainwright is really good when you can plainly see all the dark green. Tomorrow is an off day and Friday, the holiday, may be even trickier with an 11 AM start time and games scattered throughout the day. We may have to skip the earliest one if it’s of little Daily Fantasy consequence.
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. Team Def = UZR/150. L2Yrs is a rolling calendar. 2013+ is since the start of that season. Combo stats are explained below.
Charlie Morton – has 17 K’s to 3 BB’s over his last 2 starts (11 in his last) and gets the great matchup at home against an ice cold team.
Chris Young – beats his peripherals better than just about any other pitcher, but I wouldn’t buy into his ERA entirely either.
Hyun-Jin Ryu – has a significantly lower xFIP at home in his short career, but his FIP and ERA are similar to what it is on the road. Cleveland struggles against LHP.
Jake Odorizzi – has a better than you’d think matchup in the Bronx.
Justin Verlander – has been better, but gets a really tough offense, which has been less tough recently.
Ryan Vogelsong – has a better than you’d expect matchup with the Cards at home.
Tom Koehler – has been better in his most recent starts and has a strong matchup, but reasons for caution appear below.
Tyler Skaggs – makes his first start in a month with a great matchup against a team that can’t hit LHP despite Abreu.
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.
Adam Wainwright – both his K and BB rates well spread out today.
Cole Hamels – adds his own strong K% to a Marlins team that has struck out over a quarter of the time this last week.
Jake Odorizzi – has his K-rate meet resistance from the Yankees.
Julio Teheran – gets a spike from 19 K’s in his last 2 starts, but is still otherwise well rounded vs the Mets.
Justin Verlander – has struck out 8 in each of his last 2 starts, but he’s going from the Astros to the A’s, who are much tougher to fan.
Tyler Skaggs – faces a White Sox team with healthy K rates.
Combo Batted Ball Chart
Ditto for the Combo Batted Ball stats in the Main Chart above.
Cole Hamels – sees his HR/FB shoot up due to allowing 3 of the 7 he’s allowed on the year in his last start vs these same Marlins.
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.
Chris Tillman – has had a SwStr below 4% in 3 of his last 5 starts with a high of 5.3%. That was his June, where he had a total of 8 strikeouts (11 walks) in 29 innings.
Doug Fister – had a SwStr of exactly 8% the last 2 years. Through 10 starts this year it’s 4.9%. He has a total of 9 strikeouts over his last 4 starts and has failed to exceed a 4% SwStr in 5 of his last 7. His more recent results (L30 Days) more accurately convey what his K% might look like if he can’t start missing more bats.
J.A. Happ – if we discount the 35 innings he threw before 2009, then his SwStr this year is the lowest of his career. If you notice, his SwStr is 0.7 points higher over the last month without the K% budging. That’s about what he’d have to maintain at least to have any confidence in it might stay there going forward.
Jake Odirizzi – has at least 5 K’s in each of his last 10 starts. That seems to set a solid floor. His lowest SwStr in the last 3 starts is 11.3%, so despite his season ratio, he’s trending upwards. If you’ll remember, a couple weeks back when I started posting the charts here, he had a 2.98 K/SwStr, so he’s getting very close to a confident rate. I’d even buy into the high end, which is where he is right now, due to the framing work he benefits from.
John Danks – a small K% increase still probably doesn’t sell you on him.
Johnny Cueto – like Odirizzi above, Cueto has been regressing to a more expectable rate. And like Happ, his L30 Days rates look a lot more like what we’d expect his K-rate to be while maintaining such a SwStr%. It’s still above average stuff.
Tyler Matzek – struck out 7 in his major league debut and 5 more in 3 starts since, never again coming close to his initial 13.6 SwStr% yet either. A 7.2 SwStr% in his last start is his highest since and considering that debut was against an Atlanta team that often has trouble catching up, I’d go with his latter numbers and worry that he’d be able to K enough batters to be Daily Fantasy relevant.
Vidal Nuno – his 7.7 SwStr% against the Red Sox last time out was his highest in 6 starts. So, yeah, don’t expect much.
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
Adam Wainwright – I think we can all buy that he’s still a great pitcher, having an exceptional month.
Brad Peacock – barely struck out more batters than he walked in June, but his BABIP dropped to .262 and he stranded 80% of base-runners.
Chris Tillman – also, conveniently, had a .262 BABIP and stranded 80% of runners in June in addition to his horrid 11/8 K/BB.
Chris Young – is still too tall for FIP, but Tony Blengino wrote something about exactly this yesterday.
Cole Hamels – has been pitching great, but his results have been even better, although the last 2 have been a little shakier.
Doug Fister – we already mentioned the sad SwStr situation above, but you can probably guess what’s coming next: career low .260 BABIP – career high 81.6 LOB%. Be cautious.
John Danks – hasn’t really improved. 16 K’s and 12 BB’s in June with a .248 BABIP.
Johnny Cueto – is still looking at a .212 BABIP, but he’s been closing the gap on his estimators for a while now.
Julio Teheran – Until it drops off the chart after the AS break, I have to mention that one horrid start in Colorado a few weeks back messing up everything. Otherwise he’s pretty much in line with who he projects to be with his rates improving in June (26.6 K% – 2.2 BB%).
Justin Verlander – it’s gotten better over his last 2 starts, but one of those was against Houston. His June HR/FB was 15.6%. He did have his best monthly K (19.6%) and BB (8.4%) rates of the year too, although those numbers are merely league average at best.
Kevin Correia – is not suddenly any better either. He struck out just 11 batters, seeing dip in BABIP to a reasonable .282, but still about 20 points below his career rate.
Ryan Vogelsong – had a .372 BABIP in June.
Tom Koehler – is seeing his results snap back so hard that they flew past his peripherals in June. If you weren’t buying a .240 BABIP and 80 LOB% through May, you were right. He normalized to .308 and even a 65.1 LOB% that might be a little low.
Travis Wood – has pretty much matched his FIP, but been below his xFIP and SIERA for his career. Last month he saw a sharp decline in his K/BB to 1.06, yet saw better results due a dip in BABIP to .269 and hike in LOB to 81% while his HR/FB was cut in half to 4.5. The BABIP may not be so crazy though as it’s exactly his career line.
Tyler Skaggs – hasn’t started a game in a month.
Vidal Nuno – xFIP and SIERA are if his HR’s normalize, FIP is if they don’t.
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).
Adam Wainwright – is floating a BABIP 40 points below his career baseline with a career low IFFB and not below league average 22.5 LD%.
Brandon Workman – .226 is not going to float, even with that exceptional IFFB.
Chase Anderson – hasn’t exhibited BABIP suppressing skills in the minors and while the IFFB reflects well, the 27.9 LD% does not.
Chris Young – read the article I linked to above concerning his infield fly ball rate, but .212 he will not BABIP forever.
Cole Hamels – in fact does have a lower career BABIP as his tendencies might suggest. After allowing a .400 mark in April, he followed that up with .284 and .275 the next 2 months.
Doug Fister – was noted above concerning the career low BABIP.
Jake Odirizzi – projects to potentially see a serious BABIP drop. In fact his monthly splits have been .384 in April to .333 in May and .240 in June.
Johnny Cueto – had a .275 BABIP in June, nearly matching his team. What’s done is done, but that’s what I would expect going forward.
Julio Teheran – had a .313 BABIP in June just to bring it up this high.
Travis Wood – has the 2nd best IFFB among qualified starters. In fact, 4 of the top 11 are going today. His 12% career rate has led him to a stunning .269 career BABIP.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
Adam Wainwright – has been on fire and has a great matchup. There’s no reason he shouldn’t be the top pitcher at the top price.
Brandon Workman – despite the low BABIP, comes at a low price and has some redeeming qualities if you’re looking to pair him up with a stud. He’s going deeper into games (at least 6 in his last 3) and faces a step down in competition today (Cubs).
Charlie Morton – is pitching some great baseball and has a great matchup with Arizona in his home park. K’s aren’t something you normally associate with Morton, but he has at least 6 in 5 straight starts after doing that just twice in his first 11.
Cole Hamels – the only blemish in his lines today is the 3 HR’s he allowed to the Marlins in his last start.
Hyun-Jin Ryu – a LHP is usually a decent bet vs Cleveland in a decent park. Ryu is even starting to strikeout a reasonable number of batters (5+ in 3 of last 4).
Jake Odorizzi – as mentioned in the first chart, the Yankees aren’t a terrible matchup and as mentioned in the SwStr one, he seems to have set a reasonable floor for K’s.
Johnny Cueto – should be your Plug & Play vs the Padres and will probably be fine, but you may have some similar performance options for lesser prices. He may make for a decent fade, hoping that he’s just good, rather than great.
Julio Teheran – is one such pitcher you might opt for instead of Cueto, with better numbers in a lot of areas over the last month and a solid matchup as well. He’s struck out at least 6 in 9 of his last 13.
Justin Verlander – has been pitching better and remains at a reduced price against a somewhat toned down A’s offense lately, but jumping from the Astros to these A’s requests some caution.
Ryan Vogelsong – is coming off a great outing at home vs Cincinnati and gets another better than expected matchup tonight. He’s very hit or miss, even at home, but the price tag may make it worth the risk.
Tom Koehler – is not a guy I’d usually recommend, but the last 2 starts have been decent (13 IP – 11 H – 4 ER – 3 BB – 14 K), including one of them being against these Phillies. The price makes him a potential consideration.
Tyson Ross – I’ve been on the cheaper end of this series (Padres pitchers) for each game because only the Padres can make the Reds offense seem decent. If you compare the peripherals and estimators in the charts above, Ross lines up right with Cueto and Wainwright in most places, including the highest SwStr% of the day (12). Would you take a potentially similar to Wainwright performance at 2/3 the price?
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.