Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Wed 8/13
As noted yesterday, we’re only going to get to cover the late games tonight. I’m including the “tweener” in San Diego because I have no idea what the intentions of the DFS sites are concerning that game as I write this and it doesn’t hurt to add it. That makes 12 games total.
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. 2013+ is since the start of that season. Combo stats are explained below.
NOTE – the doubleheader now scheduled today in Cleveland makes a mess of things. The charts were prepped before this happened with Bauer and Nuno listed for the lone night game.
A.J. Burnett – has been hit hard in 4 of his last 5 starts, but the peripherals are still decent. We’ll get into the specifics in the ERA chart, but a normally tough matchup with the Angels may be tempered by their cold bats of late.
Bartolo Colon – has been on a strikeout binge of late, at least relative to his usual performance. He has at least 5 K’s in each of his last 6 starts. We already know he’s a strike throwing machine.
Buck Farmer – was a 5th round pick out of college in 2013. He’s moved fast through the system with only 12 innings in AA. He’s had strong K rates in the low minors, but who knows how that will translate to the big leagues. His introduction comes by way of a banged up, but hot Pittsburgh team that hits RHP 2nd best in baseball.
Chris Archer – has struck out 15 of his last 50 batters and faces the worst home offense (4th worst vs RHP) in baseball. Surprisingly he has one of the lowest expected HR/FB’s today in the toughest park.
Chris Tillman – we’re going to talk about the recent K rate in the SwStr chart, but on the surface, he’s gone at least 6 IP with 3 ER or less in 10 of his last 12 starts with a healthier K% over the last month.
Hisashi Iwakuma – has fantastic underlying numbers at home since the start of last season. The Blue Jays are a little better with Lind back and still the best offense vs RHP, but injuries and circumstances have taken their toll lately.
Hyun-Jin Ryu – is on a 5 start quality streak (6 IP – 3ER or better) where he’s walked a total of 4 batters and allowed just a single HR. The Braves have some pop vs LHP, but that also leads to some K’s.
Ian Kennedy – is getting decent results with bad process lately (3 or more BB in each of last 5). He has the 3rd worst road offense in the best park tonight though and may wind up with the top K-rate.
Jason Vargas – has had some of the biggest contrast I’ve ever seen between peripherals and results since the break, but it’s only 2 starts with some awful BABIP going on. The A’s mashed in KC last night.
Jered Weaver – the estimators almost always look worse than his results, but even the results haven’t been all that good lately. Let’s see what facing the team tied for 4th worst offense on the road and 2nd worst vs RHP can do for him.
Jordan Zimmermann – has a 30 K/BB over his last 5 starts and struck out at least 5 in 11 straight. He has the day’s best estimators and a good matchup.
Justin Masterson – ugh, can you even trust him against Marlins? The BB and HR numbers are just awful. He’s walked at least 3 in 7 straight starts.
Kyle Lohse – has 5 BB’s and just 4 K’s over his last 2 starts with mixed overall results. The Cubs are now the worst offense vs RHP though and tied for 2nd worst at home.
Michael Pineda -returns to take on the hottest offense in the league. Let’s see if he can stick this time around (pun intended). In 2 AAA rehab starts he pitched 8 innings with 1 ER, 1 BB, 11 K, and 0 foreign substances found on his body.
Miles Mikolas- has one of the lowest expected K-rates today, but maybe some reason for optimism in the SwStr chart. He also oddly has one of the greenest HR/FB rates in the toughest park.
Nathan Eovaldi – his line looks better than you’d think or at least less scary, including the day’s greenest HR/FB.
R.A. Dickey – Seattle has some of the hotter bats in the league. Pop up rate and ball park are the only dark green in his line.
Scott Kazmir – hasn’t exceeded 158 innings since 2007 and is at 142 now. I mention that because his last 2 starts haven’t been great, but now he takes on the tied for 2nd worst home offense, though we know they’ll hurt his K rate.
Tsuyoshi Wada – has pitched very well over his last 3 starts and somehow ends up with one of the better K% numbers in today’s chart. The batted ball section has some extreme numbers as well.
Tyler Matzek – it’s a shame you probably can’t take advantage of the worst offense vs LHP in the best park. He’s been that awful, even on the road.
Vance Worley – continues to defy conventional wisdom, but takes on the 3rd best home offense in baseball. His K rate, even with the looking strikeouts, is still fairly useless.
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.
Bartolo Colon – the Nats will take their walks, but he has free passed a total of 3 batters in his last 6 starts.
Hyuk-Jin Ryu – has league average or slightly worse K rates across, but the Braves strike out 3rd most often at home and vs LHP. They’ve struck out way more than any other team over the last week.
Ian Kennedy – the terrible BB rates are all on his side, while both sides share in the high K% with only the Colorado rate against RHP being even near league average.
Jordan Zimmermann – has walked 1 batter total in his last 5 starts, completely trumping the strong BB rates of his opposition today.
Justin Masterson – here we see that every single BB% is higher than league average with each on his side being in double digits.
Miles Mikolas – the Rays have some low K rates and he has just 9 total in 3 home starts.
Tsuyoshi Wada – although nothing really sticks out as extreme, the only below average K% is the Brewers L7Days.
Tyler Matzek – his K & BB rates are disgusting with no further explanation necessary.
Vance Worley – aside from his own poor rates, the Tigers are very tough to fan at home.
Combo Batted Ball Chart
Ditto for the Combo Batted Ball stats in the Main Chart above.
Chris Archer – has allowed 3 HR’s over his last 15 starts. The Rangers have below average power at home this year.
Ian Kennedy – today’s lowest IFFB rate isn’t even that low and pulled down by the fact he hasn’t gotten one in recent starts, though he rarely gets many at home anyway.
Justin Masterson – the Marlins have some surprising pop being around league average in HR/FB at home and that’s the lowest rate in the line. Every other HR/FB is in double digits. It might be a little tricky on his side though because the GB rate is so high. He’s only allowed 8 total HR’s all season.
Michael Pineda – the O’s hit HR’s.
Miles Mikolas – all HR/FB rates are below average, including TB rates vs RHP and over the last week. Interestingly, he’s only allowed 1 total in 3 home starts vs some very tough offenses (OAK, LAA, HOU – HOU hit it).
Nathan Eovaldi – has great HR/FB rates and hasn’t allowed one in 3 starts. The Cardinals are steadily below average as well.
R.A. Dickey – knuckleballs get pop ups and Seattle may be willing to help at home.
Tsuyoshi Wada – the line drives, and many of them, has been the big flaw in his game up until this point, but that’s also come with a tendency for pop ups.
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.
Bartolo Colon – he waited for me to semi-cave in his last write-up because he has done the 3+ K/SwStr thing a few times in recent seasons, then he goes and drops it under 3 for the month. I sit there and watch him pitch and can’t understand why hitters are taking such good pitches with 2 strikes when they know what’s coming. Then he throws a slider and it goes over the wall. Go figure.
Chris Tillman – I wasn’t buying the recent K% surge at all with a minuscule SwStr% over the last month. Then he hits us with a 12.8 SwStr% as he K’s 7 of 25 Cardinals. Well, if he’s gonna do that, sure, but it was only the 2nd time he exceeded 9% this season.
Justin Masterson – you wonder if things would be different with Yadier. He’s getting hit so hard that his SwStr% barely matters if he only sticks around for 2 innings.
Miles Mikolas – in 3 of his starts, he’s had a SwStr% between 6.8 and 7.8. In 3 of his starts he has a SwStr% between 12 and 12.5. In his other start, he had a 1.0 SwStr%. It’s been above 12% in each of his last 2 starts where he’s struck out 10 of 51 batters. I think he has the potential to see more strikeouts.
Nathan Eovaldi – has suddenly found himself missing bats like he was early in the season before he completely stopped for almost 2 months. His SwStr% was above 12 in each of his last 2 starts, which resulted in 12 K’s of 54 batters. This looks like potential, but he’s fooled us before.
Vance Worley – mocks me and my fancy stats. C’mon! Now he’s just getting ridiculous….and I still hate him. His SwStr% hasn’t exceeded 6 in any game. This was fine as he was coming off a stretch of 14 total K’s in 5 starts, but then he strikes out 7 of 26 Padres last time out with a 3.3 SwStr%, his highest in 3 games.
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
A.J. Burnett – the peripherals remain the same, but anybody who’s watched recent starts knows he’s just tossing meatballs up there, resulting in a .381 BABIP, 59 LOB%, and 16 HR/FB. Sometimes it’s mis-fortune, sometimes you’re just pitching like crap, but we trust the veterans to make an adjustment. The fact that he’s still striking out a league average rate of batters has to account for something in the tank.
Chris Tillman – has a .230 BABIP since the break. I’m not even buying the estimators until he proves he can sustain a reasonable SwStr%.
Ervin Santana – if you believe he’s magically found a way to keep the ball in the park, then go with his FIP & ERA. He’s allowed 1 HR since the break and 2 in his last 9 starts after 8 in his first 13 and pretty much 20+ every single year of his career.
Hisashi Iwakuma – has a .245 BABIP since the break and has even cut down the HR/FB to 7.1% in that span. Something really interesting with him is that no starting pitcher (500+ IP) has ever had a LOB% of 80 or higher. He’s at 447 IP and 81.6%….historic stuff potentially.
Jason Vargas – in 9.1 innings (2 starts) since the break, he has struck out 10 without a walk or HR, but .485 BABIP and 43.8 LOB%. He’s allowed 12 GB, 11 FB, and 8 LD with 1 IFFB.
Justin Masterson – his BABIP has gone up as a Cardinal and been above .500 in 4 of his last 5 starts. He’s only allowed 4 LD’s in his last 2 starts and has 19 GB’s of 28 total batted in the new uniform.
Kyle Lohse – has posted K and BB rates of 12.3% and 7.7% over the last month without any repercussion.
Miles Mikolas – he’s going to have to live with the BABIP as a member of the Rangers, but the 55.2 LOB% should see better days ahead.
Nathan Eovaldi – we’ve already begun to the improvement over the last 2 starts. We mentioned the K’s in the preceding chart, but he’s allowed a total of 1 ER over his last 2, yet still has a 54.9 LOB% in 5 starts since the break, though his BABIP is .263.
Vance Worley – his .272 BABIP isn’t all that remarkable, but it’s over 40 points below what he’s previously established in just 300 major league innings. The 78.9 LOB% would make him 10th in the league this year and best of all time if he were to sustain it over a career. The 6.7 HR/FB is the lowest he’s had in the majors, but he’s pitching in a great park.
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).
NOTE – I almost thought I made a mistake with no a single questionably low BABIP and so many high IFFB rates.
Chris Archer – is 3rd among qualified starters in IFFB. You’d think the BABIP would be lower, but perhaps the 23.4 LD% limits that.
Ian Kennedy – with a .287 career line and low team allowed rate, I’m surprised. The only mis-step is the IFFB, where his career rate is 10.2%.
Jered Weaver – is 6th among qualified starters in Z-Contact and usually generates a much higher rate of IFFB’s.
Jordan Zimmermann – the 24 LD% is alarming, but nothing else in his indicators suggests a very high BABIP. He is within an accepted range of his team’s allowed average though.
Justin Masterson – the 59.3 GB% is the 2nd best of his career. The LD% is only 20.2, but the highest of his career. The IFFB is also his 1st double digit mark. I don’t understand how all that comes together to form this BABIP even if he’s injured. The Cleveland defense is one thing, but it hasn’t gotten any better since.
Michael Pineda – if he keeps up the indicators, he could maintain the low BABIP.
R.A. Dickey – knuckleballs lead to low BABIP’s often.
Tsuyoshi Wada – we’ve seen a lot of outliers in his profile today. Both is LD and IFFB rates have been extreme in a small sample.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
A.J. Burnett – I should make a separate category because he’s one of two guys “the spreadsheet likes more than me”. It sees his past work and solid peripherals and thinks he’ll be fine. Maybe I have the bias now seeing him pitch in 2 of his last 3 starts, but I just have trouble buying it. He’s been throwing a lot of meatballs. He may be fixable, but you also have to remember that he’s been pitching all year with one of those sports hernias, so who knows.
Bartolo Colon – the Nats have been hitting the ball well lately, but have been without one of their top fastball hitters (Werth). That didn’t seem to hamper them last night against another high % fastball user (Montero), but the vet may be different. We talked about the increased strikeouts already and he’s gone at least 7 innings with 2 ER’s or less in 3 of his last 4 (although the omitted was a beating).
Chris Archer – is very borderline for me today. The plusses are the matchup and his K potential. The minuses include the park, the not so cheap price, his inability to complete 7 innings (on 5 times in 23 starts), and inconsistency overall.
Chris Tillman – I’ve bashed him relentlessly and already said I mostly don’t buy the recent K surge, but even I will admit his last start was solid with a 12.8 SwStr% and 7 K’s. I still don’t think he’s nearly as good as the recent run he’s been on, but at least he’s finally showing some positive underlying signs in addition to unsustainable BABIP and the Yankees don’t scare anybody in any park this year.
Hisashi Iwakuma – is always going to be an option at home even at the top price in most places today. The park will usually neutralize the threat of whatever offense he faces, making him practically matchup proof in Safeco. His price is only extreme relative to today’s lack of star punch group, so it’s not even that high. The Blue Jays haven’t looked good since playing the unplanned double header Sunday and then traveling all the way across the country. Aside from their season batting numbers, his line otherwise has a lot of green in the main chart. He’s gone at least 7 innings in 7 straight starts, allowing 2 ER’s or less 6 times.
Hyuk-Jin Ryu – the price tag takes some of the luster off with the power potential the Braves hold against LHP, but the strikeout potential they offer has to be considered as well. Though he hasn’t been dominant, Ryu has been pitching well of late.
Ian Kennedy – has been a bit of a mess with the control lately, so he may not give you length (no more than 6 IP in last 4), but he is facing one of the worst road offenses in the best park with some high K potential.
Jason Vargas – WHAT?? He’s been pounded in his last 2 starts and faces Oakland today, but I’m going to go with the under-valued aspect. The .483 BABIP is not something we expect to continue of course, but the 10 K’s without a walk, including a 13.1 SwStr% is pretty interesting at a low price on a few sites.
Jordan Zimmermann – would probably be my top guy today in terms of performance and probably value. He is a top of the board guy, but the price tag is still reasonable relative to what the top of the board would normally look like. Who can argue with 30 K’s to 1 BB over his last 5 starts and 19 to 1 over his last 3 with 5 ER’s over 20.1 IP. The matchup and park are both favorable as well. I’ll be very upset if someone already used his picture today.
Justin Masterson – is the other guy “my spreadsheet likes more than me”. I don’t understand the BABIP either, especially considering the batted ball rates and the numbers like what he’s done in the past and thinks there’s still some good in him, but it’s just been a complete mess this year and who knows if he’s still injured. The price and opponent are attractive though, if you think some of those ground balls start finding gloves.
Nathan Eovaldi – his bat missing lately is a really positive sign and he’s already garnered some great results over his last 2 starts (15 IP – 7 H – 1 ER – 0 HR – 3 BB – 12 K – 54 BF). The Cardinals have taken a page out of the book of their Missouri counter-parts this year in making a lot of contact, but with below average power. He might be able to sneak up on some people at mostly low price tags today.
Tsuyoshi Wada – may be another big bargain tonight. He’s pitched 18.2 innings, allowing 5 ER’s with 4 BB’s and 18 K’s over his last 3 starts and gets the Brewers, who have oddly struggled vs LHP this year. You wouldn’t think that with their RH centric lineup, but it’s no less true. That might keep most people off him today, but he has the potential for some K’s and a quality start.
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.