Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Wed 9/10
Without the 2 afternoon games, we have a total of 13 night games for our mid-week daily fantasy action. Rookie is the key word on Wednesday as we have several of them on the mound and one making his major league debut. Let’s see what we can find out about them below.
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.
Alfredo Simon – got rocked his last time out and now has allowed at least 3 ER’s in 4 of his last 5 starts.
Chris Bassitt – hasn’t impressed in his 7.1 major league innings so far. He entered the season ranked as the #11 prospect in the organization on the Fangraphs Top Prospects tool list with the ceiling of a back end starter.
Chris Capuano – the HR/FB is pulled up by the 6 he’s allowed in his last 3 starts, but it’s an issue he has struggled with and while the Rays haven’t shown a ton of power this year, they do have a 12.2 HR/FB over the last week.
Dan Haren – is your Plug & Play (although it didn’t work last night) against still the worst road offense, 2nd worst against RHP, and worst over the last week. He has some excellent walk rates, including just 2 over his last 3 starts.
Drew Hutchison – is pitching well and has a decent shot to do more of that against a bottom of the league offense, especially against RHP. He’s allowed just a single LD in each of his last 2 starts, dragging his overall line to the greenest today. The great K% is a function of everything in the chart directly below (lowest mark 21.5%). The Cubs have the 3rd highest K% on the road and vs RHP and the highest over the last week.
Hisashi Iwakuma – he’s had some BABIP, strand rate, and HR problems in his last 3 starts, but the underlying numbers have remained solid. A home start against the Astros should help him. Every K% in his line below is above league average. The HR/FB is pulled up by the 3 he allowed 2 starts back, but the Astros do have some power.
Ian Kennedy – has allowed at least 3 ER in 4 of his last 5 starts, going fewer than 6 IP in 3 of them, and walking at least 2 in every one. He does not have an easy assignment against the Dodgers tonight.
Jake Odorizzi – has followed up an absolute beating by Baltimore with 14.1 shutout innings vs Toronto and Boston, but has just 3 K’s in 2 of his last 3 starts.
James Shields – has allowed just 1 ER over his last 15.1 IP (10 K – 1 BB), but it’s the 2nd best home offense and 4th vs RHP that he faces today. In his favor is a great defense and walk rates below average across the board in his line below. He’s walked more than 1 in just 3 of his last 16 starts.
Jarred Cosart – has allowed 3 HR’s in 20 starts, which is a necessity when facing high power teams like Milwaukee (although not at full power). Strikeouts should be similarly lacking when a low K% pitcher meets a low K% team.
Jeff Samardzija – has struck out at least 9 in each of his last 3 starts with a total of 1 walk and now faces an ice cold offense that has struck out 24.3% of the time over the last week. Every K% in his line below is above 22% with a below league average BB%.
Jerome Williams – has gotten some better results than his peripherals would indicate for the Phils so far, but deals with the 2nd best offense (tied) vs RHP tonight. It’s just about all red for him in the main chart.
John Lackey – we’ll talk about his impressive NL SwStr% below. Today he takes that into battle against one of the worst offenses vs RHP. He has allowed a single HR in 4 straight.
Josh Collmenter – doesn’t have an easy matchup, but does have the park and some very low HR/FB’s on his side, including the Giants’ 7.5% at home.
Kyle Gibson – faces the 2nd best offense (tied) vs RHP. His strong SwStr% (with the exception of last start) still hasn’t translated into K’s and is unlikely to do so again here against a contact prone offense. Walks are an issue almost across the board in his line below.
Kyle Hendricks – has outshined his estimators so far and that will need to continue against the top offense vs RHP and just a damn good one overall. Strikeouts, which have been hard to come by, should be even rarer against the Blue Jays.
Matt Shoemaker – had a rare rough outing last time out (4 IP – 3 ER – 3 BB – 2 K), but should bounce back against the worst offense at home and vs RHP. They do make above average contact though.
Nick Tepesch – takes his single strikeout per start into a potential beating tonight.
Nick Tropeano – makes his ML debut. He was their #10 prospect on the Fangraphs list 2 years ago,, but dropped out of the top 15 this year. He’s bounced back in terms of ERA (3.03) in AAA this year, but with a 3.81 FIP due to a .248 BABIP. He has struck out nearly a quarter (24.7%) of the batters he’s seen.
Rafael Montero – returns for his 7th start of the season against a 2nd worst Colorado road offense. His last start almost a month ago was one of his best, although he’s struggled in 2 AAA starts since then.
Rick Porcello – takes lack of K’s and BB’s against the Royals’ lack of the same.
Ryan Vogelsong – has perhaps the best park included matchup of the day against a cold offense that is tied for 2nd worst on the road and vs RHP.
T.J. House – it’s an adventure when the ball is put is hit (see defense and batted ball numbers above), but he’s done a decent job trying to limit the damage though with an above average K%. He has 12 K’s without a walk over his last 14 IP. Only 6 of his 15 starts have come at home, where he’s allowed 4 of his 9 HR’s. He has just 2 IFFB’s on the season.
Tyler Matzek – threw a shutout last time out and hasn’t allowed an ER in his last 2 starts (16 IP), but those 2 starts were against the D’Backs and Padres. The Mets aren’t much better, but have been a hotter offense.
Vance Worley – the saber-defiant hurler faces one of the worst offenses vs RHP in his old team.
Wily Peralta – rebounded slightly in his last start, but has had some issues, mostly with BABIP, recently.
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.
Combo Batted Ball Chart
Ditto for the Combo Batted Ball stats in the Main Chart above.
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.
Hisashi Iwakuma – has seen his K% increase over the last month despite a 1 point drop in SwStr%. This is a little bit of a concern with his SwStr above 8% in only 2 of his last 6 starts now. I won’t call it fatigue because he threw over 200 innings last year, but had a 10.3 SwStr%.
John Lackey – has had a 14+ SwStr% in 3 of his last 4 starts, striking out just 23.2% of batters in those starts. His overall K% has barely budged with a 2 point increase in his SwStr%. I would think this has potential, especially as he’s not facing DH’s anymore.
Kyle Gibson – I’ve been a broken record talking about his strikeout potential with respect to his SwStr%, so let’s just look at what he did in his last start. He struck out just 1 of 28 batters (3.6%) on a 4.2 SwStr%. Perfect!
Kyle Hendricks – doesn’t look to be a high K% guy, but he should be able to get up to around 15% with his current SwStr%. He didn’t strike out a single one of the 25 batters he faced in his last start (1.3 SwStr%) and only a total of 8 in the 3 before that though.
Nick Tepesch – If you care, he’s struck out 1 in 3 of his last 4 starts and 2 or less in 9 of his last 10. His SwStr peaked at 9% in one of those games, but has not otherwise been above 7%.
Ryan Vogelsong – is another of today’s pitchers who’s seen an uptick in K% despite a not totally insignificant drop in SwStr%. In fact, he’s only been above 6.3% in 1 of his last 4 starts. There’s nothing in his season or career that says he can strike out 20% of batters.
Vance Worley – sigh….this guy. I’m not even going to try anymore. But wait…..he’s had a 7+ SwStr% in 3 of his last 4 starts, which are his 3 highest marks of the season. It’s a baby step.
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
Alfredo Simon – his peripherals have actually gotten better and his ERA is a train wreck over the last month. His BABIP is up some 70 points to .333 and the LOB dropped some 15 points to 62.5%.
Chris Capuano – if the 25 HR/FB over the last month (5 starts) normalizes then it’s his SIERA and xFIP. If it doesn’t, it’s his ERA and FIP. Pitching in tough parks, it’s probably somewhere in between.
Dan Haren – his FIP is down a point, but his other metrics are mostly the same over the last month. He’s gone through some crazy stretches with his BABIP and it’s down to .253 over his last 5 starts. His HR/FB has been cut in half to 6.8 and we know he’s always had an issue with those.
Jarred Cosart – over his last 5 starts: .248 BABIP – 89 LOB% – 2.8 HR/FB. None of those are even close to sustainable by even a very good pitcher. Those are better than Kershaw numbers.
Jeff Samardzija – although he did allow 4 ER in his last start, he only allowed 6 base runners (2 HR’s) and this is really about one beating the Mets handed him 4 starts back. Since then, he’s struck out at least 9 in all 3 starts. He has allowed 5 HR’s over his last 4 starts, but has a 27.1 K% over the last month and has stranded just 55.6% of runners.
Jerome Williams – there is a chance that the .325 BABIP and 66.2 LOB% is indicative of his true talent at this point, no? Well, to answer my own question, in the last month of starting for the Phils, those numbers are .253 and 77.4%.
Kyle Hendricks – for this soft tosser to have made it to the majors, he has to have some batted ball management skills, but the metrics don’t believe in the .260 BABIP and 81.8 LOB%, which, you know, is a reasonable assumption to make. Just as importantly though, can a Wrigley pitcher sustain a 4.8 HR/FB?
Matt Shoemaker – continues to be great, striking out a quarter of the batters he’s faced over the last month, but has also been aided by a .203 BABIP, 91.3 LOB%, and 5.7 HR/FB.
Ryan Vogelsong – this is entirely a HR thing (18.4 HR/FB over the last month) and mostly a 1 start thing where 4 of those HR’s happened (his last start). In fact, he has an unsustainably low .221 BABIP over the last month.
Wily Peralta – his HR/FB over the last 5 starts is 15.4%. His BABIP is .360, but it was under .300 in the first 3 starts, over .400 in the last 2. In those last 2 starts with the .400+ BABIP he has 19 GB – 6 FB – 7 LD.
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).
Ian Kennedy – the BABIP continues to be perplexing considering his .289 career rate and team’s allowed average. His indicators aren’t great, but not terrible either. He hurt himself even more with a .435 mark in his last start (9 line drives) and has been above .350 in 5 of his last 6.
Jerome Williams – has been bringing that down, as we remarked above, just a .253 BABIP with the Phillies.
Josh Collmenter – has had low BABIP’s in 3 of his 4 seasons now with a lower than league average LD% in each one. The difference this year is his 1st single digit IFFB%.
Kyle Gibson – Kyle Hendricks – Nick Tepesch – we see 3 in a row with low BABIP’s and high IFFB’s. Two of the 3 teams have marks well above .300 with Tepesch the furthest away and likely for the most regression with also the highest Z-Contact%. None of the marks seem sustainable, but Gibson has the most reasonable mark with his indicators.
T.J. House- well, no IFFB’s means no easy outs, but he’s only allowed a 20.3 LD%. He should be able to reduce it a little closer to his team’s allowed mark.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
Dan Haren – I’m not buying he’s been as good as shown over the last month due to the low BABIP and uncharacteristically low HR/FB we discussed above, but the K% is up too and his underlying numbers aren’t bad. He’s only really cheap on one big site tonight, but faces the Padres.
Drew Hutchison – you have a guy who is pitching reasonably well with some strikeout potential against a young team that K’s a TON and doesn’t hit RHP at a reasonable price. In his each of his last 3, he’s gone at least 6 IP, walking exactly 2, and striking out at least 6, without a HR.
Hisashi Iwakuma- is the top price and has had some issues recently, but most of them seem fixable (BABIP, LOB%). The only real concern voiced above is the dip in SwStr% over the last month. That said, he returns home to a spacious park and faces a team that doesn’t hit RHP nearly as well as LHP, but still strikes out a ton either way.
Jeff Samardzija – has been whiff-tastic in recent starts. There’s a little HR-itis (5 in his last 4 starts) which you worry about in a park like this, but this offense is ice cold and the K’s should cancel the damage out. He’s the #2 price on most boards and probably well worth it.
John Lackey – I love the potential of his SwStr% since moving to the NL and today he takes a mid-range to slightly top half price against a terrible offense vs RHP. Again, he’s a HR prone pitcher in a tough park, but there should be enough good to cancel out the bad.
Ryan Vogelsong – is a pitcher I’ve never really been high on for daily fantasy purposes, but is useful occasionally in his home park. Add in an offense that can’t hit in good parks at a reasonable price and he’s definitely worth a look tonight.
T.J. House – is a guy I’ve used as a low priced sleeper several times this year. He’s no longer bottom of the board, but still bottom half and although he does face a hot offense, they’re really neutral overall and he does have some bat missing ability. His HR/FB is really high at home, but he has only allowed 2 in his last 6 starts, mostly on the road, so that seems to be settling down. His defense still can’t catch the ball, but what can you do about that. He’s still allowed 1 ER or less in 4 of his last 6 starts and each of his last 2 with 12 total K’s. There’s probably some decent value above his price tag.
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.