Advanced Stats Pitching Charts - Wed 9/24
As mentioned in yesterday’s open, we’ll only be covering the night games today, which leaves us with a little more room to dissect each pitcher. It looks as if some teams continue to throw their scraps out there, while tonight will be the last chance to watch Clayton Kershaw pitch during the regular season. After an off day tomorrow, we’ll be back on Friday for the final report of the season.
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.
Anthony Ranaudo – has the reddest ERA estimators, K%, and HR/FB in today’s chart. He’s walked 2 more batters than he’s struck out (15-13) and has allowed a HR (10) in every start.
Brad Hand – if you look under the hood, and we will later, it looks like he’s doing some interesting things lately. He hasn’t walked a batter or allowed a HR in 3 starts and has a 6.8 HR/FB rate at home over the last 2 seasons.
Clayton Kershaw – what can I say that you don’t already know? This being his last start and the Dodgers headed to the post-season, I was wondering if they might be cautious and just set him up to pitch next week, but they can put away the Giants in the NL West tonight and then have a nice layoff until his next start, so I think it’s standard operating procedure tonight.
Daniel Corcino – has been decent in his 2 starts, but I’m not sure the .184 BABIP is going to hold up. He has to face an ice cold Milwaukee offense tonight.
Gio Gonzalez – the Nats may be careful with their pitchers, but he faces the 4th worst offense vs LHP, with a 23.7 K% and 6.1 HR/FB against them. Gio has a 5.3 HR/FB at home over the past 2 seasons and hasn’t allowed one in 3 starts.
Jake Arrieta – faces a much less potent St Louis offense on the road. He’s coming off a 1 hit shutout of the Reds with 13 K’s and hasn’t allowed a HR in 4 starts.
Jake Odorizzi – has 3 or fewer K’s in 4 of his last 5 starts, but has allowed 1 or fewer ER’s in 3 of those 5 starts.
Jason Vargas – has been missing more bats than usual, but has some severe BABIP and batted ball issues that need to be tended to.
Jeff Locke – can be ok when he keeps his walk rate under control and faces the coldest bats in the majors.
Joe Wieland – has pitched a total of 6 major league innings this month and season, in which he’s allowed 2 HR’s and struck out 3. He faces the 2nd worst road offense in baseball, who strike out 24.6% of the time away from home.
John Lackey – faces the offense tied for 3rd worst at home with a 24.8 K% and tied for 5th worst vs RHP with a 23.7 K%. The park might be an issue as the Cubs have some pop when they do connect and he’s had an 18.7 HR/FB on the road over the past 2 seasons.
Julio Teheran – has just 1 BB and 17 K’s over his last 3 outings. He faces the team tied for best offense in the league vs RHP.
Kyle Kendrick – faces a cold Marlin offense, but he has just 4 quality starts (6 IP – 3 ER or better) in his last 17 and walked 5 last time out.
Kyle Lohse – has been very hit or miss lately, but generally throws strikes and faces the tied for 3rd worst offense vs RHP.
Lisalverto Bonilla – has walked 4 in each of his 2 starts. Do you think the Astros are consistent in the IR offense? 91’s across the board.
Mark Buehrle – piles up innings, not K’s and has allowed 9 ER’s over his last 12 innings, but faces the 2nd worst offense vs LHP.
Scott Feldman – has an awful defense behind him and hasn’t missed hardly any bats over the last month, but faces the worst offense at home and vs RHP, but in a terrible park.
Taijuan Walker – was good against Houston in his first start in 2 months, but goes against the 5th best home offense and 3rd best vs RHP. His 27.2 major league LD% needs to be improved upon significantly.
Tim Hudson – it was my bad calling for a big bounce back last week after looking at the recent numbers and not realizing he’s been dealing with a hip injury. He promptly went out and got beaten soundly. Tonight he has a rematch with the tied for best offense vs RHP.
Trevor Buaer – has allowed 4 HR’s over his last 3 starts, but only walked 2. The Royals normally have very low K rates, but have struck out 21.1% of the time over the last week.
Yohan Flande – doesn’t strike batters out and has a big problem stranding runners, but he also hasn’t allowed a road HR in 22 innings and faces the worst offense in the majors vs LHP in Petco.
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.
Brad Hand – in 4 starts over the last month, he hasn’t struck out more than 4, but has had a double digit SwStr% twice and above his season rate of 7.1% in every start. I was surprised to see that Hand is still only 24 years old so perhaps it’s not too late for him to pick up some new tricks. That makes this a little bit interesting and maybe something outside the box to look at tonight, but still way too small a sample to get excited about.
Jake Arrieta – he is still missing bats at a great rate, but this is mostly about striking out 13 of 28 batters with a 16.4 SwStr% in his last start. We don’t expect a 30 K% to continue.
Jake Odorizzi – this is very disappointing after the season he’s had prior to the last month, but he’s struck out 3 or fewer in 4 of his last 5 starts. The good news is that while his SwStr% is down a little, it’s not that big a drop and still right around league average. It hasn’t been below 7.9% in any of the previously mentioned starts. I have confidence in a bounce back.
Jason Vargas – had a 10.6 SwStr% in his last start and struck out just 1 of 19 Tigers! He’s had a double digit SwStr% in 4 of his last 5 starts now. He’s also been giving up a lot of runs, but that’s for the next chart. You might say that Vargas has never struck out a lot of batters, which is true, but he’s never had a SwStr over 9%. I’m not going to start suddenly predicting him to be a power pitcher next year, but this is certainly interesting and the 4th straight year his SwStr% has increased.
John Lackey – I mentioned that his SwStr% has been very inconsistent as a member of the Cardinals, especially lately, which makes him more difficult to evaluate. The 9.2 SwStr% in his last start was his first mark between 7.1% and 14.1% in his last 6 starts. Yet he only struck out 5 of 28 batters and hasn’t struck out more than 6 in any of his last 5 starts.
Scott Feldman – hasn’t had a SwStr above 5.4% in any of his last 4 starts. Not that you ever expect him to miss a lot of bats, but this doesn’t bode well for him even reaching much more than a double digit K% today.
Tim Hudson – this is deceiving as he had a 17.2 SwStr% in a game on 8/27 and hasn’t been above 8.6% in 4 starts since.
ERA Estimators Chart
How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.
Brad Hand – only stranded 61.6% of runners over his last 5 starts. If he can turn that around (likely) and capitalize on his new found ability to miss bats (maybe?), he might have something here.
Jason Vargas – I thought we were going to find a discrepancy when going through his K rate in the last chart. He has had 6 starts over the last month and sure enough, we find a .377 BABIP. Looking at the batted ball mix, we don’t find much optimism with a 32.1 LD%, higher than his 30.4 GB% over that span. That’s not to say you should expect it to continue, but he’s going to need to make some sort of adjustment. This can’t just be disregarded as random bad luck so easily.
Julio Teheran – there’s a lot of strange things going on here. He has just a .250 BABIP over the last month and a 5.3 HR/FB, but has somehow managed to combine that with a 59.6 LOB%. Ah, another quick look reveals the culprit. He has allowed 9 ER’s and 6 unearned ones over the last month. They won’t hurt your ERA, but will smack your LOB%. I don’t know how those runs were scored, but it may make his ERA very deceiving.
Scott Feldman – is rocking the .228 BABIP and 83.3 LOB% over the last month. That along with his SwStr% flashes a clear danger sign.
Taijuan Walker – through just 30 innings, he has an 81.5 LOB%.
Tim Hudson – the underlying numbers still look good. I’ve got to believe that the .372 BABIP and 51.1 LOB% is at least in part due to the hip injury, but a look at the batted ball mix still says a 51.7 GB% and 20.7 LD%. Maybe those ground balls are just being hit really hard….information we don’t have access to.
Yohan Flande – 49 of his 55 innings have come in a starting role, so I think we can confidently say that he might not be all that terrible if/when his 60.3 LOB% normalizes. Not that he gives you much in a fantasy setting with just a 13.5 K%.
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 may be onto something (check batted ball profile too).
Anthony Ranaudo – is one of many elite pop up rates today, but expect his BABIP to crash and then he’ll probably not even be in the majors anymore. His other positive, aside from his IFFB rate is a 16.4 LD%, so perhaps there’s some underlying batted ball talent there, but it would be a mistake to assume that right now.
Clayton Kershaw – can continue to have almost any BABIP he wants with those indicators.
Dillon Gee – his BABIP has been creeping up slowly and is a more believable .280 in the 2nd half.
Jake Arrieta – has a strong IFFB% and his BABIP is just out of range of his team’s allowed rate. I can live with this.
Julio Teheran – his strong Zone Contact rate could suggest a lower BABIP, while his other measures (IFFB, LD) are around league average. He’ll probably still come up 10 points or so next season.
Taijuan Walker – sticking to only guys with at least 20 major league innings this season, this is still a small sample and he has an atrocious 30.1 LD% this season, but has also been able to generate some po ups.
Yohan Flande – has a fine 19.2 LD%, but otherwise terrible indicators and pitches in front of a poor defense. This does not bode well for his BABIP.
Pitcher Notes & Summary
Clayton Kershaw – got beat up, if you consider 5 IP – 3 ER – 3 BB – 9 K getting beat up, in his last start. But weird things happen during the day in Chicago. They beat up Johnny Cueto too recently. He has at least 8 K’s in 7 straight starts. You may have to sell off a kidney, but what are necessary organs in the face of having extra incentive to watch Kershaw work his magic.
Gio Gonzalez- is not cheap and can be erratic, but should have a good start against the weakened RH Mets lineup tonight. He’s thrown at least 6 innings in each of his last 6 starts, but my real concern is that Washington doesn’t let him get too deep in this game even if he is pitching well.
Jake Arrieta – is the #2 price in many places and while certainly not cheap, he’s less expensive than the 2nd guy on the board on a normal day. The Cardinals aren’t as proficient on the road and he almost threw a no hitter last time out, finishing with 13 K’s. He’s gone at least 6 innings with 2 ER’s or less in 8 of his last 10 starts. He’s likely your 2nd best bet for K’s today.
John Lackey – the HR is an honest threat and he has blown up on occasion, but commands only a middling price tag and should be able to handle this Cubs lineup and generate more than a few K’s.
Julio Teheran – he should still generate some K’s, but I’m not sure I want to pay the 3rd highest price today vs the best hitting team vs RHP. I’m really borderline on him being worth much more than his cost tonight.
Trevor Bauer – if you’re looking for another low priced option, even though he’s allowed at least 3 ER’s in 3 of his last 4 starts, a Bauer without the walks could be interesting. The 2 he’s allowed over his last 3 starts is easily his best 3 game stretch of the season. The Royals normally don’t K, but have struck out a bit more than league average over the last week.
Yohan Flande – this is another rock bottom Kershaw compliment, mostly due to opposition. He’s facing the worst hitting team vs LHP in the best park and as mentioned earlier, hasn’t allowed a road HR in 22 innings.
You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.