Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Wednesday, April 22nd

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2015-04-24 15:34:40

After 26 runs scored in a Cincinnati/Milwaukee game and poor pitching performances everywhere last night, you’d think someone who writes about pitching would be in a straitjacket, talking to walls today. But we’re going to try tonight with some better pitchers on the mound because we all start at 0 again at 7pm.

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

NOTE – Team defense stats are still 2014 as UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) is not available for 2015 yet.

Aaron Sanchez may find himself in the bullpen or even minors if he can’t find the strike zone soon.

Adam Warren has missed some bats and could realize some upside in his K%, but he has a tough matchup today, despite the Tigers being shut down in the first two games of this series.

Archie Bradley has pitched fairly well so far and done well with contact management, but not in a completely sustainable way. His K% is in question as well, due to a lower SwStr%. His BB% needs to adjust, as well, before his batted ball rates normalize or he may run into some problems. Despite last night’s outburst, Texas has been bad against RHP and has just a 5.4 HR/FB against them.

Clayton Kershaw is having issues with line drives and HRs, which means he’s getting hit hard, but is also missing bats at an elite rate, even better than last season. One wonders if the old pitch tipping argument will resurface, but how could it when he’s missing so many bats. It’s an odd situation that he should solve sooner or later. And when he does, look out hitters, again.

Cole Hamels has become the pitching version of Adam Dunn. You get a walk, K, or HR and little else. That’s how 45% of his plate appearances have ended so far. He should see some normalization in his rates and the Marlins can be had, but they do possess some power that could worry you in Philadelphia considering his current trends.

David Price is pitching a bit above his head right now, as would anybody with a sub 1.00 ERA, but you already knew that. The Yankees are hitting well and haven’t been susceptible to LHP, though their lineup leans heavily that way. He still rates as potentially one of the top K rates for today, mostly predicated on his own rates, including 24.3% overall over the last two calendar years.

Dillon Gee is just a couple of mistake pitches away from being off to a great start. Looking at the 7.59 ERA and don’t believe me? Continue reading below. HRs have been the problem and the Braves have seen 15.7% of their fly balls leave the yard over the last week.

Doug Fister has some concerning trends, including exactly as many walks as strikeouts. He was able to mask some questionable things last year, in part due to a low walk rate, but what he’s done through just two starts this year won’t continue. Read on for a very bold prediction concerning him.

Eric Stults was perfect for a few innings before being lit up by the Mets (back to back HRs) in his first start and his last vs Miami wasn’t much better. It might not be much different tonight. This team now has some quality bats vs LHP, even without Wright.

J.A. Happ should see some positive movement in his K rate and the Astros could be happy to comply with a 29.7 K% vs LHP in 111 plate appearances this year. They’ve also struck out in over a quarter of their PAs this week. Safeco has done little to limit run production this year though.

James Shields is off to a great start, but I won’t pay for him in Colorado, even if the Rockies have been stifled at home in this series. Consider this: You may not know that Coors has the largest outfield space in the majors and he has some fly ball tendencies. Are you ready to depend on those guys chasing fly balls all over that yard?

Jarred Cosart has little upside aside from his ground ball rate, which doesn’t mean much for daily fantasy purposes, but gets the Philly consideration. They’ve been extra awful vs RHP.

Jason Hammel is having some issues with contact management, but his peripherals have been exceptional. Pittsburgh is not accepting free passes to first base at this point (see K/BB chart below) and is still looking to hit their overall offensive stride, but does have possess a surprising 16.1 HR/FB at home so far.

Jered Weaver is not suppressing BABIP or HRs through three starts. In fact, if he weren’t a “name” with a history, I’d probably skip right over him today. Many of you saw this coming as his fastball isn’t even averaging 85 mph. He hasn’t even hit 85 mph in two of his three starts. The lone positive note is that his K% should be a bit higher considering his SwStr%.

Jeremy Guthrie has an ERA over 5.00 with a .214 BABIP. That’s not easy to do.

Jimmy Nelson had an incredible first start and I was guilty of getting too excited because you have to take some educated risks in daily fantasy to stay ahead of everyone else. His second start didn’t match up, but wasn’t really bad as he still missed bats at an above average rate, though they didn’t turn into as many strikeouts. His ground ball heavy approach remained in the second start. It looks like he’s cut his slider usage in half in exchange for returning to a curveball he didn’t use at all last year, and both pitches have been good. Cincinnati exploded last night, but is still a below average team. I believe they’ll have a harder time against the groundball pitcher tonight.

Joe Kelly has forsaken his previous approach, it seems. He’s using the slider and four seamer more often, cutting down on the groundball heavy pitches (two-seam, curveball, change-up) in order to “sell out” for more whiffs. It’s working, as he’s had a SwStr% well above his career rates in each of his first two starts. He’s also allowed more fly balls than ground balls, but it hasn’t hurt him yet. I’m not even saying that it will, though his .129 BABIP will adjust.

John Lackey will see his BABIP regress, but is doing some pretty interesting things in SwStr rate, not just this year, but even since coming back from injury. This is not something I figured out until looking at the Z-Contact in his BABIP chart line at the bottom, but he had never had an O-Swing% (chase rate) above 32% prior to missing the 2012 season. Since then, it’s now been above 35% each year and would be a career high 38.6%. With that though, his HR/FB has also spiked. There are risks and there are rewards, but he has a great home park for suppressing HRs. He’s just not in it today.

Johnny Cueto got the BABIP smacked out of him last start, his LOB dropped below 80% for the first time in two years and he is no longer kicking the crap out of his peripherals. That means the beautiful ERA you see is backed up by the third best K-BB% in the majors this season (26.6%) and not some potentially fluky BABIP and strand rates. He’s missing more bats than he ever has before and only has two unintentional walks. Even last night’s outburst can’t make the Milwaukee offense look competent. Take a look at the K/BB chart just below if you want to see why Cueto potentially rates as tonight’s best strikeout option.

Kyle Kendrick is all kinds of awful, and then even worse.

Madison Bumgarner isn’t missing bats this season (much worse by both K% and SwStr%) and though he’s only walked two batters, he’s hit three. He hit only six last year. There’s no concern in his velocity, but it looks like he’s throwing a lot more pitches in the strike zone. His Zone% and First Strike% are way up. I’d bet on him eventually figuring it out, but he’s facing one of the toughest lineups in baseball.

Mike Pelfrey is where we save some more time and just say “No, thank you”.

Nate Karns has done well with contact management, but walks too many and there is some degree of flukiness in his K%. Eleven of the 45 fly balls he’s allowed in his short career have left the yard. Tampa Bay should help, but he’s allowed all three HRs at home in two starts this year. The Red Sox have started slowly, but take their walks and have some power.

Roberto Hernandez gets another “No, thank you” and we’ll add a “Good day, sir”, just to be polite because he’ll probably appear again.

Sonny Gray is someone I’m a bit down on compared to the expectations when he came up, and there will be more on that later. The Angels blew up last night, but have also fallen below expectations so far this year.

Ubaldo Jimenez has had an interesting start to his season with lots of ground balls, but has faced just 37 batters and has fooled us before. I don’t trust the K rate right off the bat and he faces the hottest bats in the land in a bad park.

Vance Worley is always difficult to write up because I just don’t know how he does what he does, although he hasn’t really done the part that stops runs from scoring yet. The Cubs have the best road offense in the majors thus far.

Yovani Gallardo had an interesting start to the year, missing more bats and sacrificing ground balls in his first two starts, but evidently didn’t like the results, panicked, and went right back to what he’s been the past few years in the Seattle game. The SwStr% dipped below league average for the first time this year, he pounded the bottom of the zone, and 13 of his 18 batted balls were on the ground. He didn’t allow a run, so I’m guessing he thinks he did well and goes back to having low daily fantasy value. Or at least we can’t trust that he’ll have upside from start to start.

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 (2014 LG AVG – 20.3 K% – 9.3 SwStr% – 2.18 K/SwStr)

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.

Adam Warren has had solid SwStr rates in each of his two starts and the K% should absolutely be expected to pick up should this continue.

Archie Bradley – His first start was fine, but he got just two whiffs against the Giants over 100 pitches.

Clayton Kershaw – This part of his game is not only not a problem, but he leads the majors in SwStr%.

J.A. Happ has been as consistent through two games as he was with the same exact SwStr% last year and a similar number through most of his career. For some reason, he has just four strikeouts. He should see an increase closer to his career rate either way, but it he may get fast tracked against Houston.

Jason Hammel threw exactly 92 pitches in each start, with nine missed bats in his first, but just four in his second. Both his SwStr% and K% have fluctuated in recent years, so I’m not sure where this goes.

Jered Weaver has had at least a 9.3 SwStr% in each of his last two starts and while he hasn’t enjoyed even a league average K% in four years, his current rate probably isn’t going to remain as bad as it looks.

John Lackey had a league average SwStr% in his first start, but just a single K. He really ramped it up in his last start, getting 18 swings and misses and eight strikeouts. He has the sixth-best SwStr% in the majors thus far after sitting just below 10% each of the last two years. While he’s not going to miss that many bats every week, I expect the results of his last outing to be more of the norm than the first.

Kyle Kendrick has never had a K rate above 17.2% and his current SwStr% is right around his career rate, so you know where this is heading.

Mike Pelfrey struck out two in each of his two starts, but his SwStr% couldn’t have been more different. He followed up a 13.8% effort with a single swing and miss (88 pitches) vs Cleveland.

Nate Karns – I would urge caution to those impressed by his lofty K% as he hasn’t topped a 7.6 SwStr% through three starts.

Ubaldo Jimenez threw just 59 pitches in his last start, recording two K’s, but did not record a single swinging strike. That follows up a decent effort in his first start with a double digit SwStr%.

Vance Worley is the most difficult pitcher to write up. He must hypnotize batters because they just love staring at strike three. He has a career 3.4 K/SwStr and this year it begins even worse as his SwStr% is lower, but the K% remains the same. It would probably be correct to allow some leeway for just he and Bartolo Colon at this point, but I’m not comfortable justifying a 4.0 K/SwStr for anybody yet.

ERA Estimators Chart (2014 LG AVG – 3.80 ERA – 3.72 SIERA – 3.80 xFIP – 3.80 FIP)

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

Archie Bradley has been a groundball machine: 23 of 31 batted balls have been on the ground with just two line drives. He hasn’t allowed a HR and has a BABIP below .200 in his first two starts. He’s been good, but won’t maintain those rates. If he doesn’t improve his BB% and SwStr% before the other rates regress, he could end up with some problems.

Clayton Kershaw is really getting hit hard. A quarter of his batted balls have been line drives and three of his 12 fly balls have left the yard. He’s still missing bats at an elite rate, but there seems to be some adjustment he needs to make.

Cole Hamels has a really strange looking line. Seven of his 19 fly balls have left the yard, but he has otherwise stranded 98.2% of his runners with a .122 BABIP. And he’s walking more batters than he ever has (12%).

David Price – The batted ball profile is right around what it usually is for him, but the BABIP is very low and the strand rate is a bit high. Only one of his 21 fly balls has left the yard. He’s probably exactly what he used to be, which is still pretty great.

Dillon Gee – Only 11 of his 32 batted balls have gotten off the ground, but three of his seven fly balls have left the yard and he currently has a 55.6 LOB%. His 15.6 K-BB% would actually be a career high. HRs absolutely count, but they’re just one mistake pitch and with a normalized or even slightly high HR rate (two fewer mistake pitches), he’d be off to a great start.

Doug Fister has both walked and struck out five batters each, yet has been favored by the BABIP Gods despite a 24.4 LD%. None of his 16 fly balls have left the yard. He was able to strand 83.1% of his runners last year and this year’s number is even higher. My bold prediction is that in a few months all the traditional analysts will be pondering what’s wrong with Doug Fister when they should have seen it coming as Tanner Roark threatens his rotation spot… unless his K and BB rates vastly improve.

Jason Hammel – His ERA hinges on a .351 BABIP. His 19.6 K-BB% is exceptional.

Kyle Kendrick – Four of his 21 fly balls have left the yard and over a quarter of his batted balls have been line drives. When bad meets Colorado…

Sonny Gray – The positive markers for him are a great walk rate and a potential ability to sustain lower than average BABIPs, but we are far from being able to justify the second one. What we can say is that he’s had a below average LD% thus far and especially this year, but as we see in the next chart, his indicators aren’t really favorable. He’ll probably go as his defense does and they won’t sustain that low a team BABIP all season. The park could help him suppress HRs and make him look like an above average pitcher, but I’m just no longer that high on him unless I see changes.

Ubaldo Jimenez has only allowed a single hit (.045 BABIP) and stranded all of his base runners. The really impressive thing is that 17 of his 21 batted balls have been on the ground. I’m also flagging him for the 4.15 K/SwStr we saw in the last chart, but let’s see where this goes.

BABIP Chart (2014 LG AVG – .295 BABIP – 9.5 IFFB% – 87.2 Z-Contact%)

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).

Archie Bradley – See his ERA chart notes.

Clayton Kershaw – Aside from the line drives we spoke of above, he’s gotten a few pop ups and his Z-Contact% remains among the league leaders (fourth).

Cole Hamels – It seems if you don’t hit the ball out of the park, it’s caught. It’s hard to say a guy with seven HRs already is managing his contact, but four of his remaining 12 fly balls have been IFFBs and that’s the same number of line drives he’s allowed. The BABIP will somewhat normalize for sure, but so should his HR rate to help balance things out.

David Price – His early batted ball rates are close to what they’ve been for his career, but look at what the Tigers have suddenly been doing defensively. Does Jose Iglesias mean that much? He’s due for about a 75-point adjustment.

Dillon Gee has a 65.6 GB% with just four line drives.

Doug Fister – See notes in ERA chart.

Jason Hammel – The line drive rate (23.7%) is a little high and his strikes are being hit at a higher rate than you’d like (Z-Contact) without a single pop up.

Jeremy Guthrie – 24.4 LD% without infield fly and nobody is swinging and missing. Yep, he’s actually worse.

Jimmy Nelson – 18 of his 26 batted balls have been on the ground with just four line drives and three non-infield fly balls. He rivals Shields and Kershaw for Z-Conact%. That’s some good company.

Joe Kelly – Sometimes there’s just nothing extraordinary that you can find. Batted balls have just been finding gloves at too high a rate, until they don’t.

John Lackey does have three pop ups to his credit, but also a 23.7 LD%. Despite his great SwStr rate, it seems that’s all in the chase rate as they’re hitting the pitches that remain in the zone.

Madison Bumgarner has the lowest LD% of his career and five pop ups with an otherwise similar batted ball mix to the rest of his career. His Z-Contact%, like a lot of his plate discipline stats we’ve talked about today, is worse than his career rate.

Nate Karns has allowed just two line drives for a 4.7% rate.

Sonny Gray – See notes in ERA chart above.

Yovani Gallardo is hard to quantify because he seems to have changed (or reverted) his approach after two starts. The Texas defense seems to have been little help so far.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Archie Bradley hasn’t pitched poorly and does have some upside despite some concerns I expressed up top. He’s fairly cheap on most sites and has a good matchup, although the park is a concern.

Clayton Kershaw – Great park and he’s missing bats at a career high rate. I’m not worried and, like I said last time, he may even scare some people off at this price.

Cole Hamels simply needs to reign in the HRs. The strikeouts should give him a high floor and compensate if a couple of balls leave the yard. He’s expensive, but affordable in most places.

David Price – Remember that game where the Yankees got like 9 straight hits to start the game late last year and knocked him out in the first inning? He probably does too. I’m not saying that’ll make him pitch better, but he’s really good and deserves consideration for your fantasy dollars today despite the Yankees having some success vs LHPs this year.

Dillon Gee – This is a sneaky one. The peripherals are the best of his career so far and, as mentioned, he could theoretically be off to a great start if not for a couple of mistakes that left the yard and a low strand rate. No, I don’t think he’s as good as his peripherals say he should be and he seems to make too many mistakes that get hit hard, but I also don’t think the Braves are as good as their early offensive numbers show and he’s sitting near the bottom of most boards in terms of cost.

J.A. Happ – I’m probably going to stay away, but he should be mentioned just because I believe he might be able to finally generate some Ks today.

Jarred Cosart – Probably also needs to be mentioned just because he’s facing the Phillies. There’s not much upside here though.

Jason Hammel is right in the middle of your board today and if you believe in the shiny peripherals, may be an under-valued asset tonight. Personally, I’m kind of in the middle here because I think the Pittsburgh offense is better than they’ve shown.

Jimmy Nelson – I’m going back to the well again. Some might see that as stubborn, but I believe the reasoning is valid. First, a lot of people might be scared off by last night’s outburst. Second, he wasn’t as dominant in his second start, but was still really good underneath the hood (9.6 SwStr% and 10:1 GB/FB). You’re looking at a great ground ball rate with some K upside vs a below average offensive team. His price looks to have risen in some spots, but he’s still bottom half of the board in most places.

Joe Kelly is a cost-controlled option in a great park, who seems to have made some real adjustments that increase in fantasy value (read: missing more bats). If the side consequence is going to be more fly balls, this is a park where that’s ok.

John Lackey – I’m not sure I love him in this spot, but will probably be taking some shots with him at home this year.

Johnny Cueto is missing bats more often and faces a struggling offense (despite last night) at a lower cost than David Price. Don’t let his last start (4 ERs) concern you. He still struck out 10 batters against a good lineup in St Louis.

Madison Bumgarner – This is tricky because I’m probably not going to trust him with my money against this lineup, but I do expect him to start missing more bats soon and you’ll probably not see him this cheap often. He’s right in line with Cole Hamels and cheaper than the big three (Kershaw, Price, Cueto) tonight.

Sonny Gray can definitely have some real life value as is, and it’s not often that I disagree with my spreadsheets (it’s not anything the numbers particularly like, but nothing they hate in his charts today), but the current version offers too little upside against an offense that should be better than they’ve looked. He’s cheaper, but not cheap.

Yovani Gallardo – This may be me reaching for a risk/reward play, but even if he pitches to contact again like last time out, ground balls against a weak offense at a decent price are worth something. There’s always the slight chance that his last outing was a fluke too and he feels more comfortable attacking this offense? Probably not, but I don’t expect him to get smashed here.

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