Advanced Stats - Pitching Charts: Wednesday, May 20th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2015-05-22 17:52:00

Something I quickly learned as a young man was that whenever I was fortunate enough to find a bartender that would give me free drinks, it never meant I would spend less money, but only that I would end up drinking more. Over the past few days, I’ve instituted two new lists to intended to shorten the length of this article, but it’s turned out that writing about fewer pitchers hasn’t had an effect on the total word count as there were just more words concerning the pitchers that were written about. And a 5,000-word article yesterday was probably 4,900 words too many considering the results. We’ll try to do better today.

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. Hm/Rd xFIP is since the start of the 2014 season. Opp team offensive stats are wRC+. Combo stats are explained below.

Adam Warren tells us what kind of day it’s going to be. His 4.10 SIERA over the past two weeks is one of the better marks in the main chart today. He’s coming off one of his best starts of the season with a season high in innings (seven) and strikeouts (also seven). He’s still pimping the 5.6 K-BB% though. His impressive 3.3 Hard-Soft% can be seen in his 7.9 HR/FB though. The Nationals are a patient team that could give him trouble. They have an 18.3 HR/FB at home, 15.0 HR/FB vs RHP, and 24.4 HR/FB over the last week.

Bartolo Colon has allowed at least four ERs in three of his last four and has begun having issues with the HR ball, but still hasn’t walked a batter since opening day, giving him a career-high 19.8 K-BB%. He has an 18.3 K-BB% at Citi Field as a Met and faces a team that had been struggling until breaking out for 10 runs yesterday, but that was their lefty mashing lineup where guys like Randall Grichuk did a lot of the damage.

Brett Anderson is not normally going to give you the upside you seek in a daily fantasy pitcher and has already had one rough outing in San Francisco, but is a breath of fresh air on a day like today because he seems to offer some stability. He’s allowed a total of two ERs over his last three starts and struck out a season-high eight last time out. What you can and should expect from him is good control and ground balls, but the Dodgers, perhaps in trying to keep him healthy, have not allowed him to go past 90 pitches since his first start. He’s already faced the Giants twice this season, in back to back starts just before this current three-game streak just mentioned and has allowed seven runs in 8.2 innings against them, but seems to have turned a corner since. They do have the hottest offense in the league, even including last night’s lackluster performance. They have both a very low K rate (16.4%) and HR/FB (6.1) at home.

Carlos Martinez has had some rough outings lately, struggling with walks and HRs, but at least he seems to be striking out batters again (15 of his last 49 after just 7 of his previous 49). Interestingly, aside from allowing seven runs in back to back starts, he hasn’t allowed more than two or walked more than three in any of his other five. Maybe it was just a little blip on the radar? Some mechanical adjustment that needed to be made? Maybe we’re really just going to have to reach for and take whatever positives we can find today? The Mets have the 3rd worst offense vs RHP in the majors with just a 6.4 HR/FB against them and a 24.5 K% over the last week.

Carlos Rodon has upside and that’s a great thing to have today, but why are the White Sox stacking all three of their lefties consecutively? He’s struggled with control, walking 10 of 48 batters in his two starts, although it only came back to bite him in his most recent one. Strangely enough, pitchf/x says he suddenly abandoned his four-seam fastball for his two-seam over 50% of the time in his last start, in addition to mixing in a few change-ups as a third pitch. Now he just needs to throw more of them for strikes. He’s done fine with missing exactly a league average rate of bats so far, though even more might be expected. Unfortunately, Cleveland is the type of patient team that could give him a lot of trouble with a 6.3 K-BB% vs LHP. He could walk the ballpark and be gone by the fourth.

Chase Anderson has failed to impress from a peripheral standpoint over his last two starts (five walks and five strikeouts), but has only allowed a total of two runs over his last three, so not too many people are complaining. We’ll take a closer look below. He has the top park adjusted matchup today against a Miami offense that is 2nd worst at home, 5th worst vs RHP, and 3rd worst over the last week.

David Phelps has not allowed more than two ERs in any of his six starts and struck out a season-high eight last time out. Though we’re skeptics of everything he’s doing, circumstances help pull him off the “NAGATL” list below and have us talk in depth about him today. Those circumstances would be a matchup in a big home park against a weak offense with just a 5.1 HR/FB over the last week, which is great because he hasn’t allowed a HR yet this year.

Drew Hutchison is coming off a season-high nine strikeouts and has now put together back to back solid performances for the first time this year. Many people predicted big improvements from him this year and maybe now he’s starting to live up to the hype. It looks like he’s fiddled with using the slider that led to success towards the end of last year less for a couple of starts before increasing it again in his last start, but sacrificing his changeup in order to keep throwing more than 70% fastballs. It could be because he was facing the Astros too, but tonight he gets a go at an Angels’ lineup that was shut down by Aaron Sanchez last night. They’ve struggled against RHP all year, but when Mike Trout goes cold there are absolutely lifeless. Only the Phillies have been worse vs RHP and Hutchison has a 26.3 K% at home since the start of last season.

Jake Odorizzi continues to pitch well and hasn’t walked a batter in four starts, driving his K-BB up to 17.1%. It appears that he’s had to sacrifice a bit off his K% to achieve this improvement in his control, but his SwStr is exactly the same as it was last year at 9.7%. The Braves may lower that strikeout rate even more (15.8 K% vs RHP), but the bats have gone cold with just a 2.6 HR/FB over the last week, but a 29.2 LD%.

Jeff Locke has been struggling and allowed at last three ERs in each of his last five starts and five HRs over his last three. He does face the 3rd worst road offense in the majors though, with just a 5.4 HR/FB away from home. We’ll see if he’s salvageable later.

Jordan Zimmermann is coming off his best start of the season with six shutout innings and six strikeouts. The velocity has ticked up a little bit over his past couple of starts, but is still well below last season. He has just a 4.3 HR/FB at home since last season and the Yankees are one of the colder teams in baseball, despite getting to Gio Gonzalez last night.

Kyle Lohse is someone we’ve been expecting some improvement closer to career levels from for some time this season, but nothing like the eight strikeouts in eight shutout innings against the Mets we saw last time out. He now has the highest K% of his career, supported by a 9.4 SwStr%. The Tigers can be a dangerous opponent, but seem to run either extremely hot or extremely cold from day to day, though they’ve hit well overall this past week.

Phil Klein is a 26-year-old rookie making his first major league and fourth professional start. He was the 924th overall pick in the 30th round of the 2011 draft and not a single piece of prospect information is linked to his FanGraphs page. He hasn’t gone more than an inning in any appearance this season, so expect heavy bullpen usage.

Roenis Elias can sometimes miss a few bats and show you some upside, but occasionally he’ll walk to many and/or allow too many HRs, which makes taking his 18.2 HR/FB to Baltimore a very scary proposition against a team with a 13.8 HR/FB at home, though it’s just 6.6 vs LHP.

Shane Greene had a three stretch start a few weeks back where he allowed 20 ERs over 11 IP with some massive BABIP issues. He’s allowed a total of two ERs and gone at least seven innings in four of his other five starts. He’s neither, obviously, and his 5.0 HR/FB is not likely sustainable, but he faces the 2nd worst road offense, though they broke out last night and have a 17.3 HR/FB over the last week.

Shaun Marcum has a 1.36 ERA in 33 innings at AAA since a lone five-inning appearance for Cleveland in early April. His minor league numbers come with 3.78 FIP, .229 BABIP, and 93.8 LOB%. The White Sox are a favorable matchup with the 4th lowest team Hard-Soft (6.3%), but he’s probably not a guy you want to trust in that park.

Tsuyoshi Wada has pitched well in recent minor league starts, allowing just two ERs with 17 Ks over his last 19.2 IP. That’s earned him his first start of this season in the majors, where he was adequate last year with a 13.1 K-BB% and ERA estimators just below four. He’s in a nice spot in San Diego against a league average offense that should play down in Petco, but they are loaded with RH bats and will have the platoon advantage much more often than not.

Tyson Ross has found a bit of a groove, allowing exactly two ERs in three straight starts, but hasn’t struck out more than six in any of those. He’s still striking out 26.3% of his batters on the season and 27.5 K% at home since the start of last season. He faces no contact Cubbies, who have a 26.8 K% on the road and 25.8 K% vs RHP.

Williams Perez also has little information available about him other than he’s about to be 24 years old and has a heavy groundball tendency. His 2.1 major league innings have been unimpressive. He did put up a 3.13 FIP in 27 AAA innings this season, but does not miss many bats. This looks to be another bullpen affair against a team that’s hit the ball well lately.

NOT AS GOOD AS THEY LOOK

This list is reserved for pitchers who may look attractive because their ERAs are much lower than their estimators. The reason for this is almost always extreme BABIP, LOB, and/or HR/FB deviation from the norm, so we’ll just quote those stats and be done with them.

League AVG (.294 BABIP – 72.3 LOB% – 10.8 HR/FB)
Extreme deviations from league averages are italicized.

Jered Weaver – last two starts with 0.55 ERA (.170 BABIP – 100 LOB% – 4.3 HR/FB)

Tim Lineceum (.289 BABIP – 79.9 LOB% – 3.0 HR/FB)

Wei-Yin Chen (.222 BABIP – 78.8 LOB% – 10.7 HR/FB)

NO THANK YOU

Eddie Butler

Jason Marquis

Jeremy Guthrie

Joe Kelly

Mike Pelfrey

Severino Gonzalez

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 (2015 LG AVG – 20.1 K% – 9.3 SwStr% – 2.16 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.

Bartolo Colon is the rare pitcher that will settle in at around a 3.0 K/SwStr because of his impeccable control. When he’s on, he’s painting the corners and getting more called strikes than the average pitcher.

David Phelps struck out eight of 26 batters in his last start on just three swinging strikes. He had a 3.43 K/SwStr last year and is making another joke of it this year. His 3.29 K/SwStr in 336.1 career innings is nowhere near enough for us to call him another Bartolo Colon-like outlier. His K/SwStr has increased just about every season.

Drew Hutchison has been very hit or miss, literally. He’s had a double-digit SwStr% in five of his eight starts, but has been at 6.7% or below in each of the other three. The 10.0% overall mark gives you hope that he’ll push up above a league average K% though.

ERA Estimators Chart (2015 LG AVG – 3.89 ERA – 3.80 SIERA – 3.89 xFIP – 3.89 FIP)

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

Bartolo Colon – A 63.3 LOB% over the last month tells you that the biggest change might be in the sequencing of his hits, although a .314 BABIP is also a bit higher than what he started with. Maybe he wasn’t as good as he started, but he’s probably not as bad as he’s been lately either.

Carlos Martinez has allowed a HR in four straight starts and seven on the season for a 25.0 HR/FB because he’s only allowed 28 fly balls. He hasn’t otherwise been hit particularly hard via his contact authority rates, so we have to believe he’ll be able to at least cut that mark in half. Does he know he pitches for St Louis and, like, all their other pitchers have severely suppressed HR/FB rates? Maybe he needs to talk to someone.

Chase Anderson has seen a drop in his non-FIP estimators this year, but a 1.2 run drop in his ERA. He’s cut down his walks, but is also now missing less than a league average rate of bats, resulting in a 12.0 K-BB% just slightly worse than last year. His line drive rate (20.3%) has improved from last year, but his other batted ball and contact authority rates are all very similar. There’s been a 32 point drop in BABIP perhaps due to a better line drive rate and then just some random variance, though his other indicators are good too, but the big difference you probably guessed when I said “non-FIP”. After a 13.6 HR/FB last year, just two of his 43 fly balls have left the yard this year. That’s going to be pretty tough to sustain in Arizona, but maybe not in Miami tonight.

David Phelps is all about the FIP and lack of HRs. The good news is he pitches in Miami and faces another weak offense today. The odds of him keeping the ball from flying out of the park again tonight are fairly good, but he had a 10.8 HR/FB last year pitching for the Yankees.

Drew Hutchison has seen a drop in his K% that’s led to a 3.3 point drop in his now 12.5 K-BB%, but we’re content with the SwStr% so maybe that improves too. His BABIP is way up, and part of that is a 24.6 LD%, but his other indicators in the chart below are great and he’s inducing more ground balls this year too. There should be some regression in that, which should help his 61.7 LOB% too. His 10.2 Hard-Soft% is actually better than last year and almost exactly league average.

Jake Odorizzi has allowed a HR in each of his last two starts, his first two of the season. We knew they were coming, but pitching in TB may afford him the opportunity to keep a HR/FB in better than average, though there’s still some regression in his 3.4% rate. His BABIP is 30 points below what he did last year, but right around his team’s allowed rate and with a strong defense behind him, we can’t automatically call for it to rise.

Jeff Locke has a below average SwStr and K rates, but not low enough to be entirely unusable if he had other redeeming qualities. Unfortunately, a league average BB% gives him a 9.3 K-BB% and a 13.2 HR/FB is not far off from his career 12.1 HR/FB. The good news is that his 65.4 LOB% should see some improvement, though we can’t say the same about his .320 BABIP due to supporting indicators like team defense and pop up rate, despite it being over 40 points higher than last season. The best news, however, is his 25.2 Soft%, which is 7th best in the majors, that combined with a 50.0 GB% means lots of weak ground balls and, hopefully, double plays.

Jordan Zimmermann has a 3.8 HR/FB, driving an ERA that matches his FIP. He’s had a single digit HR/FB every season since 2010, but never this low, though his 3.3 Hard-Soft% supports a low mark. His .327 BABIP is a bit high, but matches his defense, though the 65.4 LOB% could see improvement. With his velocity and SwStr% starting to tick back up, his 10.2 K-BB% could improve as well.

Kyle Lohse has a 14.0 K-BB% that’s the best of his career. The issue is when batters do make contact as he always runs high in hard contact and it’s no different this year with the 7th worst mark (34.7%) and with a 41.8% fly ball rate, that’s led to 10 HRs and a 16.4 HR/FB and 62.2 LOB% that trumps an impressive .264 BABIP despite a 24.7 LD%. We can expect all of those rates to continue to regress at least a little bit, except maybe the Hard% that’s in line with most of his last decade. If the new found strikeout stuff holds though, that should be less of a problem than it seems.

BABIP Chart (2015 LG AVG – .291 BABIP – 9.9 IFFB% – 86.9 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).

Brett Anderson has had a BABIP of at least .313 in every start since his first, but with a career-high 64.7 GB% and 14.7 LD%, that seems to be a case of too many grounders finding holes, even with otherwise poor indicators in the chart above. You don’t expect him to miss bats in the zone or induce pop ups. Those aren’t leading to an above average rate of hard hit balls or too many line drives though.

Tyson Ross has only induced one pop up, but has just a 19.7% fly ball rate. He has a 63.1 GB% and 4.8 Hard-Soft% with a strong 17.2 LD%, which suggests, along with a solid Z-Contact%, that too many ground balls are sneaking through.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Bartolo Colon – The recent issues seem to be mostly rooted in sequencing, though he was hit hard by an aggressive Milwaukee team last time out. Perhaps a patient St Louis offense plays more towards his strengths? He’s one of the more expensive pitchers today, but that has much more to do with the other offerings than him actually being expensive.

Brett Anderson might be one of your top guys today. Others have much more upside for GPPs, but he’s fairly inexpensive and been pitching better than anyone, offering more stability for double ups. To use an old baseball cliché, he should keep you in the game with the biggest drawback being a pitch count that won’t let him go more than six innings, even on a good day.

Carlos Martinez was better last time out and has struck out 15 over his last two starts, so maybe today you just hope that he’s figured out what was ailing him over his previous two starts. The Mets have helped many RH pitchers get healthy this year. He’s cheaper than Colon on every site and with potentially more upside.

Chase Anderson is beginning to show some concerning trends that haven’t shown up in his overall results yet, but is cheap and in a great spot tonight.

David Phelps is not someone I’m suddenly buying into as I still forecast a heaping pile of regression in several areas in his future, but the low HR thing is something that might be more sustainable at home and he’s got a good matchup against Arizona at mostly low prices. He’s a dumpster diving special on DK more than FD, where his price is a little higher.

Drew Hutchison may be starting to peak and has as much upside as anyone today with the added bonus of facing an Angels’ offense that has hit like they are no longer among the living, especially against RHP. If you somehow had Aaron Sanchez last night, congratulations, and you’re probably doubling down on Hutchison tonight.

Jake Odorizzi is one of the top three price tags today and should pitch well against Atlanta. The only concern is that they may limit his upside as a low strikeout team and his K% is already down from last season.

Jordan Zimmermann is showing signs of improvement with his velocity, results, and underlying performance. The Yankees have been cold, but did break out of it a bit last night and I’m still not entirely sure I trust him again yet as one of the top two prices on the board. I wouldn’t fault players for using him though on an otherwise sketchy day.

Shane Greene may be a risk against a Milwaukee offense that has shown some signs of life with their top hitters (at least the ones that remain healthy), but seems to have righted the ship after a really rough patch. He’s done a good job of keeping the ball in the park and is still fairly cheap in some places.

Tyson Ross is your other high priced play tonight and has the most upside of the three. He excels at home and there are strikeout rates exceeding 25% everywhere you look tonight. Unlike Shields last night though, he supports that with an extreme ground ball rate, though lefties like Rizzo could and have posed a problem for him.

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