Advanced Stats - Pitching: Saturday, April 30th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2016-05-02 00:32:44

We’re covering the nine game late slate on Saturday and don’t waste words because you probably have more important things to do on weekends, so let’s get to it.

Changes for 2016 were outlined on Opening Day, which you can find here.

Don’t forget to check lineups, umpire assignments, line movement, and Kevin’s weather report as they are released later in the day, all of which may change the equation and help you decide between two pitchers of otherwise equal value in a pinch.

Most stats 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 used here.

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 2015 season. Opp team offensive stats are wRC+.

Colin Rea has faced 101 batters this season with strikeouts, walks, and HRs at just a bit worse than a league average rate. Despite a 29.4 LD%, contact has been weak (24.6 Hard%). There is absolutely nothing special about him, but the Dodgers have been absolutely awful and have just a 6.3 HR/FB vs RHP.

Francisco Liriano has walked 17 of the 99 batters he’s faced this year. I’ll keep him here because I can’t punt everybody and he’s in a great spot. He did pitch poorly against these Reds in Cincinnati though, just before missing a start due his balking hammy. He did have a 12.4 SwStr% in his last start though. The Reds haven’t even been that bad vs LHP (16.7 K%, 17.1 HR/FB), but they have a 28.7 K% over the last week and their power numbers should take a hit in this park.

Jerad Eichkoff allowed seven runs and two HRs in his last start, but still struck out seven Brewers without a walk and has struck out at least that many in each of his three starts. While I thought it was just a different approach against a familiar opponent (5 of first 11 starts against the Mets), he continued to throw his curveball nearly 40% of the time against the Brewers as well and it’s become his strikeout pitch (16% whiffs). Who throws that many curveballs? He now has a 25.2 K% through 12 career starts, which is not what we expected from him. Cleveland has shown an above average offense thus far, but lose the DH in the NL park (Santana sat yesterday) and have a 25.5 K% both on the road and vs RHP.

Kevin Gausman struck out seven of 21 Rays faced in his season debut. The Rays do strike out often and he was pulled early after five innings as potentially expected, but those results were impressive. He came out up a mph, but that may have just been adrenaline from his first outing. We’ll have to see if this trend continues, but 11 of his 91 pitches were swings and misses. The potential has always been in the arm, what I’ve often questioned is how he’s been taught to use that potential in the Baltimore system. He rarely throws 95+ mph heat up in the zone. Hopefully, things are going to finally change this year. The White Sox are not a great offense vs RHP, but have been hot (6.0 K-BB% last seven days).

Michael Pineda gets hit hard for a good pitcher and Paul Sporer did a good job of pointing that out this week. He has a 19.2 Hard% with the highest exit velocity (92.96 mph) tonight. The Red Sox could punish him, but he also has strikeout upside and that’s just as important in daily fantasy. His 26.7 K% does not even do his 16.6 SwStr% justice and it’s been consistently above 13% in every start. The good news is his HR rate drops significantly on the road (8.2 HR/FB since last season) and Boston is tougher than people realize on LH power.

Rick Porcello still has a HR problem (five of 23 fly balls this season), but has greatly increased his K%. I’m not buying all of it, but we’ll talk later. The Yankees have looked old and tired already with just an 8.8 HR/FB (very low for them) and 4.6 Hard-Soft% over the last week. They represent a favorable matchup here even in an unfriendly run environment.

Travor Bauer is a mess. You never know where the ball is going to end up and you can’t possibly predict his performance, but he does generally at least miss bats and is in a good position to at least have some success against the Phillies.

Wei-Yin Chen did miss a start with an elbow issue and his velocity is still down, but it has ticked back up in his last two starts and he has otherwise looked fine, though HRs have remained an issue even in his new park. A matchup in Milwaukee is not idea for a fly ball, HR prone pitcher, but they have been dreadful against LHP (26.6 K%), though they have been patient, lean RH, and hit the ball hard, so I’m not sure how bad they’ll continue to be besides the strikeouts.

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 (.295 BABIP – 72.3 LOB% – 10.8 HR/FB)

Yordano Ventura (.226 BABIP – 83.3 LOB% – 3.7 HR/FB) has continued to miss bats as he did late last season, but suddenly can’t otherwise find the plate. He’s also allowing harder contact (17.4 Hard-Soft%) with his fly ball rate jumping 15 points (42.9%). That’s fine in Kansas City and maybe even Safeco, but the Mariners do have power and you don’t want to take as many chances with a guy who’s been walking the park. Those results don’t nearly match the underlying performance so far and are not what you want to pay a high price for.

Ross Stripling (.269 BABIP – 72.5 LOB% – 5.6 HR/FB) has really been the back end pitcher we expected when you add the 10.6 BB% to the below average K%. We tried this for a while and he’s not in a bad spot at all against a team with a 25.7 K% vs RHP, but I can’t justify paying $7.9K on FanDuel for his skill set, especially without much expectation of a Win with the way the Dodgers have been playing. It’s closer for $1.6K less on DraftKings, but still with less upside than you want for even that cost.

Mat Latos (.167 BABIP – 96.9 LOB% – 3.2 HR/FB) seems to have results that directly oppose the process his last three years and he’s trending in the wrong direction with his peripherals again, this time potentially past the point of no return. But he’s 4-0 so Hawk Harrelson doesn’t care. None of the numbers above are anywhere near sustainable, so let someone else find out for $7K and a 13.8 K% that’s only two-thirds his career rate and backed up by a low SwStr%. He has been excellent at getting weak contact so far (-5.5 Hard-Soft%) and it does look like he’s going to a sinker/slider mix more (48% combined), but I’d still call that more descriptive than predictive at this point.

Derek Holland (.239 BAIBP – 77.6 LOB% – _6.7 HR/FB) has a below average K-BB% (9.6), a BABIP over 50 points below his career mark, and a HR rate nearly half of his norm.

NO THANK YOU (In order from least to most offensive)

Zack Greinke has allowed 18 ERs and five HRs in 16.2 innings at home. It used to be he had these blow up innings on the road and I think he’ll eventually be fine as he’s faced some tough offenses at home (Cubs, Cardinals), but it is a tough park and this Colorado team was the first to bludgeon him here. He’s more of a tossup on DraftKings ($9.2K), but there’s more difficulty in justifying $10K (FanDuel).

Wade Miley has allowed four HRs this season and at least three ERs in every start. This is still more about his opponents than him because he’s getting more swings and misses than he ever has. However, he’s facing the Royals tonight, who have struck out more this season, especially against LHP, but that’s not something we expect to continue yet and they’ve shown more power vs LHPs too.

Matt Shoemaker looks like the clock has turned midnight. His old friend, the HR ball found him last year after being left in the minors (14.0 HR/FB in 2015 vs 9.4 HR/FB in 2016) and now it’s attached itself to his hip in 2016 (five HRs, 87 batters faced). The good news is that he mostly pitches in a good park and the 10.2 SwStr% is still at his career rate. He’s in a tougher park tonight and has the most ridiculous price discrepancy I’ve seen so far. He’s at the very bottom of your DraftKings board for $5K where I might even be inclined to give him a look as a number two, but fourth from the top at $3.2K more FanDuel.

Chris Rusin has pitched well for 11 innings this season, all out of the bullpen. His last two outings were each over three innings, so he should be stretched out for five or more, but I question his ability to get that far in this tough spot. He has a career 14.3 K% in 251.1 IP.

Chase Anderson went to hell fast. First two starts: 11 IP – 8 H – 0 ER – 2 BB – 9 K. Last two outings: 9 IP – 19 H – 10 ER – 3 HR – 4 BB – 6 K. He’s probably somewhere in between, maybe league average upside in a bad park. His SwStr has maxed out at 8.1% over his last three starts.

Alfredo Simon has been impressive over his last three outings: 4.1 IP – 17 H – 16 ER – 4 HR – 4 BB – 5 K. Double digit K/9 though.

K/BB Chart

Pitcher and Opponent K% & BB% for titled splits, similar to the Main Chart.

K/BB Chart – Opponent

Batted Ball Chart

Pitcher and Opponent Batted Ball stats.

Batted Ball Charts – Opponent

K/SwStr Chart (2015 LG AVG – 19.5 K% – 9.3 SwStr% – 2.1 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.

Michael Pineda is tied with a guy names Syndergaard for the top SwStr% in baseball.

Rick Porcello is not going to strike out nearly 30% of batters with a below average SwStr%. The good news is that it’s the highest SwStr% of his career and he’s been at or above 9.5% in three of four starts, so we’re only really looking at one bad apple here. If he retains that kind of stuff, something near 25% might not be out of the question.

ERA Estimators Chart (2015 LG AVG – 4.10 ERA – 4.07 SIERA – 4.00 xFIP – 4.03 FIP)

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

Jerad Eichkoff – While I’m not going to argue with an 11.9 HR/FB in Phillly, his 68.6 K% should tic up a bit.

Michael Pineda increased his GB% over 10 points close to 50% last year. This year, he’s back to 37.3% and seven of his 26 fly balls have left the yard so far. That’s bad news in Yankee Stadium, but an opportunity on the road sometimes. A 23.9 LD% and no pop ups for that many fly balls is going to hurt your BABIP.

Rick Porcello will see his K% drop and his estimators rise slightly. We may have to live with an elevated HR/FB, but not above 20. With those two adjustments, his ERA looks okay after his low BABIP and 84.2 LOB% course correct.

Trevor Bauer – This is his first start this season. These numbers come from 11.1 innings out of the bullpen.

BABIP Chart (2015 LG AVG – .295 BABIP – 21.1 LD% – 9.5 IFFB% – 87.7 Z-Contact%)

A few years back, 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. A pitcher with a much lower BABIP than his team allows is a red flag absent further supporting evidence, while a pitcher with a much higher BABIP than his team allows may have something to offer in the future, especially with the right indicators.

Colin Rea – Its common knowledge that the Padres sold out for offense…..and then didn’t get any of that either. There a couple of good things here though. The LD% is high, but his hard contact rate is low (24.6%). Four of his 17 fly balls have been pop ups.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Here we rank pitchers by value tiers with their overall rank in parenthesis next to the name for the top five to ten. These are not hard and rigid rankings, especially on our first day of doing so today. Everything is fluid and can changed depending on ever evolving situations throughout the day. This is the more opinionated part. If there are questions, it’ll help show you where my imaginary boundaries are drawn.

Value Tier One

Jerad Eichkoff (1) has outpitched his expectations to this point and gets the top spot tonight because while it’s not a large enough sample still, we have to start to consider his strikeout rate real. He’s striking out a quarter of his batters faced, Cleveland is striking out a quarter of the time and loses their DH. This gives him tonight’s top projected strikeout rate for less than $8K.

Value Tier Two

Kevin Gausman – While I don’t expect him to continue his level of success from his first start, he does have that kind of talent in his arm. You can grab him for just a mid-range price and even less on FanDuel.

Michael Pineda offers us opportunity in a spot where many will be scared because it’s a pretty damn scary proposition, but Boston is one of the worst parks in the majors for LH power. If he sticks around for six innings and strikes out seven to nine, who cares if he allows a HR or two for $7K? Admittedly, it’s unlikely to look as neat and tidy as that.

Value Tier Three

Trevor Bauer has the upside to be the top pitcher on the board or be gone by the third inning. A matchup with the Phillies pushes things a bit further in the upside direction.

Rick Porcello has looked good aside from the HRs, which yeah, sounds a bit ridiculous, but it’s true in a daily fantasy sense. HRs aren’t that big a deal if you’re limiting your walks and getting Ks, both of which he’s doing. The Yankees have not been a difficult lineup to navigate this year.

Value Tier Four – These guys seem basically in line with their price tag. They are either useable and shouldn’t hurt you too much, but might not help you much either or have such a wide range of outcomes that you can’t see much benefit beyond the risk.

Colin Rea – This is not an endorsement for this pitcher as much as it’s a strike against the Dodgers. They’ve been incomprehensibly bad. His Draftkings cost is too high ($6.7K), though I could see him being worth his FanDuel asking ($5.4K), though I’m not sure this is the guy I’d want to ride with if I only get to pick one.
Wei-Yin Chen – You like the strikeout potential, but there are enough things that scare you here that I hesitate to lay out $9K for him on DraftKings, but $8.1K on FanDuel is a closer call.

Francisco Liriano has been a mess and has an incredibly wide range of potential outcomes tonight, the overall average of which may end up generating value equal to his price tag. Maybe it’s even less and we’re grading on a curve today. It’s a difficult slate.

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

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