Advanced Stats - Pitching: Thursday, May 5th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2016-05-06 02:02:05

I could easily repeat the open from yesterday mentioning so much randomness in pitcher performances recently. After missing most of the day, I come home to see that many pitchers had nearly the same line. A few took a beating. Then there was possibly the top line of the night where Sabathia completely shut down the Orioles as expected. His excellent plan was to lure them into a false sense of security by allowing himself to get bludgeoned by every other team he faced. We’re still dealing with the consequences of a large collection of the most talented arms in the league pitching on Sunday. We’re left with a collection of guys hiding flaws and out-pitching their peripherals along with a couple who might look trustworthy. We’ll try again to delve into the numbers and project performance based on past and recent histories along with current circumstances until the inevitable happens and baseball baseball’s us once more.

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 three-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+.

Adam Conley incited a flame of controversy when he was pulled from a no-hitter with two outs in the 8th at 116 pitches. How about not walking four batters? He walked four in his previous start too with just two strikeouts. He’s what I called a mistake pitcher last week, like some hitters are called mistake hitters. He challenges batters inside and sometimes it works and he’ll look really good. Sometimes he’ll end up making mistakes and get hit hard. The problem is that you’re not going to know beforehand. Strong right handed offenses have been successful against him and that describes Arizona, who have accumulated 329 PAs vs LHP with a 23.2 HR/FB and 37.2 Hard%.

Jacob deGrom is down over two mph, which he blames on a shortened off-season. The thing is, it hasn’t affected his ability to miss bats yet. One theory is that he comes at you with five different quality pitches at least 10% of the time at different speeds still. Another is that his two quality starts have come against Atlanta and Philadelphia. What does he have tonight though? The top matchup in the top park. San Diego has been terrible against RHP (26.0 K%). His 83.3 mph aEV is 5th best in baseball (30 batted min.).

Kevin Gausman looked merely passable in his last start after an impressive initial outing. He missed just five bats against the White Sox. His early walk and strikeout rates are on par with last season when some (or just I) think he under-achieved against the quality of his arsenal. He does have a 17.9 K-BB% at home since last season and even though it’s a tough park, he faces a slumbering offense that has mostly looked their advanced ages early in the season.

Kyle Hendricks is one of a small handful of pitchers (three) with a 59+ GB% and 20+ K%. With a 1.4 Hard-Soft%, he leaves very little room for complications. Unfortunately, he seems to join teammate Jason Hammels in the “leave them wanting more” school of thought, exiting every start since his first with less than 90 pitches and no more than six innings. Washington has been very poor against RHP with only Harper and Murphy as threats. I would expect the RH portion of the lineup, who has great difficulty against RHP in general to struggle against a pitcher with a career 53.8 GB% against same side batters.

Masahiro Tanaka has been nearly flawless in his efforts this season. He joins Hendricks as the two of only three pitchers with both a 59+ GB% and 20+ K% so far this season. That’s how you curb a HR problem. He’s never done this before though, so it’s uncertain if we should expect this to continue. He now has a 15.1 HR/FB through 321.2 career innings. Baltimore has a 14.5 HR/FB at home and 15.0 HR/FB vs RHP.

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 (.297 BABIP – 72.5 LOB% – 11.8 HR/FB)

J.A. Happ (.281 BAIBP – 88.2 LOB% – 11.8 HR/FB) has failed to retain the qualities that made him successful in Pittsburgh after being traded last season, but he does have a near career high 9.2 SwStr%. However, that’s been less consistent than you would like to project more positive results to come. It’s been below 8% in three of his five starts and above 13% only against Tampa Bay twice. He’s gone at least six innings in all five starts, but all he’s really doing is stranding runners.

Joe Ross (.231 – 91.3 LOB% – 0.0 HR/FB) has cut his K-BB% in half this season, but is generating much weaker contact (16.9 Hard%). He’s been a sinker/slider guy over 90% of the time and has some pretty extreme platoon splits. He presents some great concerns against a patient and well balanced lineup. One positive is that his league average SwStr% presents an opportunity for more success in his K%, but it’s still well his 11.9 SwStr% last year.

Derek Holland (.227 BABIP – 80.9 LOB% – 5.0 HR/FB) has a strikeout rate around 15%, is allowing a lot of hard contact (17.8 Hard-Soft%), and now more fly balls than grounders (0.75 GB/FB). However, all Toronto does is get shut down by mediocre pitching these days and that’s probably why his cost is so high for what he offers.

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

Chris Rusin has pitched well in long relief and in his lone start. In fact, he hasn’t allowed a run over his last four outing, spanning 14.2 innings. His SwStr rate is nearly league average and his ground ball rate is 61.1% so far. He’s not what his ERA says is because he has a .179 BABIP and hasn’t allowed a HR yet. I’m not even sure he can retain his current strikeout rate, but Colorado pitchers are tricky to evaluate outside of Coors unless they have great stuff like Gray. He didn’t have good road numbers last year. He doesn’t have to do much in a great park, but he doesn’t have a history of success aside from his last 14.2 innings.

Wade Miley has a SwStr% is similar to 2014 when he had a 21.1 K% and is not getting hit very hard (24.5 Hard%). There appears to be much room for improvement in his strikeout rate, BABIP, and 67.7 LOB%. However, he’s in a tough park against a tough offense with a lot of RH power and has allowed his fair share of HRs. All this said, I thought he had potential at an expected low cost today, but that doesn’t appear to be the case at all on DraftKings, though he might be closer to breakeven for $1.8K less on FanDuel.

Robbie Ray combines a 12.7 BB% and 16.2 Hard-Soft% with his impressive bat missing skills. His four HRs are already 44% of last season’s total, which I’ve repeatedly called a fluke. A walk or two ahead of Stanton, who demolishes lefties, could ruin his night in one swing.

Christopher Devenski was rated the 23rd prospect in the Houston system by Fangraphs before the season. Here’s a quote from his writeup: “He’s a fairly safe bet to be a swing man in the future despite middling stuff with an above average changeup…” and that’s exactly what he’s been with seven outings and one start. It hasn’t been bad at all, but Seattle is a very difficult matchup. It’s a team hitting for a lot of power (18.4 HR/FB on the road, 15.4 HR/FB vs RHP).

Matt Cain has fallen a long way when he’s outside consideration at a low price at home against the Rockies. He’s sitting on a career low SwStr%.

Chase Anderson wasn’t supposed to be this bad. I thought he had league average upside.

Alfredo Simon has started four games averaging three innings per start.

Colin Rea

Erik Johnson has a 4.87 SIERA in 86.1 major league innings and that’s the lowest of his three ERA estimators.

Henry Owens has walked and struck out seven through his first two starts and is down to 88 mph. His 4.62 FIP is the lowest of his three estimators through 72.1 major league innings.

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 – 20.6 K% – 9.4 SwStr% – 2.19 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.

Jacob deGrom would appear in line for more strikeouts, but with a lesser quality of offerings this year based off a lesser fastball, I’d be more concerned about his SwStr% dropping.

Kyle Hendricks leaves some to be desired in his SwStr%, but has been playing trick with his K% ever since being called up. Consider a SwStr just above 8% in each of his first two seasons, yet an eight point gap in his K% between those two years. He’s hiked his F-Strike% and Zone% this year and pitches to quality framers in Montero and Ross, so this is something I’m not too worried about if he can generate a SwStr around 8% again. By the way, you might remember that when he had the 8.2 SwStr% with the 14.6 K% in his rookie year, his main receiver was Welington Castillo, who, well, look at how the Arizona pitchers are performing this year.

Masahiro Tanaka exhibits the potential for more. He had a 26.0 K% in 2014 with a similar SwStr%.

ERA Estimators Chart (2015 LG AVG – 4.10 ERA – 4.05 SIERA – 4.00 xFIP – 4.00 FIP)

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

Jacob deGrom has thrown fewer than 20 innings still, but hasn’t allowed a HR. He has somehow managed to avoid the defensive shortcomings of the Mets, but has a .283 career BABIP through just about 350 innings and has continued to excel in his zone contact rate.

Kyle Hendricks is stranding just 57.5% of his runners this season. Sequenced a bit differently, more people would be taking about his start to the season.

BABIP Chart (2016 LG AVG – .297 BABIP – 21.0 LD% – 9.2 IFFB% – 86.6 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.

Adam Conley – This is atypical. He hasn’t induced a single pop up and has no other real BABIP suppression indicators. He also allows a lot of hard contact. It seems pretty random.

Masahiro Tanaka had a .242 BABIP in 154 innings last year, but did not exhibit similar tendencies in 2014 (.299 BABIP). His batted ball profile has changed each year and while all the rates to the right of his BABIP are quality, he’s only induced three pop ups due to the great increase in ground balls, but he’s allowing about an average rate of hard and soft contact and he’s not expected to retain his LD rate. I would not expect him to sustain this BABIP, but am not too concerned with his ERA as his 70.9 LOB% might have room for improvement if he keeps missing bats and generating a lot of ground balls.

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. 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

Kyle Hendricks (2) – I nearly considered omitting Tier One entirely or even retiring it as nearly every day it seems nobody qualifies, at least to the level at which they appeared to in previous years. Hendricks would be an exception if he were given the leash most starting pitchers enjoy, but Joe Maddon does his thing (most likely correctly) where he only gives that leeway to Lester and Arrieta, while pulling his other starters at around the 85-90 pitch mark. Perhaps they’ve been better because of it, but it hurts his daily fantasy value. He’s in a good spot tonight and has pitched better than most have realized because of his low strand rate. Last year, just two qualified pitchers exceeded both a 59 GB% and 20 K% (Keuchel and T.Ross), which is what he’s doing now.

Value Tier Two

Kevin Gausman (4) – I can often be rightfully accused of being too high on him because he flashes quality stuff, but often lacks a put away pitch. Aside from that, he wasn’t bad last year yet still commands a below average price in a matchup that isn’t really that bad. There are pitchers of equal or worse quality at higher prices in worse matchups tonight.

Value Tier Three

Jacob deGrom (1) is the costliest pitcher on the board tonight and comes with some concerns in his early performance. He may be able to continue to mask these shortcomings in facing poor offenses and this may be the poorest of them all in one of the best parks. He will now have faced three of the bottom four offenses vs RHP (via wRC+) in his four starts. Just based on opposition alone, he stands a good chance of seeing the top strikeout rate tonight. Another important factor is that Kevin’s early report is calling for rain after the game, but you’ll want to keep an eye on his late update around 5:30 tonight because if there’s a turn for the worse, there’s nowhere to pivot on late swap.

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

Masahiro Tanaka (3) – The biggest concern is his tendency to allow HRs. The elite ground ball rate added to an above average K% is impressive and keeps him in play in tonight’s toughest matchup, it’s something different for him and while maybe concern isn’t the right word, it might be cause for caution.

Adam Conley will probably be quite popular after nearly throwing a no hitter, but there are two things to consider. First, he threw 116 pitches and will be watched closely because pitchers don’t often throw that many anymore. He hasn’t thrown more than 95 in any other start. Secondly, he’s allowed some hard contact this year (though very little last season – this stuff doesn’t always correlate greatly from year to year) and that could continue against a hard hitting RH heavy offense. The range of potential outcomes in this game is probably wider than a lot of people think, although that probably sounds funny after what we’ve seen with pitcher expectations this week. It’s always a wide range of potential outcomes for every pitcher, right? This could be very good or very bad.

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

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