Alexi Ogando: Injury Risk
Yesterday, Alexi Ogando struggled against the Kansas City Royals in his first appearance of the year. While it is not uncommon for a pitcher to struggle during spring training, it was how he struggled which worries me. He struggled with his delivery and maintaining his velocity. His next few outings should be monitored closely to see if he has a possible injury.
Three aspects of his first start lead me to think he was possibly injured. First, he struggled to throw strikes. Here are his Strike% over the past 3 years.
Strike% (Strike/Total Pitches)
2010: 64.8%
2011: 64.0%
2012: 65.8%
In his 1.1 innings pitched, he threw strikes only 54.1% of the time. In all, he stuck out no one, walked 2 batters and gave up a home run to Adam Moore.
Manager Ron Washington and Ogando talked about the outing after the game:
“He just couldn’t find his release point,” manager Ron Washington said. “He just looked out of rhythm.”
Said Ogando: “When you can’t find the strike zone, bad things happen. I was trying to work both sides of the plate. I threw my change up. Nothing was working.”
Orgando defiantly couldn’t find his release point as see by this chart from brooksbaseball.net.
His release points varied by almost two feet. The problem with a non-uniform delivery is the injuries associated with them. It is almost impossible to to tell what comes first, the injury leading to inconsistent delivery or a inconsistent delivery leading to injury, but where a person finds one (injury or inconsistency) the other is also around.
The final sign of a possible injury was a loss in his velocity. For the game, his fastball averaged 93.1 mph. In case the radar at the stadium was possibly off, I looked at other pitchers who threw to see if they were also low. It seemed the radar gun was on and if it was reading low, Yordano Ventura and his 99 MPH bullets would have been the game’s main story.
He has never come close to only averaging 93.1 mph. In 2010, 11 and 12 he averaged 96.2 mph, 95 mph and 96.9 mph. Besides just his season averages, which were 2 mph higher than his Friday average, he never threw as slow as he did on Friday during a spring training game where a Pitchf/x system was installed.
Date: Average Velocity
3/4/10: 94.7 mph
3/2/11: 94.6 mph
3/23/11: 95.0 mph
3/5/12: 95.0 mph
4/1/12: 95.9 mph
He may have been at times 1 mph slower in spring training, but nothing close to the nearly 4 MPH drop he is seeing from last season.
Only a few number of spring training games have Pitchf/x data, so I went back and looked at his regular season data. His seven lowest average velocities all happened early in 2011. During the time frame, his fastball averaged 94.0 mph with max value of 94.4 and a low of 93.5. Only twice in his career has he seen his velocity drop under 94 mph
I have no way to tell with 100% certainty if Ogando is hurt or not. He may only know for sure. Some signs do point to him having a possible injury like the loss of control, an inconsistent release point and a velocity drop. I would be extremely cautious of picking him up in a draft/auction until he can throw like he has in the past.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
Good info. Thanks.
Great stuff. I had him targeted for the dual eligibility at Sp/Rp. I will watch him more closely now.
Nice analysis, but come on, it’s 1.1 innings in his first spring training game. No reason to worry yet.
… said everybody about michael pineda in 2012
Well that’s why he’s not being definitive like OGANDO IS DEFINITELY HURT AND WILL DIE SOON. But it’s worth putting on everyone’s radar. I’m as “ST stats means crap” as anybody, but this kind of stuff is very good and at least puts us on notice.
Reason to WORRY? Probably not. Reason to put him on a watch list if he was a target for you this year? Absolutely.
Seriously, talk about over reacting to spring training stats. Dude throws 1.1 innings and you are comparing strike percentages? That is ludicrous. And worrying about him throwing 93.1 vs the 95.1 he averaged as a starter two years ago is ridiculous as well. It was the first game of spring!
Small sample size. If it continues, then it might be worrying.
you should be obligated to write a follow up article due to the hyper-reaction to 1.1 IP…
Or maybe we find out that small samples is relevant in this case.
I’m sorry, but this article is simply ludicrous. You’re raising these questions off of the FIRST 1.1 IP of SPRING TRAINING!
I would state that ALL SPRING TRAINING stats should be vehemently IGNORED when doing fantasy draft prep, and I mean ALL.
Outcomes should be ignored because things like batting average can take hundreds of PAs to stabilize.
This is something else entirely. We’re all conditioned to be uber cautious about small sample sizes, but the realities underpinning that caution don’t necessarily apply to something like release point or velocity. There really shouldn’t be a lot of random variance in these things.
Even a few pitches with a horribly skewed release or missing velocity can be very significant. Nobody has said Ogando is done. Just to follow his next few starts closely and be cautious.
by the way, velocity stabilizes much quicker than any other stat, and spring training velocities are usually only .6 mph slower than regular season velocities. but you can keep ignoring them.
While it is admirable to defend your colleague, Mr. Sarris, I will be delighted to continue to ignore a sample size of 1.1 IP of a pitcher’s first spring game.
I like the article. Look forward to more velocity news from ST.
What’s not clear to me is did Mr. Zimmmerman see him throw? It seems like no but I am not sure and don’t want to mischaraterize.
I understand the underpinnings of the argument. What I think would make it stronger are some unbiased eyeballs on Ogando.
Geez people, why are we criticizing this article so much? We are in the thick of draft time and if there is any small indication of something that could be wrong with a player, I will happily read and be appreciative of the info.
It’s not like the article was explaining how he will trend downward this year after his first 1.1 innings in spring, Jeff was explaining some concerning observations. The only thing I might want to see is a view of his release points from in season last year. If he doesn’t throw this way, and we can see that in the chart, it’s definitely concerning.
Thanks Jeff! Ignore the douchebags and keep this stuff coming!
What’d the data look like for the 2nd start, @jeff?
There was no pitchfx data from the game since Texas went on the road. Also, so TV to get any speeds. I may listen to game if I find the time (probably not)
He struggled, 2BB, 1K, 3H in 2 innings.
The best information on the start I could find was here:
http://texas.rangers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130227&content_id=42044930¬ebook_id=42056206&vkey=notebook_tex&c_id=tex
Sounds like he has multiple issues to work out.
Ok, did his velocity increase over the rest of spring training? Has he been limited in any way since this article came out?
how bout a follow up sleeper post…
ok ill let this one go now, just as long as you learn from your mistakes… even if he truly is an injury risk, please wait longer than one start to write an article…
Phenomenal first start by Ogando. Mic, you were spot on. There is a little thing called sample size and 1.1 IP of your FIRST spring training game is just a tad small in terms of sample size. That’s all I’m saying.
Welp. Ogando to the DL. Score one for Zimmerman.
Very prophetic Jeff-good work…