On Thursday for my American League starting pitching slot, I used my expected strikeout rate metric to determine which starters have the most strikeout rate upside given the components of the equation (strike percentage, along with swinging, looking, and foul strike rates). Today, I’ll look at the starters with strikeout rate downside hinted at by xK%, but expand my group of pitchers to both leagues.
Earlier this year, I updated my pitcher expected strikeout rate metric, or xK%, with new coefficients. The equation uses a pitcher’s overall percentage of strikes thrown, as well as the breakdown between the types of strikes he generates — swinging, looking, and foul. We could use xK% over a smaller sample given that its denominator is pitches, rather than batters faces, so it likely stabilizes much more quickly.
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Yesterday, I listed the 20 pitchers with the largest gaps between their ERA and SIERA marks, with their ERA marks sitting significantly higher than their SIERA marks, suggesting serious potential for improvement moving forward. Today, I’ll list the pitchers on the other side of the coin, the 20 with ERA marks significantly lower than their SIERA marks, suggesting real potential for ERA regression.
We’re nearing the midpoint of the season (wow has it come quickly!), so it’s finally time to check in on the starting pitchers whose ERA marks are significantly higher than their SIERA marks. Naturally, many on this list are bad, even after figuring in some improvement, but there are enough potentially good pitchers that would make for actual fantasy targets. So let’s discuss them. For completeness purposes, I’m listing the entire top 20, but will only discuss those that matter.
Change in pitch mix often coincides with a change in performance. It’s one of the few statistical changes we could identify immediately. So let’s take a look at which American League starting pitchers have changed their pitch mix versus last year the most.
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Yesterday, I listed a slew of hitters whose HR/FB rates sit far higher than we expected heading into the year. But there have been so many darn surprises, I felt the need to continue discussing names. These are the guys that I literally do a double take when I see their HR/FB rates and think “wait…WHAT?!?!”. Once again, I included their xHR/FB rate marks as well to help gauge how sustainable these surprise power sources are.
Let’s continue our perusal through the various leaderboards, returning back to power and HR/FB rate. We’ll go through the HR/FB leaders, include their xHR/FB rate marks (not adjusted for home park) and marvel of their awesomeness.
I despise the use of small sample sizes, but pitchers change so frequently that it’s not so silly after all to evaluate shifts in underlying skills over a relatively small number of starts. So as I do every once in a while, I peruse the SwStk% leaderboard over the last 30 days. Let’s discuss some of the interesting names on there, shall we?
