Yesterday, I reviewed the hitters who have underperformed their xwOBA marks the most. Now let’s flip over to the overperformers. Once again, I acknowledge the flaws in the metric and the existence of consistent underperformers and overperformers. If one of the hitters on this list has consistently overperformed, I’ll note it.
In the last two days, I reviewed league average hitting and pitching metrics to understand what was driving the decline in offense. Now let’s return to discussing individual players. We know that Statcast’s xwOBA has its flaws, as most (all?) estimator metrics do. But it’s the best we have and it doesn’t need to be perfect to provide us with actionable information. Furthermore, we have historical data, so when we see a hitter consistently underperforming or overperforming, we could reasonably conclude that the metric is not accounting for something and ignore the player’s placement on the list.
Yesterday, I dove into some of the hitting metrics to determine what has been driving the decline in offense. Today, let’s over to the pitching side and review another set of metrics. Obviously, we use a lot of the same metrics on each side, so I’ll only present and discuss those that weren’t shared yesterday.
We’re about a month into the season (holy cow, seriously, it’s whizzed by so far!), and offense is down at levels we haven’t witnessed in a loooooong time. So I’m going to take a break from my usual player specific leader and laggard boards and review some leaguewide metrics. You may have noticed in your fantasy league standings that pitching ratios are significantly better than we’re used to. In my shallow 12-team mixed league, four teams are sitting pretty with a sub-3.00 ERA! Two teams have a sub-1.00 WHIP (I’m barely above at a 1.0057)…whaaaaaaaaaaat?! Even in my AL-Only Tout Wars, four teams have posted a sub-3.00 ERA, which is just insane! Naturally, these strong pitching results must mean that offense has been missing. Let’s review some of the most basic of metrics to find out what’s driving the decline in offense.
Ya know what I care most about from a starting pitcher? The ability to generate whiffs. So if I could choose just one metric that excludes ERA and any estimators to evaluate a pitcher, it would be SwStk%. So let’s review the top 10 starting pitchers in SwStk%, as there are some surprises in the group.
Yesterday, I shared and discussed the nine qualified starting pitchers that have most underperformed their SIERA marks. Let’s now flip over to the overperformers. This group has posted ERAs significantly below their SIERA marks. Are these ideal sell high candidates? Let’s find out.
With qualified starting pitchers having made four or five starts, it’s the perfect time to start comparing ERA to SIERA marks. While ERA stares us all in the face and could cause panic when it’s significantly higher than expected or excitement when it’s far lower, it’s not all that meaningful over a small sample. Instead, we should be focused almost solely on the underlying skills, and mostly ignore the actual results. Luckily, we have a metric that accounts for these underlying skills and calculates an estimated ERA based on those skills — SIERA. It’s all I look at over the first few months of the season. Heck, I’m not sure there’s a time at all during the season where I choose to use ERA instead of SIERA! So with that in mind, let’s first review the qualified starting pitchers that have most underperformed their SIERA marks. Do any of these names make for good trade targets? Let’s find out.
Over the last few days, I have shared the wacky rates hitters have posted over the small sample early season so far. Let’s now jump to starting pitchers. A total of 27 starters have made three starts so far, while the rest of the qualified are sitting on two. So these rates are not very meaningful, but are certainly fun to look at.
Let’s finish running through the extreme performances on the hitting side before moving to the pitchers. Today I’ll check in on the batted ball type related metrics.
Let’s continue on our journey of identifying the extreme offensive performers so far over the first week and a half of the season.
