To date, all of my Effective Velocity research has centered on pitchers. That is probably because the story that introduced me to the concept of EV focused on Trevor Bauer in the narrative, which tied the concept to the position in my mind. However, the more I’ve thought about it over the last several weeks, the more convinced I’ve become that catchers would likely share the responsibility for their pitchers’ EV adherence. After all, for every Bauer, there are probably dozens of pitchers who rarely if ever shake off the signs their catchers throw down. Meanwhile, the concept of EV falls into the game-calling strategy bucket that we more typically associate with catchers than pitchers.

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The research I’ve done on Effective Velocity to date has led to some interesting examples that in many cases suggest the strategy has an impact on pitcher success.  But to be able to really take advantage of that implication, I felt I needed to create an ERA estimator that would apply to all pitchers.  If that metric were more predictive of future performance than our current best ERA estimators like FIP, then fantasy owners could systematically use it to make better decisions based on pitchers’ adherence to the philosophy of Effective Velocity.

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In my previous article on Effective Velocity, I discovered that the pitchers who had EV Adherence rates above the 80th percentile collectively had an ERA that was 10 points below their FIP between 2013 and 2016. Put differently, the pitchers who most closely followed the principles of Effective Velocity seemed to be able to consistently outperform their peripheral numbers, presumably because their sequences of pitches had large perceived differences in velocity for hitters, which kept those hitters off-balance and generated weaker contact on average. That is a pretty notable finding because EV Adherence is a strategy that anyone can pick up, and my research for this week’s article demonstrates that many pitchers have done so in recent seasons and found success.

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Before I posted my Effective Velocity article from last week, Perry Husband was gracious enough to provide me with some feedback, much of which will guide me in improving the simplified EV calculation I am currently using. But rather than refine my math right away, I want to push forward a bit to a point where I have a real metric to evaluate pitchers. My hope is that I can then more easily test whether my attempted improvements to my EV calculations are making real improvements by testing the performance of the metric. To follow that roadmap, my next step now that I have calculated the EV of every pitch is to figure out which pitchers are executing an EV-friendly game plan, whether or not they realize they are doing so.

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I went to the SABR Analytics Conference in Phoenix about a month ago, and one of my favorite presentations was by Perry Husband, creator and champion of the concept of Effective Velocity.  The presentation actually jogged my memory for an article I read on SB Nation by Jason Turbow back in 2014 that introduced me to the concept and chronicled some of Husband’s efforts to get MLB teams to buy into his idea.

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I’m barely getting these up before the start of the season, but given my track record with bold predictions, you probably shouldn’t listen to me anyway.

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No term annoys a sabermetrically-inclined fantasy player more than Proven Closer. As far as baseball has come in the last decade, I still won’t feel confident that Shawn Kelley, for example, will be given an opportunity to close until the ball is in his hands in his first ninth inning this season. That said, I think the casual rebuttal of Anyone Can Close misses the mark in the opposite direction. Any reliever might perform well in high-leverage situations, but a traditional closer faces an extra challenge that most setup men do not: he has to regularly face batters from both sides of the plate.

For most pitchers, it is more difficult to get opposite-handed hitters out than same-handed hitters. Since 2010, relievers who have faced at least 100 batters from both sides of the plate have averaged a platoon split of 44 points of wOBA, and that sample is biased toward relievers teams are comfortable using against batters from both sides. Many relievers, and not just LOOGYs, rarely face hitters on the opposite side of the plate because of the challenge.

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At the MLB owners meetings earlier this week, the competition committee agreed on a motion to raise the bottom of the strike zone from the hollow below the knee cap to the top of the hitter’s knees. That change isn’t a done deal for 2017—or at all—but it is an interesting idea for an attempt to cut down increasing strikeout totals in baseball. The ESPN Stats and Info tweet in that previous link shows the marked increase of called strikes in the lower third of the zone in recent seasons, a trend no doubt influenced by teams’ recent dedication to pitch-framing catchers.

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After a flurry of recent moves, the Mariners ended Wednesday with starter Drew Smyly as a new member of their rotation. Smyly has long been one of my favorite unheralded pitchers in the game, primarily because of his strikeout and walk rates, which Dave Cameron explained had him on the short list of baseball’s best starters in recent seasons.

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Even though relief pitching dominated the narrative of both the 2015 and 2016 postseasons, and even though Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen made his contract look looked relatively tame inside of two weeks, I still couldn’t believe that Mark Melancon got a four-year, $62 million contract. Prior to that deal, the two biggest reliever contracts were four years and $50 million for Jonathan Papelbon and five years for $47 million for B.J. Ryan, two contracts their respective teams no doubt came to regret.

Melancon himself has been healthy and productive in his four seasons with the Pirates. He has thrown at least 71 innings every season with ERAs between 1.39 and 2.23 each year. However, he has achieved that success because of beneficial contextual factors and excellent command—he has walked between 1.0 and 1.6 batters per season in those four seasons—with good but not exceptional strikeout ability. He struck out 8.2 batters per nine in 2016 and has done the same for his career. That is only the 60th best rate among the 85 relievers who threw 60 or more innings last season, and Melancon’s 91.8 mph fastball does not hint at any untapped strikeout potential. Chapman and Jansen each struck out more than 13 batters per nine in 2016.

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