The following is an experiment. I wanted to see if hitter exit velocity (EV) drops and by how much when a batter players through an injury. I am not sure before starting it where it would head and after a small stab at the data, I seemed to end up with more questions than answers.

The following may sound like a scientific study and in many ways, it is one. I am trying to take a theory and find a solution. Let me start with the theory.

First, injured players perform worse while playing through injury. I have tackled this idea as I looked back at the players’ stats the season before, of, and after the injury.

Talking to several hitters, they say they know when something is bugging them. They just can’t get hit the ball as hard as when they are healthy. Instead of trying to figure out if a player’s slump is from bad luck or injury, we have StatCast’s exit velocity to help us see if they are hitting the ball as hard.

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A.J. Cole Breakdown

The National’s righty made a spot start for the Nationals on August 22 and allowed four runs over seven innings of work. To start getting a profile of Cole, here are his pitching comps using his 2016 MLB.com grade. Additionally, I included his previous grades which I will discuss in a bit.

The pitcher list isn’t that exciting with most pitchers falling into the #4 to #5 starter range.

The big note I took away from the grades, was his declining fastball grade from MLB.com. It was 70 in 2014, 65 in 2015, and 55 this year. Additionally, here are the velocity speeds stated in the Baseball America Handbook for each year.

Season: Fastball Speed Description
2014: “… sits at 94-95 mph and regularly hits 97.”
2015: “… pitched comfortably at 91-93 … and bumped 96.”
2016: “… sits comfortably in the low 90s, pushing as high as 96 mph …”

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Pitch Velocity Effects on Groundballs, Exit Velocity, and Swinging Strikes

Last week, I examined Danny Duffy and several other writers have examined at him also. If you want to read up on various theories on my he is performing great and why that may change, go ahead. Instead, today I am going to concentrate on his fastball velocity changes and how the results change as the velocity changes.

Danny Duffy is starting to get some Cy Young consideration after spending part of the season in the bullpen. One cause for the turnaround is his fastball velocity increasing from 93.8 mph to 95 mph. The average velocity was even higher earlier in the season but it has been steadily dropping.

So what difference does it make if he is throwing 96 mph or 94 mph? Today, I am going to lay the groundwork for finding such an answer.

Simply, I looked at three different factors, exit (or batted ball) velocity (EV), groundball rate (GB%), and swinging-strike rate (SwStr%) and how each compared to a 1 mph velocity block. To help smooth out the results, I looked velocities between whole values like 90 mph to 91 mph and labeled them 90.5 mph. Also, I looked at values between 90.5 mph and 91.5 mph and put them in the 90 mph bin. I know there is overlap, but I hoped the higher number of samples would help smooth at the final results, especially with a limited number of samples at both ends of the data range.

To start off, here are Duffy’s average exit velocities for a given range of fastball velocities.

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In last week’s MASH Report, I ran an up-to-date ranking of the of my pitcher injury finding metric, PAIN. The metric is supposed to find pitchers who are displaying traits of possible injuries. Reader, lostatlimbo, wondered:

“I’m also a little disappointed to see no mention of the % of actual injuries from high PAIN scores vs low to validate the data. Plenty of the pitchers with even negative scores have still been injured this season and naturally anything can happen at any time, but is there a significant statistical difference between the upper tiers and lower?“

Besides some initial testing on that season’s pitchers, I haven’t extensively run a recent test on the data. While information has always passed the eye test, it is time to dig a little more.

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Quick Looks: Julio Urias

Last Saturday, I was watching the Cards-Cubs game until Alex Reyes was done pitching. I moved over to the Dodgers hoping to see what Brett Anderson looked like. I missed his one inning start. After a brief appearance of Josh Fields, the Dodgers brought in Julio Urias and I got some bonus prospect coverage.

I was not impressed at all with his current production level. He seems to be a thrower in the Tim Lincecum mold and doesn’t really know where the ball is going at times. This wildness can be seen in his 4.1 BB/9.

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Quick Looks: Kyle Hendricks, Luke Weaver, and Alex Reyes

Saturday’s Cardinals-Cubs game made for some good pitcher watching with three young pitchers taking the mound. Let me start with Hendricks.

A couple of years back, I did a Quick Look at Hendricks and here were my thoughts:

I just have not seen enough of him to convince me he can keep up the results. I would not be surprised one bit if his ERA from now to season’s end was near 4.00 (which is where his ERA estimators are hanging out).

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Valuing Danny Duffy

Putting a future value on Danny Duffy is fairly difficult because he has never performed like he is right now. Here are some of his stats after his one run complete game last night.

• 9 wins
• 2.82 ERA, 3.14 FIP
• 10.0 K/9
• 1.8 BB/9
• 1.0 HR/9

Let’s start with the biggest changes and the one value which sticks out, the 10.0 K/9. Duffy is getting more strikeouts by getting hitters to swing at his pitches at career high rate (52%) and they make contact at a career-low rate (72%). This dual combination has led to a career high swinging strike rate (14%). By using the simple rule K% = 2 * SwStr%, Duffy is projected to have a 28% K% and it is 29% this season. With these matching up, I expect little regression with his strikeout rate.

A search for why the transformation as occurred begins with a 1.5 mph increase in his fastball velocity. The velocity increase raised his swinging strike rate on the pitch to a 13.6%. With the fastball velocity increase, his other pitches are playing up with his slider (15%) and change (21%) being at career highs in swinging strike percentage. I am not sure why these two pitches are performing better this season. They made be playing off his fastball as hitters are concentrating on his fastball. The pitches have a bit more movement and this could be the cause. Also, he may have changed his deception some. Or it could be a combination of several factors. All I know it is working.

Besides the increase strikeouts, Duffy continues to bring is walk rate under control which hurt his value early in his career. In 2012, his BB/9 was at 5.9 and this season it is a third of that value (1.8). The drop in walks along with the increase in strikeouts put his season’s K%-BB% at 23% for 6th best in the league.

The final aspect to understand with Duffy is he lives up in the strike zone and will give up a ton of fly balls which hurts and helps him. More fly balls mean more home runs and he will likely always have an HR/9 at or above 1.0. One the good side, the additional fly balls lead to more easy outs and he will normally have a suppressed BABIP (.286 on career) and an ERA less than his FIP (3.58 ERA vs 3.98 FIP in his career).

The big question is if Duffy can keep the high strikeout and low walk values going forward. It’s tough to tell, but we still have a month and a half of starts to monitor. Additionally, Duffy pitches at a spring training park with a Pitchf/x system installed so we will have an idea where his velocity sits next spring. I see his 2017 value being a major discussion point this offseason.

What’s left of Carlos Gomez?

Gomez was designated for assignment by the Astros and may end up a free agent soon. He was a top hitter from 2012 to 2014 when he averaged over 20 HR, 35 SB, and .270 AVG per season.

Examining his stats, the two big keys to his decline are his declining power and complete inability to make contact this season. With his power, it climbed steadily until he was 27 and has been falling fast as seen here.

Additionally, his Contact% (66%) abruptly fell to a career low. Gomez has always been a free swinger, so with his ability to make contact deteriorating, he has seen his strikeout rate jump 10 percentage points to 31% and batting average drop to .210.

Looking forward, overcoming both factors is going to be tough for him. He has not been able to stop the three-year decline in power. Even if he does, how much will it jump up? I don’t see him turning this issue around much. I could see him make quite a bit more contact since the drop was all at once. Even if the contact rate increase, will the lack of power just make him a bottom of the order player which produces some stolen bases?

With him, I am watching two items. Where he ends up this year and does that team try to make an improvement in his contact rate. The second is what his spring training and early season contact rate are next year. Right now, I don’t see him being productive and should only be taken as a late-round flier.

Michael Pineda’s Sky High ERA

Michael Pineda has seen a nice steady rise in his velocity to go with a 10.4 K/9 and a reasonable 2.6 BB/9.

With these great numbers, Pineda has a 5.07 ERA because he is getting hit hard as seen by his 1.4 HR/9 and .338 BABIP. The biggest issue I see with Pineda is he is basically just a fastball-slider pitcher (rarely throws a bad change). Hitters are holding off swinging at the slider (which he rarely throws for strikes) and looking for his fastball. Here are the triple slash lines when he is ahead, even, or behind in the count.

Behind: .345/.510/.628
Even: .312/.319/.563
Ahead: .186/.192/.314

He becomes dominant once ahead, but hitters are sitting on his fastball in all other counts because it is the only pitch he can throw for strikes. Unless he can start throwing the slider for strikes or develop a third league average pitch, he is going to continue to get hit hard.

Leaders in Home Runs Plus Stolen Bases

A few years back I created a metric to help find pitchers who are showing signs of a possible injury. I named the metric PAIN (Pitcher Abuse INdex). While I can easily publish the information at all times, I have not been able to dive into the results  as often as I would like. With the new arrangement with BJ Maack and me with the MASH Report, he will be looking at more of the daily and rehab updates and I can then dive into some deeper topics. Today, I will give an update on possible pitcher injuries.

There are just two inputs into the PAIN metric, fastball velocity, and Zone%. I have found drops in both to be indicators of possible pitcher injuries, so I decided to include the pair in the metric. Initially, I had to do a little back fitting to get the system to work. I have made a few minor tweaks over the years, but it has remained relatively constant.

One of the more recent tweaks I have made is to lower the bar for the players at risk. Initially, I made 100 the threshold for risk, but looking back, values of 90 are injured quite often. At some point in the future, I may adjust the formula so 100 is the threshold again.

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Cardinals Pitcher Call-Ups: Reyes and Weaver

The Cardinals called up Alex Reyes and he made his first major league appearance for the Cardinals bullpen last light. Reyes is a talent pitcher and here is some comparable pitchers with similar grades to his 2016 Baseball America prospect grade.

The list is dominated by hard throwers with good curve balls which describes Reyes.

Moving onto his Triple-A production this year, the 21-year-old has been a strikeout machine with 12.8 K/9, but he has some issues with walks (4.4 BB/9). Last night he averaged 99 mph with his fastball and was 98 mph in the Arizona Fall League last year. Besides the fastball, he has an above average curve ball. He is a talented pitcher and should be a top 20 pitcher for years to come if his change up is serviceable.

But to put it simply, all the talent doesn’t really matter this season. Reyes will not be useful in most leagues since he will be relegated to the bullpen and is currently not in line for Saves. In redraft leagues, let others fight over him. In keeper leagues, understand his value is limited this season. Now, if I was a non-contender in a keeper league, I would look to see if one of the contenders has Reyes and would try to pick him up for a piece which could help them win a championship.

Luke Weaver is the pitcher owners should be targeting this season instead of Reyes. To start with, here are some comparables for Weaver using MLB.com’s 2016 grades.

The list of pitchers doesn’t bring a ton of excitement to Weaver’s debut on Saturday. The key when looking at these grades is if he can get his curve or slider to be his third league-average pitch. Weaver has been extremely productive in Double-A posting a 1.40 ERA and 10.4 K/9, but a pitcher can dominate the minors with just two pitches. If viewing his start on Saturday, watch to see how his curve and slider work. If he can’t get them going, he may struggle the second or third time through the order.

As for fantasy, I think he is worth a stash in all leagues to see how he performs. I think he could be in the Cardinals’ rotation until the season end because he has only thrown 83 innings this year after throwing 124 IP last year so workload may not be an issue.

Dylan Bundy: Quick Look

I have been intrigued on how Dylan Bundy looks since moving to the Orioles rotation in mid-July. With his injuries and starting the season in the bullpen, I wanted to get an idea of what to expect from him as a starter. For the game, I picked his last start on August 7. Here are my thoughts:

• His fastball was at 92-97 mph with sink at the lower velocities. He had good command of this pitch and seemed to constantly hit is spots with it. This will help him get ahead of hitters who are looking for a pitch in the middle of the plate. His fastball seems to have a couple different movements and I would not be surprised if he has a four-seam fastball and a slower two-seamer.
• His split-change was at 85-87 mph also with plus late sink. This pitch was the best pitch he threw.
• His final pitch is a classic 12-6 curve at 77-80 mph which he used as a chase pitch for called strikes.
• As with any pitcher, when he hung the curve or change, they got crushed.
• If he throws like he did during this game next year, he is going to be a strikeout machine.

For next season, I like the possible production from him and he could be a top-20 to 40 pitcher …. if he stays healthy which is a huge if. I think he will be more valuable in shallow leagues where the replacement level is higher. In deeper leagues, he may end up a wasted pick if he goes back on the DL again for the season. Right now I would put a 140 IP, 9 K/9, and a 3.50 ERA on him for a 2017 projection.

T.J. House: Back in the majors

Going into last season, I had a huge crush on T.J. House after he put up some great numbers at the end of 2014. I bragged him up over the offseason and picked him up where ever I could. Right out of the gate of the 2015 season, House stunk it up and ended up the DL with an injury.

The biggest key I took away from my House love affair, for non-prospect who break out, any kink in their armor will probably make them unplayable. In House’s case, his velocity lost 2 mph from the previous season. There was no way he could keep up his 2014 production with a batting-practice fastball.

His return to the majors is only to the Indians bullpen and his fastball, which he should throw harder from the bullpen, only sits at 90 mph. He is unplayable in all leagues right now, but I will always remember the bond we shared that one offseason.

Introduction

I plan for this new series, Mixing Fantasy and Reality, to examine in detail how real happenings in baseball affect fantasy valuations. I had several projects I have worked on like xBABIP values and velocity differences in which I plan on including. The MASH Report took up quite a bit of my time compiling and tracking all the injuries and I didn’t have time for other outlets. Today marks a new beginning where I have an opportunity to make additional information available. This series will run on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

I am not going to completely ignore injuries. If a major injury happens or I think one will happen, I will include the information. Additionally, every Thursday I will write a detailed article exclusively on a few in-depth injury topics like my HURT and PAIN reports.

As for future articles, the format will likely be two to four main areas of discussion and maybe some interesting tidbit not found elsewhere. I am not sure if I will have a set topic rotation or if I will just follow the news. For a few articles, I will need to set some ground work to reference in future articles, so don’t expect all the articles to be full of background information like the first few. I hope you enjoy the change and let me know if you have any suggestions.

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