Joe Biagini (Blue Jays)
Toronto took Biagini in the Rule 5 draft before the 2016 season and the selection is now paying dividends. He started this season as a reliever but transitioned to being a starter in early May. Since then, the 27-year-old has posted a respectable 3.86 ERA (3.21 FIP). I watched his last start at home against Texas and here are my thoughts.
Identifying pitching breakouts as they happen can be hard. Anticipating them, even harder. Savvy readers of sites such as this rely on plate discipline metrics, batted ball data, and other indicators designed to tease out luck from results in order to uncover which performances have staying power and which are fleeting. And while we’ve arrived at the point in the season when most pitching rates have stabilized, a simple change in pitch mix can render those indicators obsolete. Think Matt Shoemaker and his splitter, Jake Arrieta and his cutter, Max Scherzer and his curveball, or Sonny Gray and his slider.
If you can spot a pitcher pulling unexpected arrows from his quiver as he does it, then cheers to you. But it’s difficult to do that at scale. While trying to anticipate a change in pitch mix before it happens may seem futile at times, doing so is a bet on potential. And what we talk about when we talk about “stuff,” is really potential. One of the components upon which that potential relies, aside from command and health, is an optimal pitch mix.
To identify which pitchers could benefit by throwing their more effective offerings a little more frequently, we have a number of tools at our disposal. Today, we’ll use some of those tools to identify the league’s underthrown four-seam fast balls and sinkers and the pitchers who underthrow them.
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At the end of January, I introduced the latest hitter version of xHR/FB, featuring the Statcast fueled metric, Brls/BBE (barrels per batted ball event). I failed to discuss the pitcher side of the ledger, but their barrels against are tracked too, of course. While I haven’t performed any sort of analysis or run a regression, I have to assume that just like for hitters, Brls/BBE allowed by pitchers are going to correlate rather highly with their own HR/FB rates. Unlike for hitters though, it’s probably very inconsistent from year to year, which is why I never bothered to look into it.
Maybe it’s unfair to do a “what’s wrong with this guy?” piece on a guy the night after he goes 7 IP, 6 H, 1 BB, 1 ER, 5 K, but I don’t think a strong outing against KC does much the quell the concerns those have with Justin Verlander. I decided to write this up last night after watching the outing and learned quickly this morning that I wasn’t the only one still concerned as I received this text:
I pay people to address me as that in texts and real life conversations. LOL, just kidding, I don’t have real life conversations. On the year, Verlander has a 4.50 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, 21% K, 10% BB, 9% SwStr, and 1.2 HR in 68 IP. I dug into the numbers and here are the findings:
We decided to push the waiver wire pod this weekend for the holiday, but I wanted to write up a little something about pitchers to keep an eye on tonight.
TWO-START ARMS
Shallow:
Moore has been rounding into form a bit over his last four starts with a 3.28 ERA and 21 Ks in 24.7 IP, but he does have a 1.49 WHIP and I might be careful with that Washington start. Hellickson has a 1.7 K:BB and 1.6 HR/9 so I just can’t see starting him anywhere right now. I like Montgomery, but he’s been markedly worse on the road with a 16% K rate and 1.3 K:BB, compared to 27% and 3.4 at home. I’d probably start Tillman if I have him, but I’m not sure I’d seek him out on a waiver wire.
Sonny Gray | 3.34 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 23% K, and 7% BB in 29.7 IP
Gray has only made five starts, but he’s looking as sharp as ever. He missed all of April, but he certainly looks health right now. His velocity is at a career-best 93.4 mph (94 w/the four-seamer; 93 w/the sinker). Here’s what else I’ve seen in the stats and video of his last two starts:
Dinelson Lamet (Padres)
Note: The camera angle was a little off, so my takes on his horizontal breaks may be off also.
The 24-year-old righty throws out of a high 3/4 arm slot. He’s a maximum effort guy and at times falls off to the mound’s first base side.
5/25/17
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Leading Off: Question of the Day
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Last season the Cubs pitching had a great BABIP, .255, the best in MLB by quite a margin. This has been attributed to superior defense and great pitching. Both of these seem like good enough explanations. This season, with roughly the same team, their BABIP has dropped to .286, effectively league average.
Now, there is a lot you may assume from these numbers. You may think, of course, BABIP is so unpredictable. Of course a team that was above average one season would return to average the following season. Fair enough, you could say that. Some argue their outfield defense has taken a step back. That might be true.
These are all guesses and assumptions, but fortunately we have a few more tools for evaluating quality of contact, so let’s see what they may tell us about this Cubs pitching staff. We can use Statcast to evaluate quality of contact. When we do so, it paints a bit of a different picture.
| Year | xAVG | xOBP | xSLG | xBABIP | xBACON | xOBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | .234 | .290 | .365 | .296 | .318 | .286 |
| 2016 | .233 | .303 | .373 | .289 | .314 | .294 |
| 2017 | .247 | .320 | .395 | .305 | .330 | .311 |
Last week, I discussed five surprising American League starting pitchers sitting among the leaders in SwStk%. All of them had enjoyed surging versus 2016. Today, I’ll discuss pitchers on the other side of the coin, surprises toward the bottom of the SwStk% leaderboard, all of whom have suffered declines compared to last season.