Archive for Starting Pitchers

Here is a look at some of the performance data for each team based on tonight’s matchup: Dallas Keuchel v. Clayton Kershaw. Links to the data where available.

The Dodgers v. Dallas Keuchel

• After a disastrous year vs. lefties in 2016 where they finished dead last in wOBA (.275) with a 22.4% K rate (13th-highest), they’ve soared to 5th in wOBA (.337) while standing pat in K rate at 22.3% (10th-highest).
• They’re 12th in wOBA (.281) against lefty sliders, Keuchel’s most-used secondary pitch (19%).
• They’re 6th in wOBA (.334) against lefty changeups, Keuchel’s best secondary by pitch value (6) which he used 13% of the time.

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Last offseason, I created an individual pitch metric, pERA, which gives each pitch an ERA and prospect grade based on its ground ball nature and swing-and-miss capability. With the 2017 season over, I’ve compiled the final 2017 values. This year, I’ve added in exit velocity (EV) grades for each pitch.

The process I used for creating pERA is in the article linked above but here is a quick rundown.

• The key change is to give each pitch an ERA value (pERA) based on the pitch’s swinging strike and groundball rate. All the values are based on the average values for starting pitchers. Closers will have higher grades because their stuff plays better coming out of the bullpen.
• The pitcher’s control is determined from their walk rate which is separate from the pitch grades.
• I’ve put each pitch on the 20-80 scale with 50 being average, 80 great, and 20 horrible. For starters, target pitchers with three average or better pitches. For relievers, they just need two pitches.

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Last week, I examined pitchers whose strikeout per nine (K/9) increased while the strikeout per plate appearance (K%) dropped. This article focuses on the pitchers who saw their strikeout rates go in the opposite directions. Besides the strikeout divergers, I’m going to include the walk rate divergers since both player sets aren’t long.

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The season seems to never end for fantasy baseball writers. Once the regular season is over, it’s time to begin writing player previews for the next season. Pitchers who’ve had their strikeout (K% and K/9) and walk rates change in different directions spin me for a loop. Now, I query these schizophrenic pitchers to start the preseason previews. I’ll give a quick look at some of these pitchers. I’ll start with those pitchers who’ve seen their K% (strikeout per batter faced) drop while K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings) increase.

Two reasons exist for why the rates diverge. The key for both is increasing the number of plate appearances per innings. More plate appearances lead to their K% dropping if the strikeouts remain constant per inning. The other factor is how many hits a pitcher allows (basically BABIP). If a pitcher had good luck on balls in play and recorded more outs, they could quickly get through an inning and thereby raise their K%. Once the BABIP normalizes, the K% will drop.
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Yesterday, I reviewed my 2017 starting pitcher strikeout rate upsider list, which produced embarrassing results. Let’s hope the downsider results look much improved. Once again, this list was compiled by using my pitcher xK% equation to identify starters whose 2016 xK% marks were significantly above their actual K% marks.

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At the beginning of January, I used my xK% equation to identify six starting pitchers with significant strikeout rate upside in 2017. Let’s see how these pitchers actually performed.

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Alas, we reach the final position to dive into for this year’s recap of Pod’s Picks & Pans. We finish with the starting pitchers, a group that always garners varying opinions. Let’s see how the players I was most bullish and bearish on versus the RotoGraphs consensus actually performed.

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Masahiro Tanaka and Jeff Samardzija had perplexing, enigmatic, and ultimately bad seasons. Many attempts were made to ascribe reasons or causes for their struggles. I think both will bounce back for very simple reasons; accordingly, I think both will be undervalued in 2018 for equally simple reasons.

Masahiro Tanaka

Travis Sawchik and Eno Sarris discussed his various ailments, so to speak, long after I gave up trying to diagnose him. The heat maps are interesting, and the splits are interesting, albeit a bit of an archaism.

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While 2017 was the year of the dinger, it also looks like it was the year of velocity. Has baseball changed (both the sport, and the physical ball itself)? The signs point to yes – but on the pitching from, the importance of velocity has never been higher. Exhibit A:

The slowest fastball the @Yankees threw tonight was 96 MPH… That is completely absurd.

— Daren Willman (@darenw) October 10, 2017

That’s not average. That’s not maximum. That’s … the slowest. Let’s borrow a little bit of math from the documentary “Fastball” to just put into context how crazy this is.

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For all intents and purposes, Kevin Gausman had a bad season. Like, catastrophically bad, such that has ERA was 10th-worst among qualified starters. That he was allowed to see enough innings to become a qualified starter should be construed as nothing short of a blessing for him.

On paper, sure. This narrative works on the surface, at the macro level. But Gausman had himself a season of two incredibly different halves. An aside: if you don’t pay attention to FanGraphs’ community research, you should. User jkved10 wrote a post about Gausman on July 24 — about the time I reluctantly convinced myself to roster him in my primary home league — in which jkved10 noticed a sudden change in Gausman’s release point. Kudos to the author for doing all the heavy lifting for me. Click through to familiarize yourself with the events that unfolded and the ensuing analysis, or dig around Brooks Baseball for yourself.

The results weren’t immediately promising at the time of his/her writing: a 4.94 ERA across six starts. Everything else under the hood, however, had changed: 12.2 strikeouts and only 2.6 walks per nine innings (K/9, BB/9), good for a 3.19 xFIP. Sure, everything else stunk; he was still allowing home runs and hits on balls in play at astronomical rates. But the peripherals very dramatically improved, having essentially doubled his K’s and halving his walks in that span.

Such success continued. In his 19 starts from June 21 onward, Gausman struck out 10 hitters-per-nine and recorded a 3.39 ERA despite a still-inflated rate of home runs to fly balls (HR/FB). A tale of two halves, indeed: prior to June 21, his 6.60 ERA was almost exactly doubly large. He was a second-half ace, and this was more than just regression to the mean — his success correlated, if not directly resulted from, his adjustment.

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