About a month ago, I shared the pitcher expected K% regression equation I came up with that does a great job of estimating what a pitcher’s strikeout percentage should be given the combination of his called, swinging and foul strikes. Since then, I have wanted to do the same for a pitcher’s walk percentage. Unfortunately, there have been many attempts in the past, but with much less success than for a pitcher’s expected strikeout percentage. I believe the highest R-squared attained has been in the low 0.50 range, which isn’t bad, but clearly suggests that there’s a lot more going on that isn’t being accounted for.

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When the Toronto Blue Jays, by way of Mike Aviles, picked up Esmil Rogers for John Farrell this offseason, I thought…well, not much. I don’t care for Farrell, and as far as returns go, Aviles for Farrell and then Aviles and Yan Gomes for Rogers seemed fine.

When I dove into his stats from 2012, I saw a guy who improved pretty dramatically when he got out of Colorado. I also saw a guy with a pretty strong profile for relief success – a fair number of strikeouts, a walk rate that wouldn’t kill you, and an above-average groundball rate.

So I thought the Jays had picked up a decent 7th inning guy.

I did not think they had picked up a solid 5th starter in this deal, mostly because Rogers only had 22 major league starts to his name, accompanied by an ERA over six in 100 innings or so. He also wasn’t a guy who had ever been successful at the Triple-A level as a starter.
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Jered Weaver has made a career out of outperforming his expected ERA metrics. In his first seven seasons, he has posted an ERA below his SIERA in six of those and sports a career 3.27 ERA versus a 3.94 SIERA. Along with Matt Cain, he has become the poster boy for the outlier group whose luck metrics don’t regress to the league average like the majority of Major League pitchers. He’s the exception to the rules.

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Homer Bailey is pitching like an ace. In his seventh professional season, everything has come together for the one-time fifth-best prospect in baseball. It’s been a long rise to the top for Bailey, who didn’t have a sub-4.00 ERA until his sixth professional season. While his 2012 performance was a major step forward, Bailey has managed to get even better in 2013. Through 90 innings this season, Bailey has nearly matched his season-high in WAR. His 2.68 FIP rates 11th among qualified starters. Bailey may have taken a while to reach meet his lofty expectations, but the wait is well worth it given his current performance.

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Welcome to the fastball velocity edition of the deep league waiver wire. While fastball velocity obviously isn’t everything, it does highly correlate with strikeout rate and a spike in velocity often leads to a surge in strikeout rate. These two pitchers embody this theme perfectly.

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Mike Leake has an ERA under three and his batting average on balls in play is over .300. Is he a pickup?

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Yesterday, I identified which starting pitchers may be due for an increase in walk percentage given their pedestrian F-Strike% marks. Although not as good a proxy as SwStk% is for K%, F-Strike% is probably the best singular metric for a quick look at how good a pitcher’s control is. Using the same data set as yesterday, these are the pitchers who have posted walk percentages well above what their F-Strike% suggest.

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Corey Kluber is the latest pitcher to go from journeyman to stud. The 27-year-old had just 12 starts in the majors prior to 2013. After a weak spring performance, he didn’t even break camp with the Cleveland Indians. It took an injury to Brett Myers to finally give Kluber a shot. Through 10 starts, things look pretty promising. After tossing eight shutout innings against the Washington Nationals Sunday, Kluber now has a 3.15 FIP and 2.95 xFIP on the season. That’s one heck of a performance from a pitcher who had started the last four seasons in Triple-A.

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Although we have done a pretty good job determining what underlying statistics can combine to formulate a strong expected strikeout percentage metric, unfortunately the same cannot be said for a pitcher’s walk percentage. Though one would assume the majority of a pitcher’s control skill would show up in his ability to throw strikes, whether by throwing first pitch strikes or throwing the ball inside the strike zone, that just isn’t the case. But of course that doesn’t mean that this data is useless.

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There aren’t many reasons to watch the Seattle Mariners. For several years now there was a singular reason to do so and it had something to do with a guy who goes by “King.” But in 2013, there’s an encore for every Felix Hernandez gem and his name is Hisashi Iwakuma.

Seattle is the kind of media market that ensures players fly under the radar (see Martinez, Edgar). So there are probably plenty of you that look up from your spreadsheets and see a 7-1 record with a 1.79 ERA and 0.82 WHIP and wonder how you could have completely forgotten about this guy.

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