Archive for Starting Pitchers

Very rarely do teams consummate a prospect-for-prospect swap. It seems as though GMs favor the “devil you know” over the “devil you don’t” approach, preferring to keep the young players whom they have invested time, energy and money developing.

However, the Chicago White Sox and the Texas Rangers made just such a deal in December of 2006. In a pitching prospect challenge trade, the Rangers sent former 1st rounder John Danks to the South Side as part of a deal that shipped Brandon McCarthy to Arlington. While the move was viewed as relatively even at the time, Danks has emerged as an ace-quality starter, while McCarthy has battled finger and shoulder maladies. After an inconsistent rookie season, Danks made tremendous strides in 2008:

2007: -1.62 WPA/LI, 5.50 ERA
2008: 2.99 WPA/LI, 3.32 ERA

Danks lowered his ERA by well over 2 runs this past season. Will that dramatic improvement hold? In a word, yes.

Danks upped his K rate slightly, from 7.06 in ’07 to 7.34 in ’08. He also slashed his walk rate significantly, from 3.5 BB/9 to 2.63 BB/9. However, the biggest difference in Danks’ numbers came in the home run department:

2007: 1.81 HR/9, 13.8 HR/FB, 34.8 GB%
2008: 0.69 HR/9, 7.4 HR/FB, 42.8 GB%

An extreme flyball pitcher in ’07, Danks generated grounders at a much higher clip in 2008. Consequently, his home run rate dropped from untenably high to comfortably below average. He may give some of that gain back next season (his HR/FB rate was pretty low; it tends to stick around 11% for pitchers) but he should be able to limit the longball damage and avoid another 2007 fireworks spectacle, given his more even GB/FB distribution. Given the homer-happy tendencies of U.S. Cellular Field, this is no small consideration.

With a few more strikeouts, as well as significantly less walks and homers, Danks cut his FIP ERA from 5.54 in 2007 all the way down to 3.44 in 2008. To what can we attribute this dramatic turnaround? A look at Danks’ pitch data reveals the addition of a new weapon:

(FB=fastball, SL=Slider, CT=Cutter, CB=Curveball, CH=Changeup XX= unidentified. The first number is the % that the pitch was thrown, the number in parentheses is the velocity)

2007: FB 61%(89.5), SL 0.6%(81), CB 17.4%(76.9), CH 21%(81.7), XX 2.7%
2008: FB 52.2%(91.3), SL 4.7%(83.9), CT 16.4%(87.1), CB 6.4%(77) CH 20.3%(82.8), XX 4.7%

In addition to gaining nearly 2 MPH on his fastball, Danks added a cutter to his repertoire. A look at Josh Kalk’s pitch F/X data reveals why this offering is so important to Danks’ development: the cutter gives him a pitch to work away from lefties and in on the hands of right-handers. Essentially, the offering opens up a whole new quadrant of the strike zone previously unavailable to him.

Danks is no flash in the pan. Every statistical and scouting measure available points to his breakout 2008 campaign as legitimate. Don’t hesitate to invest heavily in this southpaw: he’s here to stay among the elite arms in the American League.

Yesterday, Peter talked about a Marlins starter headed toward acedom (if he’s not there already) in Ricky Nolasco. Today, I’m going to examine a Florida hurler who is headed in the exact opposite direction: left-hander Scott Olsen.

A few years back, Olsen looked like an organizational pillar. In his first full year in the big leagues (2006), he struck out 8.27 batters per nine innings. Sure, he needed some refinement (3.74 BB/9), but young lefties equipped with a hopping 91 MPH fastball, a good slider and a promising changeup do not grow on trees. Olsen posted a 4.33 FIP ERA as a 22 year-old, with seemingly plenty of room for growth.

Whatever the reason might be, Olsen’s 2007 campaign surely did not turn out the way that many people expected. He was hammered for a 5.81 ERA, and while that was partially the result of an abnormally high .350 BABIP, his controllable skills were not much better. Olsen’s FIP ERA soared to 5.33 in ’07, a full run higher than his breakout rookie campaign. After punching out over 8 batters per nine innings in 2006, Olsen’s K rate fell to 6.78 and his walk rate soared to 4.33 per nine innings. After having thrown his fastball 62.4 percent in 2006, he threw the heat over 70 percent of the time in ’07 while neglecting his changeup (he threw it 19.2% in ’06, but just 8.5% in ’07). His fastball also showed a slight dip in velocity, from 90.9 MPH to 90.1 MPH.

In 2008, Olsen went back to throwing his changeup more often, but the results were not much better. Sure, his 4.20 ERA seems like a dramatic improvement over his 5.81 showing the previous year, but that “improvement” is built upon a house of cards. Olsen was the beneficiary of a very low .266 BABIP, and his FIP ERA was still an ugly 5.02. His strikeout rate fell precipitously (again), all the way down to 5.04 whiffs per nine innings. He did exhibit better control (3.08 BB/9), but it wasn’t enough to offset the dramatic downturn in his K rate. The most startling aspect of Olsen’s 2008 campaign was his total lack of velocity: his fastball averaged just 87.8 MPH, with his slider and change also coming in slower.

Since his stellar rookie season, Olsen has lost 3 MPH off of his fastball. With that loss of zip, Olsen’s strikeout rate has fallen off of a cliff, as he’s gone from a pitcher capable of dominating lineups to a guy who struck out fewer batters per nine innings than Jarrod Washburn and Darrell Rasner. Be it a physical problem or something coaching related (he’s had a few run-ins with teammates and was suspended in 2007), the current version of Olsen is not nearly the fledging ace that we saw during the 2006 season. The ERA sure looks better, but his improvement in 2008 was illusory. Until Olsen proves that he’s capable of missing bats once again, he’s someone that you want to avoid investing in.

I’ll admit it: I have a mancrush on Ricky Nolasco.

How many people realize just how good he was this year? Or, more importantly, how good he’s likely to be next year? Chances are, most of the people in your fantasy league are either unaware of Nolasco, or don’t fully appreciate how good he is.

This year, Nolasco finished with a 3.52 ERA and 186 strikeouts in 212 innings pitched. That’s a very good season, but his overall numbers don’t reflect just how well Nolasco pitched for most of the season.

Going in to his start on June 15 against the Rays, Nolasco sported a 4.63 ERA, and had a 43/26 strikeout/walk ratio in 72 innings. However, on that fateful night in Tropicana Field, something changed. Perhaps it was a minor adjustment that paid major dividends, or the result of something Nolasco had been working on for years; either way, Nolasco was never the same after.

On June 15, Nolasco allowed two earned runs allowed in eight and two thirds innings, with one walk and 12 strikeouts. It was only the third time he had walked less than two batters (the second time was his previous start), and the first time he had struck out more than seven in a start.

After his start against the Rays, Nolasco had 19 more starts. He walked one or fewer batters in all but one of those starts. And he struck out seven or more batters in 10 of those starts. In fact, including his June 15 start, Nolasco finished the season by pitching 140 innings with a 2.95 ERA, striking out 143 and walking 16.

Think about that: 143 strikeouts and 16 walks.

For comparison, CC Sabathia pitched 130 innings with the Milwaukee Brewers this year, and had a K/BB ratio of 128/25. From June 15 on, Nolasco had a higher strikeout rate and a lower walk rate than Sabathia did in his time with the Brewers.

Of course, Nolasco may not be in the same class as CC Sabathia. Nolasco’s one weakness is that he is somewhat homer prone: he gave up 28 long balls this season, including 15 in his amazing 140-inning stretch to end the season. However, that is not an absurdly high total, and it is artificially enhanced by a rather high amount of balls in the air that became homers.

Nolasco allowed a homer on 10.6% of the fly balls hit against him. League average for a starter is somewhere around 11%. Furthermore, Nolasco plays in a spacious ballpark, suggesting that he should allow even fewer homers than average. Therefore, we can reasonably expect his homer rate to regress next year.

Nolasco had a 2.95 over his 140-inning stretch of dominance despite having a homer rate higher than it should have been.

Even if we assume that Nolasco can’t possibly be as dominant as he was from June 15 until the end of this season, we have every reason to expect that Ricky Nolasco is going to be one of the best pitchers in fantasy baseball next season. And he has the potential to be one of the biggest steals of draft day.

By traditional standards of measuring a pitcher’s effectiveness, Red Sox righty Daisuke Matsuzaka had a stellar 2008 season. With an 18-3 record and a shiny 2.90 ERA, one would be led to believe that he was one of the very best starters in the majors. When one digs a little deeper, however, there are plenty of trends that point to regression for Matsuzaka in 2009. Here are a few of the factors working against Dice-K:

BABIP: Matsuzaka got plenty lucky on balls put in play in 2008, with a .267 BABIP. BABIP for a pitcher tends to hover around .300, and in fact Dice-K posted a .306 BABIP in his first state-side campaign in 2007. Even if we allow for Matsuzaka to post a slightly lower-than-average BABIP because of the quality of Boston’s defense (the Red Sox posted the 5th-best Defensive Efficiency in baseball), he’s still due for regression to the mean.

Walk rate: As any Red Sox fan can attest, Matsuzaka has a maddening tendency to nibble at the corners. Dice K’s walk rate went from a mediocre 3.52/9 in 2007 to a bloated 5.05/9 in 2008. Among starters with at least 100 innings pitched, only Tom Gorzelanny, Fausto Carmona and Barry Zito walked more batters per nine innings. For the record, none of those three guys had an ERA under 5.15.

Home run rate : Matsuzaka’s home run rate fell from 1.10/9 in 2007 to 0.64/9 in 2008. However, there are no real trends to support that drop, as Dice-K generated about the same number of groundballs (about 38 percent), flyballs (43 percent) and line-drives (18 percent) in both seasons. The only difference was a dip in his home run/fly ball rate, from 10% in 2007 to 6.1% in 2008. HR/FB rates tend to normalize around 11 percent for pitchers, so Matsuzaka is due for regression to the mean here as well. As a flyball pitcher, Dice-K is pretty unlikely to give up just 12 long balls ever again.

Left on base%: Dice-K stranded 80.6% of baserunners in 2008, well above the league average and his 2007 showing (73.9%). If that number comes back to earth, so will his ERA.

All of these auspicious numbers led to a large dichotomy between Matsuzaka’s actual ERA (2.90) and his Fielding Independent ERA (4.03). That’s the third-largest difference among starters tossing at least 100 frames (Armando Galarraga is first, Justin Duchscherer is second).

None of this is to say that Daisuke Matsuzaka is a lousy pitcher. He ranked among the top 20 starters in strikeout rate and, as his Fangraphs page attests, Matsuzaka has a cornucopia of pitches at his disposal. However, if you’re expecting another sub-3 ERA from Dice-K, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Don’t let those W-L numbers fool you: Matsuzaka is good, but not that good.