Archive for The Change

A stat that we don’t talk about much just hit the stabilization point, meaning it’s offering us more signal than noise. Pull percentage! It only takes about thirty balls in play to stabilize, and so it’s fairly easy to quickly see if a player has changed their approach at the plate in this way. Even opposite field percentage, which takes 65 balls in play, is pretty much stable for most hitters by now.

A player we do talk about a lot is Jorge Soler. Dripping with upside, the slugger hasn’t performed quite to expectations this year, whiffing more and looking a bit lost at the plate sometimes. As a consequence, he keeps showing up in trades, as some look to use the remaining promise to cash in, while others see this as a last chance to buy an emerging slugger.

Let’s look at the player through the lens of the stat.

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For all the Anthony DeSclafani and Chase Anderson love I’m getting in my inbox and Twitter feed, there’s equal parts consternation when it comes to Drew Hutchison and Shane Greene. Rightfully so. The point with the deep sleepers is to hit the lottery, but that holds a hidden second moment, just as important as the first: cutting bait before it’s too late. Have we reached that moment with the two early season duds?

First, it’s tempting to see every pitcher through the new stats on the website. Shane Greene is top 15 in Soft%! Anthony DeSclafani is top 20! Drew Hutchison is almost exactly league average in soft, medium, and hard contact allowed!

But we shouldn’t.

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Is there a more perplexing pitcher this year than Alex Wood has been so far? His pitches are all there, in the same quantities, at the same velocities, and with the same shapes… and the results — when it comes to balls and strikes at least — are nowhere to be found. Even my favorite pitch type peripherals are all out of whack.

How does a pitcher with the same stuff fail so miserably?

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So often, the first take takes. In other words, whatever prognostication came first, it’ll stick long after the data has taken a new turn. In most respects, when it comes to the games on the field, Addison Russell, Masahiro Tanaka, and Homer Bailey all started on the wrong foot this year. The trick is finding out — quickly — if there’s a chance that first look is obscuring the true value of these guys.

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Every year, pitchers add wrinkles in the spring. Most years, they forget them once they have to get batters out and the results count. In the case of today’s pitchers, though, we have three guys that found a new thing and stuck with it when the calendar switched to April. The results weren’t uniformly amazing for each of them, but a third pitch might mean wonders for misters Jimmy Nelson, Nathan Eovaldi, and Brad Boxberger.

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