MASH Report (5/16/13)
A little light on the injury news front. I will look at one pitcher coming back from the DL and the Zone% values for DL pitchers.
• Zack Greinke returned from his post fight DL trip. He struck out four batters, walked none in just over five innings of work. A couple of signs point to him not being 100% though. First, the 29-year-old’s average fastball is down 1.5 mph from last season.
Also is Zone% is down for the third straight year. His average fastball speed follows the same trend.
Season: Zone%, Fastball Velocity (mph)
2010: 49%, 93.5
2011: 46%, 92.5
2012: 45%, 92.4
2013: 44%, 90.8
Zack is an aging pitcher. Soon he may end up on the DL for a reason besides basketball or fighting.
• Zone% is my new love child as a stat to examine pitchers. Sometimes I think I may be giving it a little too much injury prediction credit. I figured another small test is in order. I went back and looked at the Zone% for pitchers who went on the DL in May for arm issues. I didn’t want to look at injuries which may not have been pitching related like J.A. Happ’s fractured skull. Also, I wanted the pitcher in question to have thrown a few games, so I didn’t go back any further. The league average Zone% is 48.9% for 2013 and previously I found pitchers with Zone% under 47% to have higher injury risks.
| Name | Zone% |
| Josh Johnson | 39.3% |
| Tom Gorzelanny | 41.6% |
| Jake Westbrook | 43.1% |
| J.J. Putz | 44.1% |
| Roy Halladay | 45.5% |
| Joel Hanrahan | 45.9% |
| Scott Atchison | 46.1% |
| James McDonald | 46.2% |
| Jeurys Familia | 48.0% |
| Andrew Bailey | 51.0% |
| Vinnie Pestano | 54.9% |
| Average of the 11 values | 46.0% |
Only 2 of the the 11 pitcher had league average or better Zone%. Three had a better than 47%. Not all pitcher with sub 47% Zone% go on the DL. Half don’t, but if given the choice of velocity or Zone% to see who is ailing, give me Zone% every time to find those at risk.
• Finally, let me know if any players you want examined who may be dealing with injuries. I will probably look at some hitters who returned from the DL in April for my next report. I will see how they are performing since they have had some playing time.
Players on the DL
(*) 15 Day Disabled List
(**) 60 Day Disabled List
(***) 7 Day Concussion List
Red colored entries are updates since last report.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
Is there an easy way, using FG’s leaderboards, to compare a pitcher’s 2013 Zone% to prior year rates? While having a subpar Zone% may be bad generally, some guys just can’t throw strikes. It would be more interesting, I think, to look at pitchers who are having more trouble throwing strikes than they have had in past seasons.
It’s under Plate Discipline on the player pages, if that’s what you mean.
The easiest way, at least for me, is to export the leaders from both 2013 and 2012, but make sure your IP minimum is low enough in 2012 so all the 2013 pitchers will show values if they pitched. Maybe like 50 innings. Anyway, export those to Excel, then copy and paste the name, Zone% and playerID from 2012 onto the 2013 sheet. Do a vlookup in a new column next to the 2013 Zone% searching for the playerid from 2013 in the 2012 data and then inserting the Zone%.
That was a terrible explanation if you’re not familiar with doing vlookups on Excel, but it’s hard to explain without giving a real detailed step by step.
Another way.
Go to the 2013 leaderboards for the group you want and export the leaders. Copy and paste the playerid’s into notepad. Put the names in one long list with comma’s like:
579,4849,5689,etc
Now start creating a custom leaderboard with just one name. Then copy and paste the previous list of ids into the leaderboard url. You can then look at whatever you want for that set of players.
Yeah, I am no stranger to VLOOKUP, or INDEX(MATCH()) for that matter. I was hoping there was a handy filter I could apply on site. Thanks guys 🙂
Price is now the DL’s newest victim.
And I didn’t express too many concerns when i looked at him a week ago. One I missed.
Great info as always. Please rank these DL guys in terms of best value right now (including best guess of post injury performance and position scarcity and in 10 team 26 man roster roto league) ROS: Hill, J. Johnson, Hart, Teixeira, Beachy.
Teixeria, Hill,…….. Hart and Beachy (fairly even)………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Johnson
And Ogando goes down to Bicep soreness — seems this Zone % thingy you have here (coupled with his reduced velo #’s), pointed to this happened a FEW WEEKS AGO! WOW!
I feel a bit “lucky”, but too many signs pointed to an injury.
Would be nice to add a column for last date each player was updated on the list! For example, the progression of some players has not changed even though it should have changed by now unless no new info is out. A last updated player date would be great. I still enjoy the list.
I could try to add it as part of the link. It is tough trade off if the extra time spent putting in the date would be better spent looking at a couple more players in the writeup.
No problem Jeff! Just a thought! I enjoy the info as is believe me.
I was looking to trade for Madison Bumgarner. He’s had a couple of poor starts (1 @ Coors may be excusable) so I wanted to look at his Zone%. I noticed 2 different zone% on his Fangraphs page– 1 under Plate Discipline and another under Pitch F/X Plate Discipline . It looks like you use the one under Pitch F/X Plate Discipline for you analysis. This one looks OK for Bumgarner at 49.1 but the other one is 41.9! Also, both numbers have gone down each of the last 4 years. His velocity looks only a tiny bit down but he throws a lot of sliders. Should I be worried about Madbum? Is there any where to find velocity and zone% for each game so I can look for a down trend there? Would that effort be worthwhile
I use Pitch PX, some inconsistencies existed with the other data. I wanted to use it since it went back further, but can’t.
Here is his Zone% by game.
http://www.fangraphs.com/statsd.aspx?playerid=5524&position=P&type=16&gds=&gde=&season=2013
I see no reason’s right now to be worried. The only issue I see with him is the late seen velocity drop in 2012.
Thanks for the quick and complete answer.