MASH Report (6/10/13) – PAIN – Pitcher Injury Finder

After introducing HURT (hitter injury finder), I am introducing PAIN (pitcher injury finder) today. Besides a list potentially hurt hitters and pitchers, I will examine Ryan Braun, Anibal Sanchez, Kevin Youkilis and report the velocity for some pitchers returning from the D.L.

• Last week I introduced a metric to help look for position players playing through injury called HURT. Today, I introduce PAIN which looks for pitchers with traits of injured pitchers. Mainly it looks for fastball velocity drops and low, dropping Zone%’s from only the previous season. I have weighted in a bit on Pace (hurt pitchers take longer between pitches) and average fastball velocity (I have found harder throwers are more injury prone). I tried to add consistency of release points, but could not get it to work because too many pitchers have more than one release point. Finally, I am going to add in a measure of contact in the future and regress the values. Enough of the boring stuff, here are the pitchers PAIN determines to be a injury risk:

PAIN (20 IP in 2013, 40 IP in 2012)

Note: I like PAIN as a easy acronym to remember for the pitchers. I haven’t had time to get the exact words figured out yet. Any suggestions?

Rank	Name	Injury Factor
1	Alexi Ogando	107.0
2	Jonathan Broxton	97.3
3	Francisco Liriano	96.2
4	Lucas Harrell	92.9
5	Craig Stammen	91.6
6	Esmil Rogers	80.7
7	Jason Marquis	73.6
8	Matt Moore	66.1
9	Brett Myers	65.7
10	Joe Nathan	62.3
11	Carlos Villanueva	59.7
12	Rex Brothers	58.4
13	Luis Mendoza	58.3
14	John Axford	55.1
15	Carlos Marmol	54.2
16	Zack Greinke	53.7
17	Jeremy Affeldt	53.1
18	Craig Kimbrel	53.0
19	Jason Grilli	52.9
20	Fernando Rodney	52.8
21	Yovani Gallardo	51.5
22	Alfredo Aceves	50.1
23	Ryan Dempster	46.9
24	Scott Feldman	46.8
25	Adam Ottavino	45.7

I have beat to death Ogando’s injury chances and Chris Cwik just talked about Liriano today, so I will look at why Lucas Harrell is near the top of the list.

First, he has seen a small drop in velocity from 92.5 mph to 91.9. The big hit for him is his Zone% (pfx). In 2013, it is near 41%. The Zone% is a 9% decline from his 2012 value and is below the 47% value I found makes pitchers more injury prone. Also, his pace has slowed down a bit.

With the above information leading to a high value, one additional piece of information should be examined, he release points. Here are his 2013 values:

While he tries to use different release points, they are not consistent in any way. Putting it all together, I would not be surprised to see Harrell end up on the D.L. at some point this season.

• Ryan Braun’s thumb is becoming more of a bother to him. His ISO is down at .206 after averaging .270 the previous two seasons. The problem looks to be getting worse and worse. Here are his 2013 ISO’s by month

Month: ISO
Mar/Apr: .298
May: .176
June: .036

HURT is not picking him up because the drop is not as much as other players and he is still able to make decent contact. It will be nice to see him get the thumb healed for once.

• Kevin Youkilis’s back is acting up again. I am just making it a personal rule to never count on position players with previous D.L. time because of a back injury (see B.J. Upton).

• Anibal Sanchez missed a start because of shoulder discomfort. I looked at his information and the only problem I see is two straight near 44% Zone%’s. I am not too concerned, but will monitor his next start.

• Dustin McGowan’s velocity is up compared to when he was able to throw in 2011 and 2012.

• Pedro Strop’s fastball is up near 2012 levels. I would continue to monitor him to see if he can keep it up.

• Jeff Francis’s fastball is right at where it always hovers. 85 mph.

• Jim Henderson’s velocity after returning form the D.L. is near an all time high.

HURT (Hitter’s Under-performance from Recent Trauma) Rankings (min 100 PA in 2013 and min 600 PA from 2010 to 2012):

Rank	Name	Injury Finder
1	B.J. Upton	319
2	Garrett Jones	174
3	Ike Davis	167
4	John Jaso	135
5	Albert Pujols	122
6	Matt Kemp	119
7	Josh Willingham	117
8	Seth Smith	115
9	Shane Victorino	114
10	Lance Berkman	105
11	Jeff Keppinger	95
12	Andres Torres	86
13	Alex Avila	85
14	Jarrod Saltalamacchia	80
15	Vernon Wells	79
16	Brandon Phillips	78
17	Adrian Gonzalez	75
18	Cody Ross	74
19	Jay Bruce	72
20	Neil Walker	72
21	Colby Rasmus	71
22	Melky Cabrera	67
23	Jonny Gomes	65
24	Carlos Quentin	64
25	Dustin Pedroia	61

Players on the DL

(*) 15 Day Disabled List
(**) 60 Day Disabled List
(***) 7 Day Concussion List
Red colored entries are updates since last report.