MASH Report (8/26/13)

Well, after a couple weeks of talking about having a mid-season PAIN metric, I finally got around to coding one up. Besides mid-season PAIN, I have a quick look at Halladay, Buchholz and a handful of others.

Clay Buchholz was averaging over 92 mph on his fastball before going on the DL. In his first rehab game, he was in the upper 80’s (source).

Red Sox manager John Farrell said. “His velocity was in the upper 80s. He came out of it physically fine, which is the biggest thing. We’ll have a chance to discuss where and when his next outing will be, probably tomorrow.” 

And by upper, it seems to mean just barely more than 85 mph.

Expect Buchholz to spend a while longer rehabbing or to struggle once he returns to the majors.

DL Returners

Roy Halladay made his first start since May. Jeff Sullivan and Zack Sanders has already broken down the start in detail, but I will look at a few injury factors.

First, his velocity was down around an average speed of 88 mph.

Eno Sarris just detailed how Halladay’s fastball velocity should play out.

Other injury signs were more encouraging. His Zone% was almost 49% after throwing on 30% in his previous start and averaging 46% to start the season. Also, his release points were extremely consistent.

Paul Maholm saw his velocity in his game back near his season low.

His release points were all over the place leading to a low Zone% (45%).

I would stay away until he begins to find some form of consistency.

Josh Tomlin was activated after Tommy John surgery and sent to AAA. Remember back in 2011 when he was 6-2 with a 2.74 ERA after two months. Probably not, but oh the past memories of hot starts.

PAIN (Pitcher Abuse INdex) Rankings (min 800 pitches in 2013, comparing July and August results to the rest of the 2013 season)

Any player with a PAIN value over 100 (red) has the traits of a pitcher likely to be hurt.

Leaderboard

Name Pain Velocity (Apr – June Zone% (Apr-June) Velocity (July-August) Zone% (July – August) Total Pitches
Brandon McCarthy 159.9 90.9 57.0% 89.3 49.7% 1377
Ryan Vogelsong 137.2 89.9 48.7% 87.9 46.0% 1236
Yoervis Medina 131.7 94.5 42.6% 93.3 39.7% 867
Bartolo Colon 130.7 90.1 60.2% 89.0 52.3% 2214
Chad Gaudin 120.9 91.8 52.2% 89.8 49.5% 1550
Jason Vargas 105.1 87.8 47.7% 86.8 44.5% 1693
Brian Duensing 101.4 91.9 51.0% 92.5 42.3% 817
Jorge de la Rosa 98.4 88.6 46.9% 87.6 44.3% 2525
Jerry Blevins 93.4 90.2 47.7% 89.5 43.9% 846
Lucas Harrell 90.0 91.9 41.2% 91.7 38.5% 2447
Hisashi Iwakuma 89.5 88.5 52.5% 87.9 47.4% 2496
Oliver Perez 84.0 92.8 55.7% 91.9 50.9% 802
Wade Miley 77.7 90.9 49.3% 91.1 43.6% 2561
Adam Warren 77.4 92.2 45.9% 92.8 40.2% 1057
Tony Cingrani 73.8 92.2 51.3% 91.6 47.5% 1703
Trevor Cahill 72.6 89.3 46.7% 90.1 40.6% 1786
Scott Feldman 71.8 89.3 46.7% 89.0 43.5% 2409
Jerome Williams 68.5 91.3 49.8% 91.5 44.6% 2066
Lance Lynn 67.6 92.1 54.3% 92.5 47.3% 2758
Derek Holland 65.8 93.6 52.6% 93.3 48.1% 2685
Adam Ottavino 65.5 91.6 50.7% 90.9 47.8% 1091
Jacob Turner 63.7 91.1 46.3% 90.4 44.7% 1494
Jose Fernandez 63.0 94.5 57.6% 94.7 50.5% 2317
Fernando Rodney 61.0 96.3 47.3% 96.3 43.8% 992
Jim Johnson 60.8 93.6 46.8% 93.6 43.2% 918
A.J. Griffin 60.5 88.9 52.0% 88.9 47.2% 2634

Brandon McCarthy just can’t keep his velocity and Zone% up after returning from the DL.

These have diminished his output with a K/BB going from 3.9 to 2.0 mainly because his walk rate has gone from 3.5% to 8.8%.

He blames the struggles on head injury from last year (source).

If there was a positive to come from Diamondbacks right-hander Brandon McCarthy’s awful outing on Wednesday night, it’s that he believes he’s identified the mechanical issue that led to his poor command and mediocre stuff.

And he wonders if that mechanical flaw might be related to the line drive that struck him in the head last year with the Oakland A’s.

McCarthy says he’s inadvertently raised his arm angle from where it has been the past two years, something that he attributes to his front side drifting. He wonders if he’s hurrying his delivery in part so he can get himself in better position to be ready for a ball coming back to the mound.

We will find out tonight when he starts against San Diego

• Again, sorry for the delay for finding out about Bartolo Colon.

• Eno looked at Vogrlsong’s struggles in an article earlier today.

• The one name which jumps out is Jose Fernandez. His velocity is fine (just a bit up). His main issue is a drop in Zone% from 58% to 51%. A 51% Zone% is not bad at all, actually pretty decent. I would worry too much about him being on the list and move on.

Also, here are the pitchers showing health improvements in the season’s second half.

Name Pain Velocity (Apr – June Zone% (Apr-June) Velocity (July-August) Zone% (July – August) Total Pitches
Robbie Ross -247.1 92.1 54.7% 93.1 63.7% 854
David Phelps -198.7 89.9 48.9% 90.0 59.5% 1425
J.A. Happ -184.1 90.3 48.2% 91.4 55.1% 1049
Aroldis Chapman -169.9 97.5 48.8% 99.4 52.7% 929
Carlos Villanueva -143.0 87.1 44.9% 87.8 51.5% 1757
Brandon Maurer -140.0 91.8 45.9% 94.5 46.5% 1084
Josh Roenicke -136.2 89.5 46.1% 91.8 47.6% 886
Joe Smith -133.7 89.5 44.9% 89.6 53.0% 805
Kelvin Herrera -130.4 97.1 47.7% 97.3 54.4% 858
Rafael Soriano -129.5 91.0 49.1% 91.6 54.4% 960
Kevin Slowey -128.7 89.1 55.5% 89.8 58.4% 1466
Bronson Arroyo -124.2 86.5 55.2% 87.5 57.1% 2378
David Carpenter -121.0 94.8 51.3% 95.1 56.1% 818
Anthony Swarzak -117.0 91.3 51.3% 92.8 52.3% 1252
Doug Fister -112.7 87.8 48.3% 88.1 53.6% 2715
Wade LeBlanc -111.7 84.8 48.1% 86.0 50.8% 971
Tom Gorzelanny -111.0 90.7 43.1% 91.2 48.9% 1250
Charlie Furbush -105.7 91.3 47.1% 92.3 50.2% 871
LaTroy Hawkins -105.4 91.7 58.8% 93.3 56.8% 861
Josh Collmenter -102.4 87.4 46.5% 87.5 52.2% 1266
David Price -101.5 92.3 52.7% 92.3 57.0% 1945
Bruce Chen -100.5 85.0 54.5% 85.2 57.5% 1393

Additionally, I have a full list for people to reference.

Players on the DL

(*) 15 Day Disabled List
(**) 60 Day Disabled List
(***) 7 Day Concussion List
(****) Free Agent
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.

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Daniel W
10 years ago

MATT HARVEY. =(