Pitcher SwStk% Laggards
On Monday, I looked at the pitching leaders in SwStk% to see if we can expect any strikeout rate surges in the near future. Today, I will check in on the opposite end of the ledger, those pitchers whose SwStk% are at the bottom of the totem pole. Obviously, these are not the guys you want on you fantasy team. Let’s see if any of them have higher strikeout rates than you would expect and are therefore in for some regression.
| Name | K% | SwStr% |
|---|---|---|
| Henderson Alvarez | 7.3% | 4.0% |
| Kevin Correia | 8.3% | 4.1% |
| Bartolo Colon | 14.6% | 4.3% |
| Derek Lowe | 6.1% | 4.4% |
| Lucas Harrell | 11.1% | 5.0% |
| Randy Wolf | 12.6% | 5.4% |
| Tommy Hunter | 13.4% | 5.7% |
| Jason Vargas | 17.0% | 5.8% |
| Kevin Millwood | 16.0% | 5.9% |
| Carl Pavano | 13.0% | 6.1% |
| Ubaldo Jimenez | 12.5% | 6.1% |
| League Average | 18.4% | 8.3% |
On Thursday, I highlighted Henderson Alvarez as someone to sell high on. Some commenters had an issue with this suggestion, believing that Alvarez was purposely pitching to contact and that he could improve his strikeout rate if he wanted to. This is the typical argument for pitchers whose strikeout rates are low, but ERAs are low as well, and I strongly disagree with it. Alvarez’s league low SwStk% tells us that he simply doesn’t have the stuff to make hitters swing and miss. Strikeouts are automatic outs, whereas a ball in play will typically go for a hit about 29% of the time this year. Studies have concluded that strikeouts do not increase pitch count, walks do. One would assume Alvarez’s K/9 has to improve just by luck alone, but even if it does, he may have a hard time getting it above 4.0, which still remains woefully poor.
One of the primary reasons I have ranked Bartolo Colon lower than most in my AL SP rankings is because his SwStk% last year suggested his 7.4 K/9 would be impossible to repeat. Sure enough, that rate has dropped to just 5.6 this year. His SwStk% now has an almost perfect downward trend line since 2002. He continues to be a strike throwing machine and his SIERA is right in line with his ERA. However, it will be difficult to maintain a 1.5 BB/9, so I don’t foresee his ERA dropping below 4.00 .
Jason Vargas has the highest K% on this list and his strikeout rate is at the second best mark of his career, yet his SwStk% is down two points from last year. What might provide an explanation is the highest called strike percentage of his career, a mark that has increased every year he has pitched since 2007. While I am confident that called strike percentage does require some skill, I think it is subject to more randomness than SwStk% and so I would bet that Vargas’ strikeout rate declines.
I decided to include an 11th pitcher just to remind everyone how truly bad Ubaldo Jimenez has become. We all know his velocity is down again this season, but even with a fastball that only averages 92.1 miles per hour, his stuff has to rate well above average. So it is still head scratching that he has managed such a pathetic SwStk%. What’s amazing is that his expected ERA metrics actually suggest that he has been lucky this year to have posted a 5.02 ERA! It’s crazy to think that there is still no explanation for his struggles. Hopefully nobody is still starting him in any leagues at this point, even AL-Onlies.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
i think ubaldo was never a good pitcher. He was a thrower with great stuff. Now he is a thrower with okay stuff who doesnt know how to get hitters out without overpowering them.
You wrote:
—–
“Some commenters had an issue with this suggestion, believing that Alvarez was purposely pitching to contact and that he could improve his strikeout rate if he wanted to. This is the typical argument for pitchers whose strikeout rates are low, but ERAs are low as well, and I strongly disagree with it. Alvarez’s league low SwStk% tells us that he simply doesn’t have the stuff to make hitters swing and miss.”
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Where’s the logic in your reasoning? If Alvarez is trying to induce weak contact rather than swings and misses, then out course his SwStk% will be low.
I’m also not sure how you can be so do missive of the notion of pitching to contact. Alvarez has a GB rate of nearly 58%, Isn’t that somewhat indicative of weak contact?
None of that means Alvarez will sustain his ERA. His high strand rate and low BABIP suggest he’s due for regression. But that is hardly grounds to be entirely dismissive of pitching to contact and especially not on illogical grounds.
If you can prove to me he is inducing weaker contact than other pitchers, then I’m willing to listen. But that data isn’t publicly available. All we can look at is his popup rate, which is lower than league average, or is LD%, which is admittedly also better than league average, but not so much to explain such a ridiculously low BABIP. His HR/FB ratio is also way above league average, so that’s another mark against inducing weak contact.
GB% is not the same as weak contact. There are hard hit grounders and weak grounders. Ground balls go for hits more often than fly balls so a pitch to contact strategy of just allowing grounders isn’t a winning one. Otherwise, you’d see every pitcher try this, and it’s not a coincidence that they don’t.
And whose to say Alvarez is trying to make hitters hit the ball? Why would any pitcher want to induce contact when hitters can record a hit, or even a home run, when the ball is in play? If the ball is swung at and missed, then that’s the perfect result.
This might be a double-post, but oh well.
“Ground balls go for hits more often than fly balls so a pitch to contact strategy of just allowing grounders isn’t a winning one.”
That doesn’t necessarily follow. They go for hits more often, but these hits are less likely to be for extra bases than hits borne from fly balls. Ground balls also also go for DPs more often. And, pitchers with very high ground ball rates (~60%) get the added bonus of having a lower BABIP on grounders in play (this is one of the many contributing factors behind SIERA).
Of course, the dominant strategy for a pitcher is just to strike every single batter out, but that isn’t a genuine insight. The optimal mix, given a particular pitcher’s stuff and context, is not nearly as crystal clear as you make it seem.
“Otherwise, you’d see every pitcher try this, and it’s not a coincidence that they don’t.”
Again, pitchers pitch to their own stuff. Plenty of sinkerballers have adopted this strategy, to varying effect. You should consider that there may be more than one possible path to being an effective pitcher, given a pitcher’s personal stuff and, say, the dimensions of his ballpark. And other possible considerations, like a pitcher’s ability to hold runners on and keep seeing-eye singles from becoming seeing-eye doubles.
Case in point, Chien-Ming Wang was an effective pitcher from 2006-2007, despite a putrid K% (Even his FIP/WAR stats will back that statement up). His GB% during that stretch was 60%, and he surely adopted a strategy of inducing ground balls with a power sinker. He also played half his games in a ballpark with a notoriously short right porch, providing further incentive for him to keep the ball on the ground. His BABIP against was very near ~.294 both years (league average was ~.302), but his SLG% against was only ~.372 (league average was ~.428).
What would your advice to Chien-Ming Wang have been, entering 2008 (Besides, “Hey be careful stepping on home plate!”)? “Hey man, you should really scrap that sinker. Your strategy is not a winning one.”
While I agree with you in a general sense, and Alvarez is someone I’d stay away from for the most part in fantasy, I do think you’re underestimating two factors:
1. The sample size. This year’s sample size is really only about as large as last year’s. We definitely have enough information to assume Alvarez is a very low SwStrike guy, but it’s probably better to look at his career rates so far in terms of projecting, and he was considerably better last year, though still well below average.
2. The cumulative effect of ground balls. This is a component of SIERA theory. Ground balls are more likely to yield one base hits, and with a runner on first, more likely to yield double plays. Therefore, there benefit of added ground balls is not linear, its exponential. The difference between a 55% ground ball rate and 50% is larger than 50% and 45%.
Overall, Alvarez looks so far something like a poor man’s Derek Lowe or Tim Hudson, and can probably be an average or slightly above average real life pitcher, and a low end AL-Only option and even tactical streamer in leagues with no IP limit like H2H.
Of course, mentioning Lowe and Hudson does bring up another point–those guys have had pretty respectable SwStrike rates over their careers despite low strikeout rates, so you the argument that they do intentionally avoid strikeouts in lieu of contact is actually supported by the numbers a bit. This obviously isn’t the case with Alvarez. Lowe and Hudson actually tended to very good O-Contact%, especially earlier in their careers, but instead of expanding the zone in deeper counts, it seems they tended to pound it as much if not more. Whether or not this is a wise strategy is debatable, but BABIP does drop in pitchers counts, so its much easier to make a case that they tactically chose “weak” contact over no-contact to generate outs. And they do both have slightly above average career BABIPs considering the environments and eras they pitched through.
There’s no evidence as of yet that Alvarez has this skill, thus we should make no special assumptions about his ability to generate “weak” contact or control his BABIP in ways other pitchers can’t.
Not every pitcher needs to be a strikeout pitcher to succeed in the pros. They may not be great fantasy pitchers, but they are great in real life. Try telling Tom Glavine’s career 5.3 career k/9 he needs to strikeout rate that he needs to strike guys out to succeed, or Greg Maddux’s career 6.1 k/9, or Tim Hudson’s 6.1 k/9 to stop pitching to contact. Alvarez may never be the caliber of these guys, but the point is that you don’t have to strike out everyone to be an effective pitcher in the MLB
But thats the thing, where is this supposed BAbip magic? Where is his BAbip showing inaccuracies?
.055/.055/.055 for .055 BAbip to Infield (.076/.076/.078 at .075 BAbip for Lg)
.570/.565/1.037 for .515 BAbip to Outfield (.555/.545/.922 at .502 BAbip for Lg)
Both of those are sustainable, and actually match League Average well. Its not that uncommon at all for weak GB inducers to have lower BAbip to the infield like that – see someone like Ted Lilly with his .065 over a 14 year career. (the Jays also provide an aggressive shift which helps too) While the OF line matches great considering the SSS (only 102 AB) with merely the extra HR/9 rate creating a real noticeable variance. And remember, we are talking about a 1.19/1 Inf-to-Out pitcher here, where the average pitcher in the AL is at 0.96/1.
So where is all the magic? Should he just be giving up a much, much higher amount of infield singles off his weak grounders, or should he just really be seeing a horrific BAbip line to the outfield? Where must he secretly suck if being realistically aligned to League Averages is inappropriate? Based off last year (.074 Inf and .533 Out throwing fewer many fewer GB-inducing pitches) I would say he is where he should probably be in my mind – what am I missing though?
Similarly, you ask why a guy would want to induce contact – but when you are inducing weak GB contact nearly 60% of the time, and you’re doing it on 3 or fewer pitches nearly 60% of the time, and hitters are producing a .055/.055/.055 line off most all of that contact… well, why wouldnt you welcome that? Its as if Hitters are up against a wiffleball here
Oh, and add in the fact that he is inducing DPs at a rate Twice as fast as the rest of the league (1 every 21.2 AB against 1 in 41.8 AB for the League)
So while yes, more Ks would be nice, I’m not sure they are needed based off what he is currently doing. And if he continues to walk so few, induce such weak contact, get the DPs, limit the LDs and sustain normalized BAbip lines to the field (all realistic expectations), I see no reason he cant sustain a low BAbip, a high LOB% and much lower ERA then his FIP/xFIP suggests. He wouldn’t be the first.
Side note – a Strike Out is anything but “nearly automatic”. To get the K you have to throw a bunch of pitches hitters can actually hit, often times really well, but have them miss it. Sure, its great when they do miss; but what happens when they connect with said pitch? What is the outcome when you leave it hanging? More likely to produce a higher percentage of LDs and/or moonshots, right? So ask yourself, if you could instead just throw 27 guys very few pitches they can do almost nothing with and just let the normal extremely low infield BAbip rate apply, wouldn’t you be tempted to do it?
And one last thing:
“So it’s difficult to speculate that those strikeouts will suddenly come.”
Why? Over his first 6 starts last year he was sitting at a 6.14 K/9 with a 7+ SwStk%. He was also sporting a 6 K/9 in spring training, and holds a 6.5 for his minor-league career (where he was generally 2 years younger then his competition and running only 2 pitches). It is the last 4 starts of 2011 (5.0 K/9 and 5-ish SwStk%) and 2012, times in which he has been working on the Slider and Sinker, that are producing that belief for you – but that’s looking at only 1/2 of a 22yo learning on the job. If he felt comfortable enough to better combine the two games tomorrow, his K would overnight skyrocket from where it is currently. He’s not at that point yet it seems, but he will eventually get there and possibly much further when the Slider completely develops. Could be next month, could be in September, could be a year from now or more – but it will happen
oops, that should be replied to the later conversation – sorry!
Ultimately, we’d like to see Henderson Alvarez get more swinging strikes. But people need to remember that the concept of statistical regression isn’t limited to any particular stat or situation. Pundits will write that he’s got a very low BABIP that is bound to regress. That is true, but he also has a very low SwStk% and K%, which is also likely to regress.
Meanwhile he’s a very young guy, with less than a full year of pitching experience. It’s not unheard of for a young guy with power stuff, but a pedestrian K%, to develop a little and start striking guys out at a higher clip. Ivan Nova comes to mind this year.
Sidenote: Whenever a player has an extremely high or low stat, on whatever measure, you don’t have to appeal to some other more esoteric stat to make the claim that the player is likely to regress. Like, you’ll read someone write “David Wright has a .390 batting average. But that’s built on a .490 BABIP that is bound to regress.” But ya didn’t need the second part there—we already know that exceedingly high batting averages are much more likely to go down than up. That’s Statistics 101, and the reference to BABIP is therefore not a genuine insight. When someone shows me the guy who’s batting .390 with a .150 BABIP (or batting .200 with a .500 BABIP), now that’ll intrigue me.
Well the difference between BABIP and SwStrike% is that the latter will tend to be more predictive in smaller samples, while the former almost (keyword, almost) never becomes predictive for pitchers in any sample size. But see my note above as well, I do agree that it’s a mistake to assume too much from what Alvarez has done so far this year, and that we can assume almost twice as much by including last year’s numbers, though even that sample size is relatively small.
Also, the reason we include BABIP with predictive batting average regression isn’t so much as supporting evidence for the near-tautological claim that a .400 average is going to regress, but as a quantifier of magnitude. But, once again, I do agree its often at bet insignificant and at worst misleading to cite BABIP with hitters in terms of batting average regression. I’m much more interested in the inverse issues–the outs that are being made that couldn’t be hits, aka strikeouts. Wright is a good example. In discussing his production, I would say that while its virtually impossible he hits .400 over a full year, his strikeout rate is currently a career best pace and is supported by an excellent whiff and Z-Contact rate, so even if we don’t expect .400 moving forward, there’s solid evidence that he’s back to being a positive batting average contributor the way he was prior to when his strikeout rate spiked a couple years ago.
Yeah, I catch your drift, Mark (and if you read my comment above ,we seem to have raised some similar points about GB%). On the other hand, let me know when one of these hacks on Yahoo! Sports accompanies his liberal use of BABIP as a predictor for a drop in batting average with some quantitative estimate of magnitude.
Ha, touche. You won’t catch me defending Yahoo! writers. I’ve long since phased those guys out of my weekly reading material, and it’s done wonders for my fantasy performance, lol. More talking about when you see it here at FG or at my home on THT.
I’ll check out your stuff on THT, I haven’t been to that site before.
This Mike Podhorzer guy is pretty clueless and ignorant. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, he just likes to pretend that he does. How again does someone like that get to write for fangraphs?
This comment is hilarious. I fundamentally support expanding its scope to all fangraphs writers, including Appleman and his site updates.
Are all strikeouts an automatic out like you stated? The catcher has to catch a swinging strikeout and if he doesn’t he’ll have to tag the player or throw to first. That isn’t an automatic out.
How many strikeouts result in a baserunner? 1%? 2%?
How many groundballs result in a baserunner? 29%? 31%?
So, not 0%?
Mike,
As one of the Alvarez apologists, I’d like to offer the following additional things:
I’ve followed Farrell’s comments on Alvarez closely, since he was first brought up. Besides being very complimentary overall in the way a proud mentor might be, Farrell has emphasized that they are teaching him to pitch with placement (inside pitching), speed variance and movement. There has been a strong emphasis that Alvarez was purposely told NOT to flex his power pitching capabilities. (Farrell has directly commented on this issue). Indeed, there has been some complimentary discussion on the fact Alvarez throws two different change-ups. Also… Alvarez has played with a slider, which in the Spring resulted in a number of strike outs.
Roughly four starts ago, I watch nearly most of Alvarez’s outing. In the first inning, Alvarez pitched some serious heat in the mid-90’s. From that point forward, I did not see a pitch go over 90. It was such a stark contrast that at first I wondered what was going on. Injury? Broken gun? At some point, I realized Alvarez was almost exclusively pitching off his two change-ups. That is not a guy who is focussed on strike outs; that’s a guy learning how to pitch.
The good news for the Blue Jays is Alvarez’s placement, movement (and yes cheese) is so good he can successfully operate as a two pitch pitcher. The bad news for the AL East is that at some time Alvarez is going to add his cheese and hopefully his slider to the mix. At that point people will scratch their head and ask: When did the Blue Jays get a new ace?
On Alvarez, there is plenty of evidence that he is attempting to pitch to contact instead of trying to K guys.
Things like:
FA% — 61.1% 2011 – 35.4% 2012 (the pitch he can crank up to 100mph)
FT% — 10.1% 2011 – 32.8% 2012 (his sinker)
Wouldn’t a 26% drop in heater usage in favor of a Sinker be something to take note of first and foremost when looking at a pitcher?
On top of that, his Change is often being mis-identified as the Slider he is still learning, so we might not have a great indication of how much each pitch is thrown – but combined we know they account for another roughly 30% of his pitches for a whopping 63% Groundball-inducing pitches thrown. I’m sorry, you don’t basically ignore the ~100MPH heat and instead throw nearly Two-Thirds GB-inducing pitches in an attempt to K people.
Or how about this
275 Batters faced
40 – results on 1st pitch (14.5%)
59 – results on 2nd pitch (21.5%)
61 – results on 3rd pitch (22.2%)
59 – results on 4th pitch (21.5%)
30 – results on 5th pitch (10.9%)
26 – results on 6 or more pitches (9.5%)
So more then 1/3 of the hitters see outcomes in less then 2 pitches, 60% of the guys he faces see 3 or fewer selections, and 80% never see a 5th offering. Obviously he is going for pitch conservation and early contact.
Compare that to the AL Averages:
1pitch – 14.5% HA, 10.3% lg
2pitch – 21.5% HA, 16.0% lg
3pitch – 22.2% HA, 20.1% lg
4pitch – 21.5% HA, 21.9% lg
5pitch – 10.9% HA, 18.7% lg
6+pitch – 9.5% HA, 13.0% lg
or
2 or fewer – 36.0% HA, 26.3% lg
3 or fewer – 58.2% HA, 46.3% lg
4 or fewer – 79.6% HA, 68.2% lg
5 or more – 20.4 HA, 31.8% lg
You can also see it in his GB% tendencies, as he is much more likely to throw his GB-inducing Sinkers and Changes early in the count and moves away from the GB stuff late in the AB. Similarly, see the 4.0 GB/FB ratio in “high leverage” situations with a 66.7 GB / 16.7 FB / 16.7 LD split – its from that Sinker, Change and sometimes Slider, and the near avoidance of the heat. He is doing everything possible to use weak contact to the fullest
Or this is Bullpen Coach Pete Walker (then the AA Pitching Coach) talking about Alvarez just prior to his ML Call-up last year:
“He has a 98 mph fastball with depth, it’s pretty fun to watch. Standing behind him in the bullpen watching his stuff, you know it’s special. He gets a lot of weak contact and forces early contact, he doesn’t use a lot of pitches.” (on his Slider and Curve he played with:) “They’re both works in progress, once he really refines his breaking ball he’ll be ready to pitch in the majors and have a lot of success.”
Or manger John Farrell this spring:
“He showed exceptional poise for a young pitcher coming to the big leagues, and when he gave up some hits in an inning he didn’t panic, he didn’t run from contact. He’s got the ability to get two outs with one pitch, and we saw a slider that started to tighten up and gain some power in those last three starts. That is a third weapon along with his fastball and his changeup. This is an exciting young pitcher.”
Or Farrell earlier this month:
“He has a heavy sinker that he’s going to throw on the plate. He’s going to throw strikes. He’s typically getting more contact early in the count. Over time, as he gains more consistency in the strike zone, he might be able to elevate his fastball to get some swings and miss, up. But that will only happen if it’s a natural progression for him.
Or Catcher JP Arencibia:
“He’s very calm and collected out there. He knows how good he is, not in a cocky sense but in how to attack the game and attack hitters and know that he can throw that ball up there and miss spots and still get ground balls. I think he’s mature beyond his age, and he’s getting better with every start.”
Alvarez is pitching to contact by not throwing his heat and instead working on the movement pitches which induce grounders. And this makes sense for a 22yo with merely 2 pitches rushed to the show less then 1 year ago. You either develop more pitches and stay productive in the league, or you stick to the two and in a best case end up in relief.
In 2012 we are watching him developing the Slider and fine-tune the Sinker at the ML level, while continuing to pound the Change and stay away from the Heat. If he just wanted to K more people he could amplify last years early formula of almost exclusively Heat and Change (last year he was at a league average SwStk% doing that until he adjusted his approach the last couple games) but how is that going to help him for 2013 and beyond?
You seem to be evaluating him as if he is some 30-odd year old with years of learning under his belt. He is 22, was rushed to the majors with only 2 real finished pitches, and has drastically changed his approach this season in an attempt to gain confidence and control of his extreme grounder-inducing arsenal. There is zero evidence to back up a claim he cant strike out more then 4 per 9, as he has constantly done so over his career. There is plenty of evidence showing he just isnt worried about trying to K people now though, evidence you apparently just don’t feel bothered enough to consider as you repeat the now beyond tired “he just doesnt K people and will fail” rhetoric.
I don’t really care if he’s trying to pitch to contact or not. The bottom line is that his K/9 is now sub-3.00. Will that improve? I’m sure it will. But right now, given that K rate, his ERA should be over 4.00. And right now, given his SwStk%, his K/9 should be low. That was the point of this list. To see if a pitcher’s strikeout rate matches his SwStk%. Alvarez’s does.
Well actually, you might not know what your point was, or in the very least somewhere along the trail you completely lost sight of your point and are now just conveniently ignoring what you yourself wrote:
“(some believe) that Alvarez was purposely pitching to contact and that he could improve his strikeout rate if he wanted to. This is the typical argument for pitchers whose strikeout rates are low, but ERAs are low as well, and I strongly disagree with it. Alvarez’s league low SwStk% tells us that he simply doesn’t have the stuff to make hitters swing and miss.” ~ Mike Podhorzer
So people are wrong if they provide evidence backing up his current pitch to contact approach? And people are similarly just wrong if they say he can increase the SwStk% if he went back to more of the nearly pure Heater/CU combo that was producing more swinging strikes early last year? I guess I have to ask, when can someone other then you be right because you seem to have left no room for any actual documented facts to exist outside the “he has too few K’s = fail” rhetoric provided here.
And I’m sorry it is the case and all, but sentences like “he simply doesn’t have the stuff to make hitters swing and miss” become blatant shortsighted hyperbole if you admittedly “don’t really care if he’s trying to pitch to contact or not” – the two present an extreme evidence gap that show you are throwing facts out the window to come up with a non-supported stance you apparently merely want to be the case.
The quotes you provided and the background others have on Alvarez do suggest that maybe I’m wrong. I still can’t understand why any pitching coach in baseball would ever try a pitch to contact strategy though. It makes no sense to me and I would think it would only be used for a pitcher whose stuff just isn’t very good. If Alvarez could strike out more hitters if he wanted, why in the world would he choose not to? He’d rather allow a ball in play that could go for a hit than get a nearly automatic out?
I fully understand and agree that in the future, when he mixes in his slider more and strikes out more hitters, he’ll prob be a legitimately good pitcher. But he’s not striking anyone out and that hasn’t changed all year. So it’s difficult to speculate that those strikeouts will suddenly come. And assuming they don’t, he’s going to see his ERA jump above 4.00 without continued BABIP magic.
My mistake, the reply to this ended up under the incorrect post. See above please.
Lester is below league average. Not good.
“Well the difference between BABIP and SwStrike% is that the latter will tend to be more predictive in smaller samples, while the former almost (keyword, almost) never becomes predictive for pitchers in any sample size.”
This just isn’t true at all.
I’d love to see some evidence on this. Every large scale study of pitchers’ BABIP suggests the sample size for which BABIP becomes predictive is so large as to be virtually meaningless.
Understand that this isn’t to say no pitchers have a skill at consistent BABIP prevention, but that its highly unusual. If you take a series of random samples of pitchers’ BABIP, the correlation to those pitchers’ future BABIP will be very low unless you have quite such a large sample size that their BABIP nearly matches the league average anyway. If you take three knuckleballers, Johan Santana, and Tim Hudson it would be different, but at best, aside from knuckleballers, there’s very little understanding of what pitchers like Hudson and Santana does/did that allow them to keep their BABIP low.
Also understand that this is purely a statistical and empirical claim. There is no inference about why most pitchers tend towards a league average BABIP.
Just thinking about this a bit further, here’s another way of putting it, which I think might satisfy your objection. It is possible to look at the scope of a pitcher’s career and examine possible BABIP prevention skill, but the inverse isn’t true. In the vast majority of cases, it is near impossible to look at a pitcher early in his career (such as Alvarez) and learn anything from a non-league average BABIP. If you take a random pitcher who has a .260 BABIP over 130 innings, the odds are significant that he would have a BABIP of near league average moving forward. On the other hand, if you have a pitcher who has a SwStrike rate of 10% over 130 innings, there is a significant chance he will continue to post an above average SwStrike% going forward.
Mike,
For me, the reason he’s being taught this way is because he’s got great movement and control, so bad contact is highly predictable. Which would you rather have him do: battle each batter for the K or get them to ground out in half the pitches?
Look at his pitching counts. He’s been getting into the sixth inning with very low counts.
It’s not a choice between a strikeout and a ground out though. It’s needs to be a comparison of strikeout or a ball in play. A ball in play will fall for a hit around 29% of the time and also may go for a home run. Obviously, anyone would prefer a 1 pitch ground out over a strikeout that takes at least 3 pitches. But if the ball is put into play, there is a chance it falls for a hit.
Pitch counts matter. Double plays are valuable.
Also, a pitcher can’t choose to strike guys out. He can choose to TRY to strike guys out. A strike out is better than a BIP. That doesn’t mean that a strike out attempt is better than an attempt to get the guy to ground out.
Trying to blow a guy away with high heat is a lot riskier than dropping a slider on the bottom of the zone.
And no, the ball isn’t going to fall for a hit 29% of the time if he has better than average BABIP skill.
What evidence is there that he has an above average BABIP skill though? Lots of pitchers have .265 BABIPs over 130 innings and then go on to have nominal BABIPs for the rest of their careers. This is the same as the claim I was making above that you stated was “not true at all”. It seems to be true that some pitchers do have a BABIP skill, but for the vast majority, once the get past the selection bias of being viable major league pitchers, there is very little statistical evidence that can be gleaned about a BABIP skill over 130 innings.
In fact, what evidence there is, suggests that pitchers who don’t strike batters out are LESS likely to have a BABIP prevention skill (according to SIERA).
Mark,
You are talking about a guy who has seen 60% of Balls In Play fail to exit the infield, and the contact has been so weak that it has resulted in a .055/.055/.055 line in those 60% contact instances. League Average is 51% to infield with a 0.76/.076/.078 line as a result.
Simple logic tells you if you remove 10% of the To Outfield contact (which produces a roughly .500 BAbip) from the average pitcher, giving an extra 10% To Infield contact instead, is going to have a profound impact on BAbip.
In fact, just do it yourself. Try it on the ALAvg (short BABip formula of (H-HR)/(AB-HR-SO+SF)
You will probably get this (I did) – 17574 AB, 4673 H, 552 HR, 137 SF for a measly .240 BAbip
BAbip is a result of WHERE the Balls In Play go to. If a pitcher can force contact to an area where balls will not fall for hits, then he can control BAbip to at least some extent. Forcing 60% Infield Contact does just that – and that is what Alvarez is doing.
Currently Alvarez is sitting with a .055 BAbip to the infield (not unrealistic at all for a weak contact pitcher) and .515 BAbip to the Outfield (perfectly normal). Even if the Infield BAbip goes up slightly, continuing 60% infield contact absolutely ensures he will have a well below average BAbip.
I’m leaving work right now, so I can’t go as in depth as I’d like to, though I will later. The question that immediately comes to mind though is that why are we assuming rate of balls staying on the infield, especially for a ground ball pitcher? Its tempting to say this is the result of “weak” contact but the historical study of batted ball statistics suggests it’s much more likely simple random variation, with some “weak” contact but also a very high rate of “hard” contact happening to land in infielders gloves. An average of a few inches difference per ground ball in horizontal direction could easily be the difference between 60% infield contact and 30% infield contact for a ground ball pitcher. There’s no evidence a pitcher has that level of precision control of horizontal batted ball directionality.
Random variation could very easily account for a low rate of ground balls leaving an infield over this type of sample size, and random varation could do just the opposite over the next 130 innings. The result is neither surprising or viably predictive, its exactly the type of thing we would expect to see with some pitchers some of the time through 130 innings, but not necessarily with any repeatable consistency through the next 130 innings for the same pitcher.
except last year when he was even throwing 25% fewer Sinkers and 30% more Fastballs he was still seeing 55% Infield to 45% Outfield
Try to come up with some grand theory if you like, but actual evidence does not seem to on your side…
Random variation is not a grand theory. 130 innings (his career so far) is 130 innings. There are many pitchers who have done what Alvarez has done over 130 inning stretches during their careers. Very few have consistently repeated it. Talking about the rate of how many ground balls have remained on the infield essentially amounts to discussing the rate of ground balls that have been fielded by infielders. This isn’t unique. It’s the explanation for why any ground ball pitcher has a stretch of low BABIP. Ground ball pitchers don’t have low BABIP stretches when balls are reaching the outfield. The fact remains that most ground ball pitchers who have low BABIP stretches don’t become persistent low BABIP pitchers. You somehow have to create an argument that Alvarez is different from all the other high contact, high ground ball pitchers who had low BABIP stretches.
Agree completely, because I know you mean guys like Brandon Webb and Derek Lowe and Tim Hudson – you know, guys who kept .280-range BAbip lines going for 8+ years having hitters pound the infield.
And realistically, I think that range is where most people expect Alvarez to hover around as well. He does that while walking next to no one and inducing an extreme amount of DPs and he will stay below 4.0 with the possibility of taking huge steps forward as he starts mixing in K’s.
At 22 and still learning half his arsenal, the sky is the limit…
Well, technically, none of those guys had a career BABIP better than .280. Lowe’s was .295, Webb’s .286, and Hudson’s .280 even, so even for them, a .260 BABIP was not susitainable, and a .020-.035 point BABIP swing is quite significant for such a high contact pitcher.
So really, Lowe’s rate is fairly nominal, while Webb and Hudson are above average. Webb and Hudson have something else in common though: above average SwStrike rates.
In fact, if you do a custom leaderboard for pitchers with GB%, BABIP, and SwStrike%, (I used 400 min IP) you’ll see that there are very few pitchers that have a ground ball rate north of 50% and a below average SwStrike% and a career BABIP below .290 (many are actually well over .300). For the time we have the data, the only pitchers who qualify are C.J. Wilson, Jason Marquis, Greg Maddux, John Lannan, and Trevor Cahill. Wilson manages an above average K% despite a below average strikeout rate, Marquis and Lannan are pretty lousy pitchers, Cahill is decent but unspectacular and, and Maddux is an all time great. Wilson isn’t a good comp, since Alvarez isn’t striking anyone out anyway. You don’t really want Marquis and Lannan as comps, and obviously you can’t compare any pitcher, let alone one with 130 career innings under his belt, to Maddux. The only two with SwStrike% below 7%? Lannan and Marquis.
Look, I’m not saying Alvarez isn’t or can’t be a decent pitcher, just that there’s a lot of sample size noise involved in his results so far. We’ve heard almost the exact same schtick in the recent past with pitchers like Jake Westbrook, Fausto Carmona, Aaron Cook, Justin Masterson, Joel Piniero, and Mike Pelfrey after they came off superficially strong seasons. Most of those guys are respectable big league pitchers. None of them are world beaters or significant fantasy assets. And as you point out, Alvarez still has potential development, but maintaining quality results moving forward is going to be as much (probably more) a question of that development than remaining the pitcher he is today.
Sorry, had to log in to do a custom leader board and Meddler is my log in, this is still Mark.
Mark,
If you accept the anecdotal part of this discussion, then you should be able to assume that same movement, power and placement will greatly enhance undeveloped swngstrk capability, once he skill set is applied.
I do to an extent, but as much as anything I see this as a regressive issue. Its very unlikely Alvarez’s SwStrike remains this low. The anecdotal evidence does not tell me that we should expect more than a poor swinging strike rate in the future though, just not this poor.
I start Jimenez in my Razzball league. He’s awesome.