SSNS: Tanaka, McCutchen, Karns, Judge

#3: May 3
#2: April 24
#1: April 13

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It’s episode No. 4 of my Small-Sample Normalization Services, which, in Star Wars terms, means this will be, like… the 3rd-best post of the series? Is that how that works? I know to nothing about what’s believed to be the consensus on the merits of each film. I already regret making this stupid comparison.

Allow me, then, to touch upon (and revisit) some players whose performances through six weeks are worth critiquing. Six weeks is still a considerably small sample when it takes hundreds of plate appearances (or, for ball-in-play metrics, batted balls) for certain standard and advanced metrics to become reliable (or, in common but sometimes misused parlance, “to stabilize”). Check previous posts for the rules, but know that a rating of 1 means Hype City and a rating of 5 means, uh, Alarm City. A 3, therefore, would be neutral.

All graphs pulled prior to yesterday’s games.

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Name: Masahiro Tanaka, NYY SP
Games started: 8
ERA: 5.80
xFIP: 4.22
EPL: 5
Assessment: I featured Tanaka barely two weeks and two starts ago. The situation has only grown more dire, adding a buck-64 to his ERA following the worst start of his career. Although he’s racking up more ground balls than ever, his strikeouts and walks per nine innings (K/9, BB/9) have suffered demonstrably. Meanwhile, his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) — which, for nearly 500 innings, bested the league average by 30 points — now stands at an awful-for-him .312. And the strand rate (LOB%), at 70.4%, suggests there might not be much ERA relief in sight, unless his inflated rate of home runs per fly ball (HR/FB) regresses sharply toward his career mean. And that probably could and should happen. But the xFIP, which normalizes HR/FB, is still an eyesore. Yet a light at the end of this tunnel:

It’s hard to tell, given they’re on different scales, but you can distinguish the trend: Tanaka’s strikeout rate (K%) moves in tandem with his swinging strike rate (SwStr%). The two correlate strongly with each other; eyeballing it, you see that when his swinging strikes are above average (in other words, above the red dashed line), so, too, are his strikeouts (above the blue dashed line), and vice versa. Yet while his swinging strike rate has remained mostly above-average this year, his strikeouts have vanished. It seems sequencing has absolutely ravaged his ability to suppress baserunners. (To attest: his whiff rate is a full 3.5 percentage points higher in two-strike counts, so it’s not like he’s less dominant in such situations.) Even his contact quality allowed is not atypical for him.

So, I’m optimistic. Everything looks good under the hood, including his velocity (for those concerned with his once-balky elbow), which has actually ticked upward. It’s hard to stomach, but I think you have to wait it out. If the regression gods smile upon him, he could be in for a huge second half. One day, maybe I’ll regret this analysis. But I’m having a very hard time finding a smoking gun.

AEPL: 3

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Name: Andrew McCutchen, PIT OF
Games played: 37
ISO: .190
BABIP: .221
EPL: 4
Assessment: It’s nice to see Cutch making more contact and sustaining his power. And he’s on pace for about a dozen steals — a pleasant development in light of his 6-for-13 success rate on stolen base attempts last year. (His baserunning demise was slightly overblown, but I think it’s still likelier than not that he doesn’t reach double-digit steals this year, despite what Steamer and ZiPS think.) Unfortunately, I’m not here to discuss McCutchen’s merits. I’m here to discuss his faults:

I frequently discuss the ebb and flow of player performance, and you can see it in the graph. Like a (sine) wave, Cutch’s BABIP rises and dips in sustained sequences. Yet that wave no longer revolves around his career mean, which since the start of 2016, has been in freefall:

McCutchen could barely scrape together a .325 BABIP for any prolonged period in 2016, let alone a .425 BABIP (as he did in 2015). For me, 2017 would be a test to see if 2016 was a fluke. He’s obviously off to a bad start, and we should probably grant him patience for that. But it does nothing to dispel my concern. It would be blasphemous if his BABIP didn’t rebound to some degree this year, but I have dismissed the idea of it ever again being robustly (or, perhaps, at all) better than league average. It effectively caps his batting average at .270.

AEPL: 4

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Name: Nathan Karns, KC SP
Games started: 7
K%: 28.4%
BB%: 7.7%
EPL: 1
Assessment: The Royals are allotted one starting pitcher breakout per year, apparently. Jason Vargas‘ early-season shine has started to fade; his 3.72 xFIP betrays his ridiculous 1.01 ERA (so if you haven’t sold high on those still buying a true breakout, you might want to… but, to be clear, this doesn’t mean I don’t believe in him to an extent). No, it appears its’s Karns who has received the baton from Danny Duffy. Oftentimes, I happen upon these leads on my own, but it’s a tweet by Stephen Nickrand (of BaseballHQ) that brought Karns, of whose recent success I was completely oblivious, to my attention. Of course, I sought to find out why he started to succeed so remarkably:

His curveball has abused opposing hitters, registering a 26% whiff rate and 69% ground ball rate. This might be an easy development to dismiss were it not for the additional 1.7 mph he has tacked onto the pitch since last year and he’s living almost half a foot lower in the zone. Combine all of that with his decision to throw more curves with each passing game (approaching half of all of his pitches thrown), and it’s easy to understand this recent surge. It remains to be seen how well these gains hold up in the long-term. I’m concerned that his evasion of the zone and lack of first-pitch strikes could disappear should the league figure him out. Fewer hacks at his borderline pitches could lead to not only fewer strikeouts but also more walks. Overall, color me skeptical, but my excitement far outweighs my concern.

AEPL: 2

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Name: Aaron Judge, NYY OF
Games played: 33
HR: 14
SB: 2
wRC+: 209
EPL: 1
Assessment: Normally, I come here to shrug off undue hype. Here, I wish to catalyze it.

Aaron Judge might already be better than Giancarlo Stanton.

Behold, my masterful Microsoft Paint skills. Judge’s power display thus far is exemplary, but it surprised me to know it straight-up rivals Stanton’s best streaks. Moreover, Judge has put forth his best Peak Stanton impression with better contact skills; never has Stanton accomplished an ISO as high as Judge’s .427 mark in conjunction with a swinging strike rate as good as Judge’s 11.7% mark. In fact, Stanton’s best-ever 33-game rolling whiff rate is 10.4%, during which he only (“only”) achieved a .254 ISO. In other words, Judge, while hitting way over his head, definitely holds a candle to Stanton, Major League Baseball’s most prodigious power threat, when he’s at his best, and then some. If it felt up until now like the hype was overblown… well, it might actually be warranted. I’ll allow it.

AEPL: 1