Archive for Corey Kluber

Over the last several weeks, I’ve scoured Baseball Prospectus’ PitchF/x leaderboards for the league’s underthrown pitches. We’ve covered two different pitch types each week starting with four-seam fastballs and sinkers in the first installment, cutters and curves in the second, and sliders and changeups last week. This week, we put it all together. Now that we’ve identified the most underthrown pitches, who should consider overhauling his entire pitch mix to make the most of his electric stuff?

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

According to WAR, FIP and xFIP, the Indians rotation was one of the three best in the league last year, which is kind of amazing considering Trevor Bauer had the second highest innings total on the staff. But it certainly didn’t hurt that they had a guy with a 4.30 ERA as a starter prior to 2014 who more than delivered on the promise indicated in his peripherals by winning the AL Cy Young award. But one pitcher does not a good rotation make. In addition to their Cy Young winner, they got sub-3.00 ERA ball from another starter for just over 90 innings, and they had five starters throw at least 90 innings with an xFIP of 3.50 or lower. Assuming everyone is healthy come Opening Day, two of those five don’t figure to crack the rotation. I dare say this rotation might be good again. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeff Sullivan pointed out that Stroman discovered Roy Halladay’s Sinker and presented his arsenal change (Fourseam and Cutter swapped for more Sinkers):

Stroman upped his Sinker usage and was comfortable using the pitch despite the count situation. From Sullivan’s post on 2/13:

Stroman was comfortable using the sinker when behind in the count against all hitters. Same when he was ahead in the count. Same when he was even. Same on the first pitch. Same with two strikes. He’s got other pitches, a lot of other pitches, and he still has his four-seamer, too, when he wants to elevate some heat, but the sinker has given Stroman something he didn’t have: a groundball pitch he can locate and use to get quick outs.

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This week, Eno presented Pitch Arsenal scores. There were a sundry of impactful responses which will result in a more comprehensive score in the future, such as incorporating pitch usage; a dominating pitch used more should be scored higher than a pitch with the same results that is used less.

The other clear requirement is associating weight to the outcomes in which Eno evaluated: whiff per swings and grounder to fly ratios. That is all this post will get at. It sounds like follow-up scores may incorporate pop-up% and zone% as well. Again, we are looking for undervalued pitchers, but if we want to get more descriptive (simply presenting the results from last year), we could look at HR/FB and LD/BIP on each pitch type as well.

I did something similar in the past, and there are different approaches, but here goes.

Using BP’s PITCHf/x Leaderboard (1oo-pitch qualifier) I first found each pitch type’s Whiff/Swing and GB/FB z-score. I then weighed each z-score by swinging-strike’s (.62) and GB/FB’s (.27) average correlation to ERA, SIERA and xFIP for all pitchers over 70 innings pitched (my lazy attempt to omit relievers). What is not incorporated and should be in the future, is differentiating weights for each pitch type. For example, groundball induction is a more important requirement for Sinkers; Sliders and Change-ups should induce more whiffs as we know from these Pitch Type Benchmarks.

The seven pitch types incorporated are Fourseamers, Sinkers, Cutters, Curves, Sliders, Change-ups and Splitters. For Trevor Bauer‘s Screwball and R.A. Dickey’s Knuckleball, I went to Brooks Baseball’s player cards and used their sabermetric outcome z-scores for these two pitch types and combined the weighted z-score to the rest of their repertoire score.

The list will be distinguishable from Eno’s initial list based on the weights, but the names within each cluster will look similar.

When you get Felix Hernandez and Corey Kluber in the top 5 and Kevin Correia dead last, you know we got it right:

Notes:

• Pitchers with outcomes missing threw less than 70 IP.
• Pitch types were included only if pitches were thrown 100+ times. For example, Trevor Cahill wound up at #8 on this list. He has excellent breaking and off-speed pitches (all 1+ standard deviations more than average from a whiff/swing perspective), but his Fourseam is awful, and BP’s PITCHf/x leaderboard did not present his Fourseam outcomes based on a sub-100 pitch count as a starting pitcher so it was not included in his full arsenal/repertoire score.

Results:

Think the Indians aren’t looking on the pitch-outcome level? They have 5 pitchers in the top 55 Repertoire Scores: Carlos Carrasco and Corey Kluber are numbers 3 and 4 respectively! Newcomer Gavin Floyd is #15 on the list thanks to great breaking balls. Danny Salazar is #43 and his per-pitch outcomes were even better coming into 2014. T.J. House is the real deal at #54. And not far off is Trevor Bauer at #75 overall.

I cannot not mention that the Mets have two guys in the top 21: Zack Wheeler (#9) and Jacob deGrom #21). Harvey if healthy should join them.

As it relates to Cahill, for some value-add, I highlighted (red/green) those .50 more or less standard deviations from the mean in SwStr% and GB/FB, but also the three “luck” categories: LOB%, HR/FB and of course BABIP. Cahill ranks well in both SwStr% and GB/FB and was also relatively unlucky when it came to his BABIP and LOB% (about 65 points and 9% respectively from his career average). Cahill is a deep-league…even standard-league asset with some returned control and an ERA closer to expected ERAs below 4.00. I am thinking the magical-mystery-kind age 27 season for Cahill.

Attend to the luck stats. Carlos Martinez has one of the best repertoire scores yet had a 4.03 ERA in part due to a .333 BABIP. His xFIP (3.45) and SIERA (3.54) in conjunction with the #1 overall arsenal score should ensure he is significantly better next year.

The list verifies breakouts: Carlos Carrasco, Garrett Richards, Yordano Ventura and Tyson Ross (all top15). Ross has a devastating Slider (8th best; 100-pitch qualifier) with a solid Change from a whiff/swing perspective, but he induces a ton of grounders with his Change and Sinker (both have top 11 GB/FB rates).

The list also provides hope for Justin Masterson who wound up at #7 on the list with 2.72 Sinker score and .74 Slider score. That 2.72 Sinker score out-summed 205 other full repertoire scores, but again keep in mind that his Sinker whiff/swing of 22.88% might be 3 standard deviations better than the average Sinker whiff/swing, but that rate is under the average whiff/swing rate for Curves, Sliders, Change-ups and Splitters. This is why it is important to differentiate weights for each pitch type.

If there is a pitcher’s Repertoire score that baffles you, check out the “RepScores” tab to see which pitches were omitted and the individual pitch-type z-scores and weights under the “zWh/Sw” and “wzWh/Sw” columns. Each pitch-type score and repertoire score is in the last column, titled “Wh/Sw_Gb/Fb_Scr.”

Back to the actual value of the content though – we are looking for interesting names and patterns, which I have highlighted in Red or Yellow based on the content below:

• Trevor Cahill interests me if he never uses his Fourseamer again and can induce more grounders with his Sinker. Cahill has a nice Cutter/Slider that he used toward the end of last year too. There is more swing and miss to his game.
• Dan Straily and the Sinker Pattern: Dan Straily might not have a spot in the Cubs rotation at this point, but he has a solid Slider and induces a surprising number of pop-ups. If he can keep his HR/FB ratio down (probably more of an issue in Wrigley than the Coliseum though) and have better luck in the left-on-base department, he could become effective again. His ranking in this list though is because of an elevated Sinker value (similar to Masterson). Look out for the Sinker and take the associated rankings with a handful of salt.
• James Paxton: By name and the Mariners un-willingness to move him, you know that he is good. It’s nice that our list backs him up. While his expected ERAs were 3.50+ (about 50 points higher than his 3.04 actual ERA), he should get even better; mainly his Change-ups, which should induce more whiffs. Even if we don’t see an impressive strikeout rate next year, I think he will be able to prevent hard contact with his CCC (Change-Curve-Cutter) repertoire and Fastball velocity (17th at 95.51 MPH last year; 100-pitch qualifier).
• Shane Greene: He’s no Max Scherzer, but the Tigers finagle themselves into another Yankees-Diamondbacks swap and again may have acquired the best piece. Another potent righty, Greene had the 10th best Slider Whiff/Swing rate and 5th best Cutter Whiff/Swing rate (enough velocity differential where they are distinguishable). Unlike Masterson and Straily, his Sinker does not inflate his repertoire score. Losing Rick Porcello hurts, but Shane Greene could be even better.
• Jesse Hahn and Pitch Omissions: Similar to Masterson and Straily, Hahn’s repertoire score is inflated by his Sinker although he had a great Curve (31st best Whiff/Swing rate). His Slider and Change were omitted from his arsenal in this evaluation based on pitch-counts under 100. Both would impede on his overall score. Through this approach, Hahn’s Changeup would be valued at -.15, which would drag his repertoire score from 1.59 to 1.44. The Slider would be far worse, but he used it less than 30 times, so I won’t subtract from his overall score in case he decides to swap the pitch out altogether next year.
• Wily Peralta. This is more about confirmation than highlighting a surprising name. Peralta won’t provide haughty strikeout rates, but his 18.4% rate from last year could jump a bit based on the per-pitch outcomes/more breaking-ball usage. In a future FanGraphs+ post, his release point consistency (within-game but especially game-to-game) will be highlighted, which could be a source of deception. While the Sinker does inflate his value some here (almost a standard deviation more whiff/swing than the average Sinker), it does its job inducing grounders. His Changeup and Slider are also .55+ standard deviations better than average at inducing whiffs.

Eno already emphasized Carlos Martinez and Carlos Carrasco – both have glorious peripherals within each pitch-type beyond their Fourseams. Every pitch of theirs outside the Fourseam induced 1.5 standard deviations more whiffs/swing than average!

Watch out for Danny Salazar who (by classification) introduced a devastating Changeup in September and should output value similar to or better than Carlos Carrasco based on a haughtier strikeout rate. Salazar was probably a luckier BABIP away from a 3.5 ERA last year. In fact, unsurprisingly, each Indians starter outside of Carrasco had a BABIP .5 standard deviations over the average (70IP qualifier).

Review:

• Look for sleepers/surprises based on “Rep.Score” in column two of the embedded file as presented.
• Check out the “RepScores” tab to see if any pitch-types were removed based on pitch-counts and keep pitch-type usage in mind (counts in the 5th column).
• Remember, differentiating weights for each pitch type is not incorporated. Scroll to the right within the “RepScores” tab to view individual pitch-type scores as well as the complete repertoire/arsenal score. Watch for pitchers with Sinkers as their highest score. Sinkers whiff rates aren’t as impactful. Allen Webster has a great score, but it is inflated because of its Whiff/Swing rate. As mentioned above, the same holds true for Justin Masterson and Dan Straily among others.
•  The Diamondbacks and Yankees won’t let the Tigers finagle themselves into another deal after Shane Greene enjoys success similar to the Scherzer application.
• And finally, try to own the entire Indians rotation in your fantasy leagues.

There are a sundry of middle/set-up relievers that can succeed in the closer role if given the opportunity. A few obvious: Wade Davis if something happens to Greg Holland… Wil Myers for James Shields and who?!; Ken Giles if the Phillies can somehow find a trade partner for the grundle-grabber; and Brad Boxberger if not Jake McGee. I assume David Robertson signs elsewhere and Dellin Betances steps in.

Lets’ look at potential closers using reliever outcomes. Here are the average contact and balls in play-related outcomes for all relievers that qualified and specifically relievers with 10+ saves:

Our Filters: 

• Contact-related outcomes: For K-BB%, Ct% and SwStr%, I filtered simply by the general relief pitcher averages. Everyone below average in these 3 categories was filtered out.
• Command-related outcomes: For zone% and first-pitch-strike%, I used 1 standard deviation below average and 1.25 SD’s below average in BABIP as filters. 1.25 SD allowed me to omit only the relievers that had career BABIP’s higher than we would like to see for a closer or in general. I didn’t want to screen out Jenrry Mejia (1.24 SD below the mean) or Tim Stauffer (1.19 SD below), because there’s a possibility for BABIP regression.
• Balls In Play-related outcomes: I was lax on the balls in play outcomes. I went with a 40% Grounder rate and 45% Flyball rate as my filters versus the averages that you see above because below average fly-rates don’t mean much in places like Tampa (where Boxberger is elite but below average in fly-rates); and above average grounder-rates don’t mean as much with atrocious defense behind you (hence Corey Kluber’s unlucky BABIP, which should have been closer to .299 per end-of-season xBABIP/Inside Edge data), but I digress.

Using these filters, we’re left with a robust list of above-average relievers beyond just closers (scroll down for the noted filters):

What happens if we use the command (K-BB%)/contact (Ct% and SwStr%) related averages for relievers with more than 10 saves this year? 

…We’re left with some elite closers and then a few interesting names.

Last year, Danny Farquhar (just missed the list this year) had a top 20 swinging-strike rate – about a percent better than Fernando Rodney, but it was masked by his BABIP and left-on-base rate that killed his surface stats (4.20 ERA vs. 2.40 xFIP). This year, he actually outperformed his xFIP with a 2.66 ERA. After an early season MASH Report on Rodney’s velocity, I eyed Farquhar. At least keep him in mind next year if anything does happen to Rodney.

Josh Edgin (Mets for those of you that don’t know) has a top 65 contact-rate sandwiched between Mark Melancon and Jake McGee and even induced grounders 50% of the time. He has a pretty extensive repertoire as well. In order of usage: Fourseamer, Slider, Curve, Change, Cutter and Sinker. According to his Brooks Player Card, he has great swing and miss rates on his Curve (>56%), Cutter (50%), Slider (>42%) and Sinker (33%). Even his Change approaches 30%. This isn’t the case on his Fastball, but at 93+ MPH, it induces a decent amount of grounders (1.8 GB/FB). Keep in mind he had late-season elbow issues which effected his velocity by a MPH or so, but he could be called upon to get Mejia out of a jam. I like him better than an unhealthy Bobby Parnell and Jeurys Familia from a command perspective for another year.

Zach Duke did his best Craig Kimbrel impression prior to the R2M monster hitting him in August. Prior to 8/1, Duke had a 34.9% K-rate and 27.3 K-BB%. Kimbrel ended the year with a 38.9% K-rate and 28.3 K-BB%. I think August and September brought him back to his realistic value (~2.50 ERA, 1.15 WHIP). It will be interesting to see who closes for the Brewers if they let Francisco Rodriguez go. Both Duke and Will Smith have above average (even for RP w/ 10+ saves) swing-and-miss. Will Smith should have additional command next year, but Zack Duke induces grounders better which I like in my closers/in Milwaukee. They also have Jonathan Broxton. The hierarchy seemed to be K-rod-Broxton-Smith late last season. If that’s the case, they should use Duke more (former starter) and in higher leverage situations. He was equally solid against both lefties (.258 wOBA) and righties (.262 wOBA).

Oliver Perez everybody! I thought I could filter him out by his splits being a lefty, but like 2012, he was more effective vs. righties (and faced 44 more of them). The D-backs have Addison Reed, up-and-comer Evan Marshall as well as Daniel Hudson caught touching 97 MPH so if not by outcomes or splits, we can filter Perez out by opportunity.

Darren O’Day and Andrew Miller is part of one dominating Baltimore bullpen – one that gets referenced by anyone who thinks the Orioles can beat the Tigers in the ALDS. Notice that Zach Britton didn’t make either of the above lists! He was filtered out by his below average K-BB% (13.70%). It’s his 75+% grounder rate (hence the 81+% left-on-base rate and .215 BABIP) that keeps him elite in Baltimore. The only concern you can have with O’Day is a fastball velocity almost 2 standard deviations below the mean for relievers, but his arm angle combined with that slider still induces a 30+% whiff-rate on both pitches. Miller’s slider though is a world apart from O’Day’s: only Pedro Strop, Will Smith, Jake Diekman, Greg Holland and Oliver Perez induces more whiffs than Miller’s 55% according to Baseball Prospectus’ Pitchf/x Leaderboards.  I doubt we’ll see a closer-transition next year in Baltimore unless Britton’s GB/FB ratio takes a drastic dive because his HR/FB ratio, which approached 18%, could be an issue.

An xBABIP review

On the last day of the season, @jeffwzimmerman provided me with Pitch xBABIP based on inside edge data. Let’s look at some of the bigger xBABIP differentials to keep in mind:

The last column depicts the z-score for BABIP differential. Francisco Rodriguez was expected to have a BABIP about 120 points above his actual BABIP. I highlighted (red/bad; green/good) the xBABIP z-scores as well so that you know whether or not to actually be concerned meaning sure Aaron Sanchez has the 5th biggest BABIP differential (over 2 standard deviations from the mean), but a .239 xBABIP is still utterly elite (3.34 SD’s from the mean). On the other side of the equation, it’s nice to see Evan Marshall, Carlos Martinez and Adam Ottavino (albeit in Colorado) with large BABIP differentials. Marshall and Martinez even have xBABIP’s over .5SD from the mean.

The last bit of fun

It was a very fun year to be doing bullpen reports for RotoGraphs. Aroldis Chapman broke the single-season strikeout rate of 2012 Craig Kimbrel (50.2%). He struck out 52.5% of the hitters he faced. Andrew Miller (42.6%) and Brad Boxberger (42.1%) also made the top 10 seasons ever. Dellin Betances (39.6%), Wade Davis (39.1%) and Craig Kimbrel (38.9%) made the top 20. Chapman’s swinging-strike% of 20% beat ’12 Kimbrel by .8%, but he couldn’t pass ’04 Lidge, ’03 Gagne, ’04 Gagne, ’02 Gagne or ’05 Lidge. Chapman, Miller, Doolittle, Boxberger, Betances (Wade Davis and Kenley Jansen close behind) all had historical, top 20 K-BB rates. Relievers dominate this list: only ’99 Pedro Martinez (#12), ’00 Pedro Martinez (#21), ’01 Randy Johnson (#27) and ’01 Pedro Martinez (#28) make it into the top 30, but it’s clear that we have a growing list of elite relievers.

From a fantasy perspective, thanks to 45+ saves totals out of Holland and Kimbrel, we had two relievers ranked in the top 20 pitchers. If Chapman didn’t miss time and Betances and Davis consumed the closer role, we would have had 3 others. Last year, Craig Kimbrel and his 4 wins, 50 saves, 98 SO’s, 1.21 ERA and .88 WHIP campaign made him the 3rd most valuable pitcher. This year with Kershaw, Cueto, Felix and Kluber, it would have taken even more.

If we combined the 3 more dominating performances exclusive of saves this year: Aroldis Chapman’s K-rate (52.5%) and saves total (36), Dellin Betances IP (90) – who was dominating in his own right, Wade Davis’ ERA (1.00) and Wins total (9) and Sean Doolittle’s WHIP (.73) – let’s call this guy Aroldellin Dooldavis, we would wind up with a 10.95 z-sum…just above Corey Kluber (10.72), but under Clayton Kershaw (13.74), Johnny Cueto (12.95) and Felix Hernandez (12.50). Even 50 saves wouldn’t have done the trick (12.43 z-sum):

Any day now, Zach Sanders (@zvsanders) will come out with his end-of-season FAVRz/Fantasy Rankings. Look out for them.

For this post, I will provide three sets of rankings using that same approach (summed up z-scores) for our end-of-season “Bullpen Report: Expected Fantasy Rankings”. The Bullpen Report team should follow up with role reports for each division in the coming weeks as well.

The first set of rankings you will find almost anywhere: on the fantasy sites that you use, via player-raters, etc. It’s the standard 5×5 fantasy value (Wins, ERA, WHIP, SO and Saves). The second grid will be for 6×6 leagues (addition of Holds). The last grid will be for 5×5 and 6×6 leagues, but instead of standard ERA and WHIP, we’ll look at rankings if you were to use expected ERA (via SIERA) and adjusted (adj)WHIP through BABIP differential: I will explain below.

1) 5×5 Rankings (Wins, ERA, WHIP, SO and Saves) – actual 5×5 value in column 4; expected 5×5 value in column 5:

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Woof! That’s all there is to say about my preseason bold predictions as a whole. The idea was to take players at each position that I had ranked just outside starter territory in 12-team leagues who I thought could beat my ranking. Let’s break them down one by one.

Catcher – Josmil Pinto will be a top ten fantasy catcher.

The biggest problem with my Pinto projection was that I projected him for 450 PA. Pinto didn’t come close to that, finishing with just 194 PA because the Twins gave Kurt Suzuki 502 PA. The one thing my projection did get right was Pinto’s power as he hit 12 home runs in limited work. Had he maintained that pace and received the 450 PA I projected, he would have hit 16 home runs, which would have easily surpassed the 12 I projected. Pinto’s power would make him interesting if he could get regular playing time, but Suzuki is signed through 2016 in Minnesota. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve stolen from the movie before. I’ll do so again…

Guarantee? If you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your fantasy teams’ sake, for your daughter’s sake, ya might wanna think about listening to quality content from me.

If you don’t know where this reference is from, then well…just ring your call button, and Tommy will come back there and hit you over the head with a tack hammer.

I actually will play guarantee fairy here, specifically for deep leagues since there are no uber-exciting names that jump out in my below grid. So here goes…

So long as they pitch to a qualifying level of innings without getting hurt or losing velocity (not ballsy enough to leave out these contingencies), I GUARANTEE these starters won’t be any worse next year (although in the grid below I highlighted in different strengths of green/red both starters and relievers):

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Last second I changed the title from “Having a Presence” to “Commanding Attention”. If I were to talk about the team as a whole, I would have had to go with “Having a Presence,” but I’m focusing on their rotation, and well…they command our attention…

It’s rough to be a Mets fan living in Minnesota. It’s rough being a Mets fan anywhere, but watching the Twins and their approach to 100 losses doesn’t help. Despite being only 6.5 games back from the 2nd Wild Card to date, I don’t think the Mets will have enough offense to sustain next year, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be fun to watch. There will be quite the trio that commands attention – or even a quartet with the assumption that Noah Syndergaard makes an impact. And with a quartet…who knows?!

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I spent an hour trying to find something relevant to say about the last two weeks of the season but was unsuccessful. Or at least there was no topic worth spending several hundred words on. If you’re looking for a two start streamer in what is likely the last week of your H2H playoffs, look at Blue Jays Marcus Stroman and Drew Hutchison. They’re the most talented pitchers owned in less than 50% of ESPN.com leagues in terms of K-BB% and OPS allowed on balls in play (aka limiting hard contact). Instead, let’s spend a few hundred words quickly running through a way too early top 10 SP list for next year. Read the rest of this entry »