Archive for Kyle Gibson

On Monday I touched on Tony Blengino’s presentation on contact management that he gave this past weekend at Saber Seminar in Boston. Tony measured the pitchers who were best able to manage contact by looking at HITf/x data, data to which us normal people have no access. But I theorized that something like sOPS+ (like ERA- but with OPS allowed) could be a replacement for the HITf/x data. I thought that sOPS+ might be able to tell us which guys are better at inducing weak contact and thus which guys can have an ERA that beats their ERA estimators.

When I say “tell us” I should clarify that could mean two different things. It’s the classic explanatory versus predictive problem. Yes, sOPS+ can explain why a pitcher’s ERA is lower than his ERA estimators in a given season, but, as it turns out, it can’t tell us whether he’ll be able to do so the next season. I spent some time last night looking at whether sOPS+ in year one correlated well with the gap between ERA and SIERA in year two. The answer is no. While the correlation was stronger than it was between ISO allowed (another weak contact indicator) and the ERA-SIERA gap, it was still far too small to be meaningful.

It’s obvious that things like sOPS+ and ISO allowed don’t stabilize quickly. And that should not come as a surprise given that we know certain batted ball data takes a long time to stabilize. That doesn’t mean it’s not a skill. It simply means you can’t look at any pitcher’s sOPS+ or ISO allowed in the offseason and rely on it too much in projecting them for the next season. But when I say you can’t look at “any” pitcher, I mean you can’t just look at any old pitcher. I do think there are some you can look at. Read the rest of this entry »

Buzz, your girlfriend, WOOF! – Kevin McCallister

When you look at the potential 2013 Minnesota Twins rotation, you’re likely to have the same reaction that Kevin did when he saw the framed picture of Buzz’s less-than-attractive girlfriend. The Twins rotation finished dead last in WAR and strikeout percentage last year and were bottom five in the league in just about every other category. Woof, indeed.

Scott Diamond, the staff “ace,” is scheduled to make his first spring start a little over a week from now and is questionable for the start of the season. And even when he does return, the Twins will be getting back a guy who had the fourth worst strikeout rate among qualified pitchers last season.

The Twins must really like low strikeout pitchers because their staff is littered with them. This offseason they brought in one of the three pitchers who had a lower strikeout rate than Diamond last year, Kevin Correia. And all but one of their potential starters has a career strikeout rate that is under 16%. Read the rest of this entry »

– The Royals continue to bring prospects to the big leagues, calling up catcher Salvador Perez. The 21-year old Perez is exactly what you would expect from a Dayton Moore catcher: his batting average is high, his walk rate is low, and he doesn’t have a whole lot of power to speak of. Still, the idea of a catcher with a high batting average is certainly attractive in non-OBP leagues, so it might not be a bad idea to give this kid a shot if you’re looking for a catcher in deeper than standard leagues. It sounds like he’ll be the main catcher in KC, and who knows, maybe he’ll hit .280? If you’re in deeper (dynasty) leagues, he’s certainly worth a shot if you’re in need of catching help.

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