The Secret of Lance Lynn’s Success

Lance Lynn did it. He held down left-handed batters a little more often in 2014. Those freaks hit .243/.325/.372 in 378 plate appearances, for a .314 wOBA (26 points better than last year’s rate, which was also an upgrade to the previous season’s), against the St. Louis Cardinals’ right-hander this year. That, my friends, is about league average for batters from the north. And that is really all this hurler needed in order for him to be good instead of fantasy-league-average, or even league-average. He overcame his fatal flaw.

As a result, Lynn was, for fantasy baseball players, a top-25 starting pitcher by the standards of Sr. Zach Sanders. Overall, the pitcher struck out men less frequently this year, but he still fanned more than 20% of those he faced, and, once again, he also walked them less often. These leaps forward helped him to post a 2.74 ERA, a 1.26 WHIP, and, yet again, 15 wins. He earned double-digit dollars in mixed leagues in a season for the first time.

Before you scoff, in case you were about to scoff – you scoffed already? Sonofa! Well, anyway, let’s acknowledge Lynn’s progress against LHBs. He’s faced about the same number of them in each of the past three years. He’s improved his results against them in each of the past two. They walked in 2.6% fewer plate appearances against him this year. Their ISO against him dropped by 13 points from the previous season. He’s doing something right against them.

So, Lynn did it. But how did he do it, you ask? Don’t tell me that you went straight to the .290 average on balls in play against him (14 points better than the previous year’s mark, and 21 points better than the one before that) and labeled him “lucky.” Don’t tell me that you saw a FIP, xFIP, and SIERA all about the same as his rates in those categories in each of his two years prior as a starter and assumed that he hasn’t changed. You did? Freakin’ ridiculous!

Fine. I’ll tell you know he did it. Never mind the slight advances Lynn has made in soliciting pop-ups from the opposition. You want to know how he killed more LHBs?

Bam! Fewer curveballs and changeups, and more sinkers, against them. More ground balls against them. He went to what works against them – pretty much did so in early counts – more often. And it worked … more often.

Lynn threw the two-seamer nearly 7% more often overall. He induced worm-killers versus LHBs with the pitch about 65% of the time, nearly 5% more often than he did with the pitch in his previous two campaigns. Grounders, of course, become hits less often than line drives, which he tended to give up to LHBs more often otherwise. Take that.

Of course … hmmm. Surface skidders still become hits roughly, what, 25% of the time? LHBs have typically hit Lynn’s sinker on a line more than 20% of the time. LHBs do have a slight advantage on RHBs on grounders because of the distance to first base from their respective sides of the batter’s box. Geez, in 2012 and 2013, LHBs hit .330 and .347 versus his sinker; this season, only .287. Is the pitch that much better? It’s not really doing anything different horizontally or vertically from what it did in years past, naturally – it’s not the most complex offering. Overall, he coaxed grounders from LHBs only a little more often.

Crap. Well, maybe Lynn expanded to two different types of curves or changeups or both. No, wait, probably not. Those offerings aren’t really doing anything different versus LHBs as opposed to against RHBs. And he threw them less often overall, and he’s rarely thrown the change. One might surmise that his changeup and even his deuce are no good, or at least he has little faith in them, relatively.

I guess that there isn’t much of a secret after all. I might have given Lynn too much credit. I spent waaay too much time trying to find something else new about his stuff. I do, in fact, have some doubts about his path to long-term success. Don’t tell me those things! Oh, wait, I told me those things. OK, don’t tell the crowd of people who’ll overpay for him next year.

Lynn is probably better against LHBs. The change he made in 2014 alone probably doesn’t make him 2014 better against LHBs in future years. It sure as hell can’t legitimately account for an ERA that’s a full run or more better his previous standards as a starter.

I suppose that Lynn could throw the sinker to LHBs even more often in order for him to achieve these kinds of results consistently. But there’s not enough evidence that the pitch has improved his ability to succeed, as opposed to his most recent success rate, against LHBs more than marginally, if at all. Even if it is, then he likely runs into the issue of more backlash against it. It’s not quite how Justin Masterson has been successful the times he has been, but it’s kind of similar.

Ah well. Lynn still walks a fine line. The baseball gods generally insist that starters of long-term good quality have a reliable LHB neutralizer, and he still needs one. He may be better equipped (an arsenal that he can command more consistently) and in the better league to avoid the magnitude of the tumbles Masterson has taken after his couple of good seasons. But Lynn is still a loss leader at a 2015 price that’s close to what he earned in 2014, all the same. Phooey. (Woo hoo!)