Fantasy Pitch F/X

After another poor outing, Baker has dropped to 1-5 on the year.  He hasn’t been anything close to the same pitcher as he was last year as his ERA is around 7 and he’s giving up home runs left and right.  The Twins (and my fantasy team) need him to turn it around and do it quickly.  But is it likely to happen?

Baker has always been a flyball pitcher and thus prone to being hurt by the long ball but he is giving up a surprising amount of them.  His HR/9 has more than doubled from last year to a 2.33 in 2009, which is also his 3rd straight increase.   His 59% left on base % (LOB%) is well under the generally accepted 70% range which is mainly due to his HR rate.  His HR/FB% is close to double the league average of 10% (18%).  With any runners on, he’s given up 7 out of his 10 HR and every single HRA has been to right handed batters.  70% of his HR have been when he’s ahead in the count and lastly regarding home runs 80% have been off his Four Seam Fastball according to the MLB pitch Fx system.

It’s not just the HRA though.  2009 is the 4th consecutive year his BB/9 has been increasing but his strikeouts are only staying the same resulting is a K/BB ratio that has decreased in each of the last 4 years.

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SP Scott Baker, SP

I’ve been waiting for the right time and subject matter to put together another PFx post.   I’ve been trying to look at who exhibits the characteristics that I become concerned about and I see one right now with Max Scherzer.

Scherzer has been battling shoulder inflammation and fatigue several times over the last year.   Remember that when he first came up to the bigs last year, he was used out of the pen and then sent back down where he promptly went on the 7 day Minor league DL.  A month later he came back up and was used out of the rotation.  Over the winter, he had to shut down his throwing program for a month due to what was termed shoulder fatigue only to eventually begin the season on the 15-day DL  with stiffness.

I love his strikeout potential but having 3 incidents within a year of similar nature in a pitchers shoulder is not a recipe for success.  I wanted to look at his PFx charts to see if my concerns bear out.  All charts are from Fangraphs PFx section in his player card.

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Pitch FX, SP Max Scherzer, Pitch FX

In a somewhat surprising move, Scott Baker was placed on the DL yesterday with a stiff shoulder.  He hasn’t pitched very well in spring and finished the spring with a ERA north of 6.50.    There isn’t anything that jumped out at me in terms of number of innings pitched or other warning signs.  This could just be a case of a muscle imbalance and tightness thar follows and hopefully that’s all that it is.

After seeing the Twins handle Liriano’s situation last year, I’m positive that the Twins are going to take things slowly and make sure Baker is 100% healthy prior to returning to the club.  It is somewhat disturbing that he’s on the DL with a vague “stiffness” but hopefully (for my team especially) it’s something minor.

SP, news news, Scott Baker

Lots of attention is being paid towards Joba Chamberlain this spring, mostly towards his lack of velocity on his fastball. Last August he was sidelined with rotator cuff tendinitis for 27 days. This is worrisome for all of Yankee fans (not necessarily Red Sox fans though) especially considering how he served multiple roles last year and his starting role this year.

Starting in 2008 the Yankees wanted to limit the innings and the stress on his arm so he began in the bullpen. Look at the chart below for the breakdown of results of his role.

Pitch FX, SP Joba Chamberlain, PFx, Pitch FX

Justin is having a lot of problems lately with his control as he has walked 9 in his last 9 innings roughly during spring training. By now hopefully everyone knows that when a pitcher starts to significantly lose his control, it could mean that there is an injury that is being hidden from either the medical staff or the public or both.

Verlander is obviously a key component for the Detroit Tigers so I looked at his game log, courtesy of baseball-reference.com. Even though I cherry picked the dates a little bit, after July 26th he had a 6.72 ERA while having only less than a 2:1 K/BB ratio which is well below his performance in previous years. His control suffered greatly as he ended last year with a 3.90 BB/9 which was his 3rd straight year which it increased. So, let’s take a look at PFx to see if non-traditional metrics show something.

End Speed

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Pitch FX, SP Justin Verlander, PFx, SP

Ervin Santana’s elbow is merely being reported as stiffness but several of the local newspapers and beat writers are reporting he has a mild tear of the UCL of the elbow. Yes this is the same ligament that is replaced in the Tommy John procedure.

Currently, he is scheduled to miss at least a month while trying to rehab according to the Angels and other news outlets. No matter what whenever I hear that a pitcher has a partially torn or sprained UCL I avoid him at all costs. The UCL does not completely heal on it own ever. Without surgery, the area is only stabilized by two methods. First, the elbow can be strengthened up to the point where the muscles take up the slack for the lack of ligamentous stability. The other method is that scar tissue is built up and the muscles are also strengthened.

Regardless neither of these actually heal the tissue of the ligament, they merely control the symptom of instability. That’s why when Pat Neshek attempted his rehab, I knew it wouldn’t last and he would require surgery. Same with Liriano. Same with every other pitcher.

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SP, injury analysis, news Elbow, Ervin Santana, SP, Sprain, Tommy John

Oswalt has been getting some press lately about still being an ace. One wonders if injuries have begun to take their toll on him.He’s been on the DL 5 times since 2003 with 4 times being to the hip/groin area. The 31 year old made 32 starts last year mixing 4 pitches fairly well together while throwing almost 209 innings.

The results were good by all accounts posting a 3.54 ERA and 1.179 WHIP while striking out 165. According to baseball-reference.com, his *ERA+ which measures how his ERA compares to the league ERA, was the lowest of his career at 120. He has only been down in the 120’s one other time, 2004, when he posted a 125 ERA+. The last 3 years his ERA+ dropped from 149 to 138 and down to 120 last year.

He throws 4 pitches: fastball, curveball, slider, and changeup. He throws the curve slightly more than the slider, but much more when he is ahead or with 2 strikes. Overall I think that PFx data will show how he’s really not quite into decline yet and should be targeted in fantasy leagues everywhere.

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Pitch FX, SP PFx, Profile, Roy Oswalt, SP

During my draft prep, I was reading Shandler’s excellent forecaster and I noticed something interesting to me. After missing the first several weeks of the season last year with a triceps strain, Lackey started off extremely strong when he came back with an ERA of 2.47 in the first half. In the second half, it struck midnight and the carriage turned back into the pumpkin with his ERA ballooning up to 4.99. He mentioned that it was nearly the statistics correcting to their normal levels.

His BA against in the 1st half was around .230 while in the second it was .330. Amazingly in the first half he stranded 91% of the runners so of course, it regressed back down to 69% in the 2nd half. This part looks like it was just regression but his control seriously spiked up to levels not seen since 2006. His strikeout rate stayed in line with the last 2 years so his K:BB ratio significantly dropped in the 2nd half. My last bit of true statistical analysis was his HR/FB% went from 9% to 20% in the second half. The problem is that even the 9% isn’t “normal” for him. The last time his HR/FB% was 9% was 2004.

This made me think twice as to why his HR/FB% suddenly spiked up and me being me, decided to look at my PFx graphs. Before I move onto my graphs, I must explain there are some slight differences in how I present them now. All of them use the averages for each game just like before however there are now two lines. First is the normal daily average which is the blue line. This represents the group average for all of the pitches/events on that particular day. The second line (red) is a “moving average” of the last 5 games which is the average over 5 games which I use to notice trends by flattening out the large fluctuations. Each new day’s average is added to the average and the oldest game is dropped, thus “moving” the average over the time. Please let me know what you think. Read more…

Pitch FX, SP, injury analysis John Lackey, PFx, Pitch FX