Fantasy Pitch F/X

Since the end of last season, Peavy has been the subject of trade rumors, proposed trades, and ankle pain.  Peavy is somewhat of an old schooler and willing to pitch through pain or run through a brick wall for you.  Sometimes this can be counterproductive and after seeing him limp on the field yesterday, is the pain effecting his pitches?

It was first reported that Peavy was suffering through some ankle tendinitis on May 28th after his start on May 27th.    Tendinitis never really just starts up in the middle of a start.  Usually there is an underlying factor that didn’t reach the level to cause pain until he starts to feel it.  Peavy showed a similar trend in the graph below.

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Pitch FX Jake Peavy, Pitch FX

Each year there are surprises in all aspects of fantasy baseball and in particular pitchers.  Last year Sonnanstine surprised many of us and ended up with a very respectable 3.91 FIP, 3.35 K/BB, and a decent 1.29 WHIP.  He was able to turn all of that into a 13-9 record for the AL champs and put himself on the fantasy radar in 2009.  What came next was even more surprising to fantasy owners in 2009.

Sonnanstine started the year off badly and has been inconsistent (I’m in a kind mood today) at best since then.  So far his FIP is close to 5 (with an ERA even worse), his K/BB ratio is down to 1.81, and his WHIP is an astronomical 1.78.   The fact that he has been so horrible came as a complete surprise in the bad way.  After his latest beat down, I had to see if there was anything in the Pitch Fx (from Fangraphs) that would show what’s different from last year.

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Pitch FX Andy Sonnanstine, Pitch FX

After seeing the debacle of Liriano’s line, I immediately thought of two things. First, the Sox must be very happy and second, my fantasy team just took a hit.  We all know Liriano’s history by now but a quick recap.  Johan-Lite came up and lit it up big time.  He was as unhittable and as feared as Johan was and he was just a rookie.  Unfortunately, the devastating slider that made him so great also seemed to hurt him and so in late 2006 he went under the knife, subsequently missing all of the 2007 season in rehabilitation.  In 2008, he returned and was largely ineffective over his first 4 starts before being sent down to the minors where something clicked and he dominated once again.  In a cost saving move, the Twins left him down there longer than he needed to be while others got lit up like a Christmas tree.  Eventually, Liriano returned and was effective with some brilliance showing up now and then but he still didn’t have the same zip or the same bite on his pitches.

Which brings us up to the present.  There’s been so much anticipation of Liriano returning to even 90% of 2006-levels that he was taken in the early mid-rounds of many drafts.  Tommy John patients often aren’t back to their “normal” until 2 years after the operation and he’s now more than 6 months over that threshold.   By all accounts he hasn’t quite reached the velocity he had prior to the surgery in 2006.  He’s down approximately 3 MPH (now at around 91 and change) on his fastball and about 2 MPH on his  slider (now at 85.7 MPH).  Let’s take a look at the PFx data (from Fangraphs):

Pitch FX Francisco Liriano, Pitch FX

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

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

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

News out of Minnesota is that Bonser had tears in both his labrum and rotator cuff which was repaired during surgery yesterday. They say it’s a 6-8 month process publicly but for all intensive purposes it means the season. Having tears in both the labrum and rotator cuff is an extreme injury for a pitcher.

Knowing what the injuries are, I want to go back in time and see if there were any significant signs from PFx.

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Pitch FX, SP, injury analysis Boof Bonser, PFx, Pitch FX, Profile, SP

Kevin Slowey has been getting a lot of press about being a sleeper this year. Because of this, looking at the scouting reports and the PFx profile could be more than beneficial to see if this sleeper focus is warranted or not.

Slowey throws a fastball, curveball, changeup, and slider. He strikes guys out at close to a 7-K/9 clip while walking next to no one coming in under 1.4 BB/9. His command is absolutely impeccable with a 5.1 K/BB ratio and a 1.15 WHIP so he’s not going to get himself into trouble too often. Not everything is picture perfect though. He’s primarily a FB pitcher coming in around 45% and his GB% is only 36% but he has been able to control his HR/FB% to 10%.

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Pitch FX, SP Kevin Slowey, PFx, Pitch FX, Profile, SP