Brian Matusz: A Curious Case of Control Issues
Brian Matusz entered the 2010 season considered one of the top rookie pitchers in the game. Marc Hulet of Fangraphs recently wrote that he thinks Matusz will win the AL Rookie of the Year. Things haven’t been so rosy for the Baltimore lefty in the last month, however.
Matusz hasn’t pitched excellently in 2010 according to his peripherals. He’s better than his 5.8 ERA, but he’s worse than 3.8 FIP on account of an unsustainable 6.2% HR/FB. His xFIP of 4.6 looks a lot more like the pitcher that he is. He’s striking out a lot of hitters (7.4 per 9), but his fly-ball tendencies are extreme (46.5% over 446 batters faced) and his control looks spotty: 3.3 BB/9 this season.
It’s the last part I want to take a look at, because a (career) 3.1BB/9 is going to wreck a fly-ball pitcher like Matusz unless he can develop swing-and-miss stuff that will get him a strike out per inning. But here’s the thing: Matusz control has been impeccable through his major league career.
54.3% of his pitches have hit the zone since he first took the mound in 2009. For comparison’s sake, just four pitchers managed to throw that percentage of pitches (or more) in the zone last season: Ted Lilly, Cliff Lee, Johan Santana and Roy Oswalt (who tied Matusz’s 54.3%). Just below that are Justin Verlander and Scott Baker. Matusz has allowed 7.6% of hitters a free pass since his arrival. Of those six comparisons, the highest walk percentage was 6.5% (Santana), the lowest 4.4% (Lee) and the average was 5.6%. Somehow Brian Matusz manages to walk 35% more batters than the average of this group of similar pitchers.
It gets even stranger. Matusz throws pitches in the zone, but he’s not exactly a pitch-to-contact guy. His contact rate on pitches in the zone (=83.3%) is about 4% below major league average (~=88%). He does tend to allow contact on pitches out of the zone, but the net result is an average contact rate, and his swinging strike rate of 9.3% is 1% better than the major league average. He’s not throwing pitches in the zone because he gets behind in the count: his 62.0% F-strike rate place him around the top 15% of starters with 60 or more IP last season.
If we adjust his walk rate to reflect what pitchers with a similar rate of pitches in the zone do, Matusz would have just 15 walks this season and a 3.0K/BB ratio. That’s good enough to produce a 4.2 xFIP and 3.6 FIP. ( I calculated the expected walk rate at 6% of batters faced. I calculate expected HR for xFIP as 6.5% of line drives plus flyballs, i.e., balls in the air, rather than as proportion of fly balls to account for inconsistencies in LD and FB scoring.)
While it’s difficult to tell a lot about a pitcher from his plate discipline stats, two things do stand out: swinging strikes get Ks and pitches in the zone prevent walks. The correlation coefficent between BB/BFP and zone% was -.43 for 78 qualified starting pitchers in 2009, which is a pretty strong correlation for baseball.
It would be really cool if I had an explanation of Brian Matusz high walk rate, but it confounds me, and I’m completely open to suggestions. His walks look like an anomaly.
8 of his 12 starts have come against the top five teams in the AL at drawing walks: NYY, BOS, MIN, TB, and CLE). 80% his walks have come in that 66.7% of his starts. Given the division and league he pitches in, it might be misleading to compare his peripherals to those of NL pitchers like Lilly, Santana, Oswalt, etc.
David makes a nice point about the AL-factor and the AL East-factor that confront Matusz. It’s difficult to test the significance of being in the AL East. But I don’t think the fact that he’s in the AL accounts for his high walk rate. If we expand our comparison class to include the pitchers with the ten highest zone% in the AL, (1) none of them hits the zone as often as Matusz, and (2) the comp. group: Verlander and Baker, plus Danks, Halladay, Blackburn, Neimann, Shields, Beckett, Guthrie and Anderson. This is not exactly a sloppy group of pitchers; only Guthrie (6.8% BB) and Neimann (7.6%) come close to Matusz in BB%. Anderson’s zone% is just about 50%, so we’re a long way from Matusz’s level of pitches in the zone.
Nice article. As an O’s fan, I have seen a lot of his starts. I have noticed that he is often around the plate but does not get some calls I see some of the more senior/experienced pitchers get. Just my personal observation. Not sure if it has to do with him being young and not getting some of the border line calls (which it seems like to me), his playing for the Orioles (who are pitiful), or just bad luck to date. I assume all of this will even out over time.
There is a correlation between throwing pitches in the zone and a pitcher’s walk rate, but it’s not always going to work out to a low BB/9, simply because the only time throwing in the zone really matters is after the count has gotten to 3 balls. After Verlander, there are a bunch of pitchers with walk rates of 3 +, despite zone rates above 52%, and right now even Shaun Marcum has a 2.1 BB/9 despite an AL-low 40% zone rate.
No doubt, Matusz is probably a little skittish when it comes to throwing strikes in the zone in those counts, it’s something we always see from those new to the majors. We’ll see how soon he can get over it.