Archive for Player Analysis

Similarly to a large portion of the FanGraphs community, I am a Philadelphia Phillies fan.  I was born in South Jersey just 20 minutes away from the stadium and grew up watching every game.  I was there for the tough times in the late 90’s / early 2000’s, and I was there for the glory days of 2007-2011.  After an abysmal last few seasons of baseball in Philadelphia, we have finally seen some promise this season leading us to believe that better days are coming soon.  One of the bright spots on the team so far this year has been Rule 5 pick, Tyler Goeddel.

After being selected in the first round of the 2011 MLB Rookie Draft, Tyler Goeddel began his professional career with the Tampa Bay Rays.  Goeddel was drafted out of high school as a third baseman and for the first three years of his minor league career that would be the only position he played.  In 2015, however, the Rays decided to move Goeddel to the outfield.  His athleticism allows him to play all three outfield positions and that type of versatility is very sought after by big league clubs.  While defense was never his problem, Goeddel’s bat didn’t develop as quickly as the Rays had hoped.  He was a career .262 hitter with 31 home runs across four full seasons in the minor leagues.  Ultimately the Rays made a tough decision and left him off their 40-man roster, knowing there was a great chance another team would select him in the Rule 5 Draft.  Shortly after, the Phillies did just that and selected Goeddel with the first overall pick of the 2015 Rule 5 Draft.

The Philadelphia Phillies have historically been excellent in finding talent in the Rule 5 Draft.  (2004 – Shane Victorino, 2012 – Ender Inciarte, 2014 – Odubel Herrera).  In the early going, I (like most Phillies fans) was very skeptical as to whether or not Goeddel could follow in the footsteps of players like Shane Victorino and Odubel Herrera and become a valuable contributor to our big league team.  Goeddel had a mediocre spring training but with no other serious competition in the corner outfield spots, there was no harm in keeping him around for a rebuilding year and seeing what the kid could do.

The beginning of Tyler Goeddel’s major league career could not have gone much worse.  Take a look below at his stats through his first nine games:

In only 16 at-bats, Goeddel recorded only one hit (a single), and struck out a whopping eight times!  Now obviously this is a VERY small sample size, and we should expect some struggles while adjusting to big league pitching.  Up until this point, Goeddel has never seen pitching above the Double-A level.  Now let’s take a look at his plate discipline stats over the same time frame:

O-Swing % – Percentage of time a batter swings on pitches outside the strike zone
Z-Swing % – Percentage of time a batter swings on pitches inside the strike zone
Swing % – Percentage of time a batter swings at a pitch, regardless of location
O-Contact % – Percentage of times a batter makes contact with a ball when swinging outside of the strike zone
Z-Contact % – Percentage of times a batter makes contact with a ball when swinging inside of the strike zone
Contact % – Percentage of times a batter makes contact with the ball when swinging
Zone % – Percentage of overall pitches thrown to batter that were in the strike zone

There is nothing noteworthy about his swing percentages as they are all just about equal to the league averages, but the contact percentages are quite alarming.  Through his first nine games, Goeddel only made contact 53% of the time he swung his bat.  Rather than just writing this off as a rookie being over-matched by big league pitching, I decided to dig deeper into these stats and figure out exactly where Goeddel was struggling.  Check out the video below that I put together which basically sums up the beginning of Goeddel’s career in 30 seconds:

Whether or not you realized from watching the above video, every one of these swing and misses came on a fastball.  They all also came in the upper portion of the strike zone.  Just by watching Goeddel’s at-bats through this point of the season, it was clear as day to see opposing pitchers were attacking Goeddel with fastballs up in the zone.  The chart below shows every fastball that was thrown to Goeddel over his first nine games.  It is broken up by hot and cold zones and shows his contact percentage versus the fastball at every portion of the strike zone:

This chart verifies for us what we saw in the video…Goeddel really struggled to hit fastballs up in the zone to begin the season.  At this point, everyone was frustrated.  Tyler Goeddel was frustrated because he knew he was much more talented than his results thus far have showed.  The Phillies organization was frustrated because they had such high hopes for Goeddel entering the season.  And most importantly, the Phillies fans were frustrated and began questioning what the Phillies could possibly see in this guy.  (Search for Tyler Goeddel’s name on Twitter and read old tweets from this time period if you don’t believe me!!)

An important thing to remember while looking at these stats, is that up until this point of his career Goeddel has been an every-day player.  Not only is he adjusting to big league pitching, but he is also trying to adjust to not having consistent at-bats.  Since the Phillies unexpectedly got off to such a hot start, an important decision needed to be made.  On one hand, they have this young promising player who will need consistent at bats in order to show his true potential.  But on the other hand, this team is surprisingly in the hunt in the NL East and may not want to allow Goeddel to go through his growing pains while they are competing for the division title.  Eventually, a decision was made and manager Pete Mackanin started to put Goeddel in the every-day lineup. Below are some quotes from Goeddel at this time speaking of the decision:

“Getting regular playing time and the confidence [from that] is huge, but I try to get started a little earlier on my swing so I can be on time with the fastball. You need to hit the fastball if you want to play up here, obviously. I feel like I’ve made that adjustment and it’s been a huge help.” – Tyler Goeddel

“I didn’t play how I wanted to play in April.  And I’m glad he’s (Pete Mackanin) giving me a chance, because I really didn’t play my way into a chance; he just gave it to me. So I’m trying to make the most of it.” – Tyler Goeddel

The video below (from 4/23/16) summarizes Goeddel’s early season struggles and the decision to give him more playing time:

The Phillies coaching staff deserves a lot of credit.  They recognized early on that Goeddel was struggling with fastballs up in the zone and prior to this game really worked with him in that area and promised him more playing time moving forward.  Here is a video of his next at bat in the game, where the pitcher tries once again to attack Goeddel with some high heat:

Goeddel responds with another base hit and his first RBI of the season.  Take a look below at how his stats over his next seven games compare to his stats from his first nine games.

You can very easily see that Goeddel drastically improved his contact percentage over this time frame, which resulted in a huge drop in his strikeout rate.  The video below is from 5/8/16, right after the stretch of stats we just evaluated.  Goeddel had a big hit late to tie the game for the Phillies and later came in to score the winning run.

As you could see, the hit came on a high fastball.  A few weeks ago, Goeddel could not touch this pitch…but all of a sudden he is beginning to prove that he can.  The next video is from after that game.  Tyler discusses the adjustments he has made and also how playing every day has contributed to his recent success:

This hit was the start of a new Tyler Goeddel.  Pitchers continued to attack him with fastballs up in the zone and Goeddel really started to make them pay.  This is what he did to a Brandon Finnegan fastball just a few days later:

Ever since that hit on May 8th against the Marlins, Goeddel has been the player the Phillies could have only hoped he one day would become.  He has flashed signs of brilliance in just about every game since that have Phillies fans drooling over what the future outfield could look like.  Even though he has made adjustments and is seemingly now catching up to big league fastballs, opposing pitchers continue to test him.  Check out the video below that I put together showing what Goeddel has done to fastballs in the upper portion of the strike zone over the last few weeks.

As you can clearly see, this is a different player than we saw early on in the season.  Take a look at how his recent stats compare to those early on:

Goeddel’s contact percentage over his first nine games was only 53%.  Over his last 10 games, it is 91%.  That is an incredible difference and clearly his adjustments are paying off.  In turn, his improved contact has led to a strikeout percentage of only 5.4% over his last 10 games.  The chart below shows how Goeddel has fared against the fastball since he noted his adjustments on April 23, 2016.

Now go back up to the top of the article and compare this chart to what it looked like at the beginning of the season.  More consistent at bats have clearly translated into him catching up to the fastball and the results thus far have been phenomenal.  I have to admit that I was a doubter early on, but I am now completely on board the Tyler Goeddel bandwagon.  This kid is only 23 years old and the fact that he was able to so quickly make an adjustment like this and immediately see results is remarkable.  Now that he is having some success, opposing pitchers will start to change their game-plan against him.  While the pace he is on now may not be sustainable over the course of a full season, I am confident that Goeddel will continue to make the necessary adjustments and help this Phillies team continue to find ways to win ball games.  Although the video below doesn’t exactly relate to his success at the plate, I had to throw this in here and it is a must watch if you have not seen it already:

The last video I will show features Goeddel’s post game interview after this throw:

Recent Quotes:

“It’s exciting.  Coming to the field everyday I’m expecting to see myself in the lineup. That’s a feeling I didn’t have last month. It’s a lot more relaxing, less stressful.” – Tyler Goeddel

“It was definitely a big adjustment, going from playing everyday my whole career to having a specific role, and then not performing well in my role, it was a little tough.  But, you know, they’re giving me an opportunity now and I feel like I’m playing better, which is nice. I’m happy for myself. I always knew I could play up here, but I needed some results to prove it to myself. I’m glad, finally, there are some results to show.” – Tyler Goeddel

I love how confident Goeddel is when he speaks of his game and I am so glad the numbers back him up.  I continue to be blown away watching him play every day, especially due to the fact that he has only been playing the outfield for one year.

Lastly, I want to show a few graphs.  The first one shows a rolling total of Goeddel’s strike out percentage so far this season.  The statistics earlier show you that it has decreased, but this graph makes it much easier to see his progression:

The next graph is another rolling total showing how Goeddel’s wRC+ has progressed throughout the season.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the stat, wRC+ stands for weighted runs created plus.  It attempts to quantify a player’s offensive value in terms of runs.  An average wRC+ is 100.  Check out how Goeddel’s wRC+ has improved throughout the season:

What do you think, Phillies fans?  Can Tyler Goeddel keep this up?  Is the Tyler Goeddel that we have seen over the last few weeks the real Tyler Goeddel?  Are you ready to hop on the bandwagon yet or do you need to see more from him to believe?  Only time will tell, but I’m buying into the hype and am excited to see what the future holds for this promising young player.

Twitter – @mtamburri922

It seems that more and more often, we as baseball fans are constantly trying to “diagnose” the cause of a specific player’s struggles, and give our two cents on if everyone should — in the words of Aaron Rodgers — relax, or be concerned about the player’s deficiencies. I am not sure what it is; maybe it’s because talking about other people’s problems makes us forget about our own. Maybe it’s because we as humans simply like to tell other people how to do their jobs, because it makes us feel important. No one will truly ever know the exact answer to that question. With that being said, however, I am going to do exactly what I just talked about the previous four sentences; I am going to try to explain what is going on with Yan Gomes. In his first two seasons with the Tribe (223 games total), he accumulated 7.8 WAR, won a Silver Slugger award in 2014, and drew positive reviews for his framing abilities according to Baseball Prospectus (ranked 17^th out of 417 catchers in 2013 and 32^nd out of 382 in 2014 in the Framing Runs statistic). Framing runs essentially shows how many runs a catcher saves throughout a given season based on how many extra strikes they are able to get their pitchers from their framing abilities. The Indians, seeing a young and talented player still required to go through the arbitration process for several more years, locked Gomes up to a six-year, 23-million-dollar contract before the 2014 season. Taking a look at this chart, the Indians’ felt they were in for a huge bargain.

To briefly explain my methodology, I used the estimates for dollars per WAR (which adjusts for inflation) from an article by Matt Swartz from Hardball Times, and adjusted Gomes’ overall WAR per year by the generally accepted decline rates laid out by Dave Cameron of FanGraphs a few years back. Players on average perform at 90% of their previous year’s WAR output through age 30, 85% from 31-35, and 80% from 36 and up. When the Indians signed Gomes, he was coming off a 3.3 WAR season. Considering he was going into his age-27 season, he was probably nearing his peak year in terms of WAR. Therefore, right or wrong, I believe his true-talent level (and what the Tribe were expecting from him) in 2014 was right around 3.5 WAR. I adjusted his yearly totals accordingly until his contract expired — I did not incorporate team options for 2020 and 2021 into this. The Indians receive roughly 120 million dollars in surplus value for the length of Gomes contract, which would be an incredible deal for a small-market team.

Obviously, Gomes went out in 2014 and produced a 4.5 WAR season, even further increasing the bargain for the Tribe in the early goings of the deal. Since 2014, however, Gomes hasn’t been the same player at the dish. His defense still grades out favorably according to many defensive metrics, but his bat appears to have taken a big step back. It isn’t fair to judge him on 2015, considering he was injured early on in the season and never fully recovered. This year, there isn’t an injury excuse — that we know of anyways. Gomes is slashing a dismal .167/.204/.353 at the plate, and has been worth just 46 wRC+, meaning his hitting has been 54% worse than league average. Few things of merit before jumping into a more detailed analysis: he is running a .174 BABIP, which is tremendously lower than his career average of .302 and upon regression will raise his average. His walk rate is about the same, and he is only striking out 3% more than his “peak” season of 2014. While a 3% rise in strikeout percentage isn’t minuscule, Gomes has always been known as a free swinger (over the last four years, he is in the 75^th percentile in swinging strikes and 83^rd percentile in swing percentage).

So, the big question here is, what specifically is causing Gomes’ struggles? I am going to try to be as systematic as possible here, so that everything kind of builds upon itself. To quickly summarize his plate discipline statistics — because I don’t think there are really any surprises here — his out of zone, zone, and overall swing percentages in comparison to his career have increased, and his out of zone and overall contact percentages have decreased. I am not sure why his Z-Contact% has increased, but I don’t think that is of much consequence. It is clear that Gomes is swinging more, and making contact less.

Turning to his batted-ball statistics, there are several important changes that start to paint a better picture of why Gomes is struggling. For ease of communication, I have split the information into two tables below.

Notice how in all of Gomes’ professional seasons, his groundball-to-fly-ball ratio has gone down. This could be considered a good thing, since he does possess a ton of raw power, and everyone knows you can’t hit home runs on the ground — okay, technically you can, but Gomes doesn’t have Dee Gordon speed. The next thing that jumps out is his 14.7% pop-up rate, which is good for 25^th highest out of 192 qualified hitters. His increased fly-ball rate, coupled with his bloated IFFB%, could explain why his BABIP is so low — balls in the air are caught more often than balls on the ground. More importantly, though, it seems that there could be a pitch-recognition problem, considering his isn’t quite squaring up balls as consistently as he has in the past. To go into this concept further, let’s take a look at the next chart.

Gomes is pulling the ball more than he ever has in his entire career — excluding the cup of tea he had in the bigs in 2012. Not to mention, he has basically abandoned taking the ball the other way. Looking at his quality of contact stats, he is hitting the ball “hard” less often than he typically has throughout his career, too.

Sure enough, Gomes has been below the league average in exit velocity for the majority of the season. So, to recap what I have already found, Gomes is hitting a ton of fly balls and pop-ups, is pulling the ball more and taking it the other way less, and is hitting the ball softer than usual. What does this all mean? I think it illustrates that Gomes is struggling with breaking balls.

Looking at Gomes’ spray angles against hard, breaking, and offspeed pitches, it appears that he is not recognizing breaking balls well this season.

For those that aren’t familiar with Brooks Baseball’s spray angle data, it essentially shows the average direction which balls are hit on the field. So, a positive spray angle (as depicted on the graph) means that the hitter tends to pull that pitch, and a negative spray angle means they tend to take it the other way. A recent FanGraphs Community Blog post by an author named Brad McKay explained the significance of spray angle well, in my opinion. He surmised that similar spray angles for different pitch types suggests that a player “was able to recognize and wait back equally well for both pitch types,” something that I happen to agree with. Looking at Gomes’ Silver Slugger Award winning year, it appears that Gomes tracked and hit fastballs and breaking balls at a similar spray angle, while also hitting offspeed pitches almost identical as well. This shows that Gomes was picking up the ball well in 2014. Fast-forward to 2016, and you can see that those angles have changed, and Gomes is now pulling breaking balls more than he does against fastballs. This suggests that something isn’t right with Gomes’ pitch recognition. He has almost reverted back to more of what he was in 2013. Interestingly enough, Gomes hit really well that season in 88 games played. The difference from then to now, however, is the pitch sequencing.

The approach against him has done a complete 180. The lefties — who used to pound him with fastballs when ahead in the count — now go to their breaking balls, while the righties — who used to pound him with breaking balls when ahead in the count — now attack him with fastballs. Essentially, the way pitchers (both lefties and righties) attacked Gomes in 2013 is consistent with how one would traditionally pitch to an aggressive, right-handed power bat. Here’s what I think has happened now. Pitcher’s have realized that Gomes is not picking up breaking balls the way he was in the past, causing him to have to sit breaking ball on the majority of pitches. He does this with the hopes of picking up the breaking ball early enough to decide whether to swing or not swing. With this in mind, right-handed pitchers know that because Gomes is sitting breaking ball, he will have a harder time catching up to the fastball many times. Simultaneously, left-handers know that they can attack him earlier with their fastballs (which are generally a pitch righties see well from lefties) to get ahead in the count, and then try to put him away with the breaking ball. In a sense, Gomes is completely and utterly discombobulated at the plate. Here are his heat maps vs. righties, broken down into “hard stuff” and “breaking balls.”As expected, the “hard stuff” is up, while the breaking balls are started over the middle of the plate and break down and away. Next, the lefties.

Lefties have attacked him with fastballs low, and inside, and use this to set up the breaking ball on Gomes’ back foot, which is incredibly difficult to hit (especially for someone not picking up those types of pitches well). Gomes is hitting .177 against the 55 sliders he’s seen this year, and is hitting .000 against the 35 curveballs he’s seen. His averages against harder pitchers are not much better.

Now that we have identified the problem, is there a way to fix it? I don’t know what Gomes is doing behind the scenes, but in my opinion there are three different ways to go about this. For one, I think Gomes should study the way pitchers are attacking him (which I would assume he is already doing). Using this knowledge, I think Gomes could benefit from being a little more patient at the plate. Instead of swinging out of his shoes all the time, he might be better suited remembering how pitchers are attacking him, and waiting on a pitch he not only can drive, but knows is most likely coming (helping to eliminate the guessing game he is playing right now). Lastly, I think he could simply practice recognizing pitches on the pitching machines teams have in the clubhouse. Gomes could spend time every day tracking a set amount of pitches, working to improve his ability to discern spin on the baseball upon its release. Then, he could put that pitch recognition to the test by actually attempting to hit the pitches when they are thrown. These are pretty simplistic solutions, and I am sure Gomes is working tirelessly trying to break out of his slump already. These are just my best guesses on how to improve this deficiency in Gomes’ game going forward in 2016.

I still believe in Yan Gomes, and so should you. He has proven he can be a successful big-leaguer, and one of the top catchers in the league. Catchers are judged more on their defense than on their bat, and catchers who can do both are considered a premium. In other words, Gomes could still be considered a solid MLB catcher, even if he doesn’t ever regain his old form at the plate. It is my opinion, however, that we should not sell him short at the plate. The ability is there, it just needs a little refining right now. For the sake of Indians’ fans everywhere, let’s hope Gomes can unleash his inner “Yanimal” sooner rather than later; the fate of the Indians season depends on it.

References

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=9627&position=C

http://www.brooksbaseball.net/h_landing.php?player=543228&time=year&startDate=01/01/2016&endDate=01/01/2017&s_type=13

http://www.brooksbaseball.net/h_landing.php?player=543228&time=year&startDate=01/01/2016&endDate=01/01/2017&s_type=13

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-cost-of-a-win-in-the-2014-off-season/

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/player?player_id=543228&pos=2&player_type=batter

http://www.fangraphs.com/community/the-tulowitzki-hypothesis/

Let me preface this article by saying that I watch A LOT of baseball.  I also have an extensive analytical background and am always analyzing baseball stats looking for value in players.  Last week, I was watching an Orioles game and the starting pitcher was a player I have never heard of.  His name is Tyler Wilson.  While watching the game, I was very impressed with his overall make-up and the confidence he displayed in each one of his pitches.  Many times what separates a pitcher from being able to start at the big-league level versus being destined for the bullpen is the ability to throw multiple pitches.  The ability to throw each of those pitches effectively, however, can be what separates a good starting pitcher from a great starting pitcher.  The more I watched of Wilson, the more intrigued I became about his future outlook, and the more motivated I became to write this article.  (I went back and watched all of Wilson’s starts this year before writing this article.)

To give you a little background, Tyler Wilson has never been an elite prospect.  He attended college at the University of Virginia, where he was overlooked by fellow staff-mate, and future 1st round pick, Danny Hultzen.  Wilson was drafted by the Orioles in the 10th round of the 2011 MLB Draft.  Ever since being drafted, he has quietly excelled at every level.  He doesn’t have the dominant strikeout numbers that you look for in pitching prospects, which is a big reason he has gone overlooked for much of his career.

After climbing his way through the organizational ladder, Wilson made his major league debut with the Orioles last year and eventually made the team this year out of spring training.  Although he made the team in a bullpen role, early season injuries to the Orioles pitching staff opened up an opportunity and Wilson has really taken advantage of it.  Enough of the background though.  Let’s move on to what I saw while actually watching him pitch.

Tyler Wilson features a cutter and a two-seam fastball.  Each of these pitches sit in the 89-91 mph range and both show a great amount of movement.  The cutter is most effective against right-handed batters when thrown on the outside portion of the plate.  Check out the video below to watch him fool Kansas City Royals outfielder Lorenzo Cain with three straight cutters:

He essentially gave Cain, a very good hitter, three of the exact same pitches in a row…and Cain couldn’t touch them.  In every start this year, Wilson has pounded the outside corner with this cutter and has had fantastic results.  Don’t think by any means though that he is a one trick pony.  As soon as you start to expect that cutter on the outside corner, Wilson will come right back in on you with a two-seam fastball:

Look at the horizontal movement on that pitch!  Absolutely filthy!  Wilson has showed a ton of confidence in both of those pitches so far this season as he uses them to pound both sides of the strike zone and his command of them has been exceptional.  He is not afraid to throw them in any count and they are equally effective vs both left-handed and right-handed batters.

While his fastballs both seemed to be plus pitches upon first glance, I started to have thoughts that this guy might be for real as soon as he started throwing his curveball.  Wilson’s breaking ball sits in the 77-79 mph range.  I was astonished by how well he was able to locate his curve and the amount of movement on each and every one he threw.  Watch him send White Sox slugger Jose Abreu down swinging in the video below:

Abreu had no chance.  In his most recent start against the Twins, Wilson’s curve looked even better.  Check out the one he threw to Byung-Ho Park:

Both of those pitches came in a 2-2 count.  Many pitchers are scared to throw a breaking ball in a 2-2 count, especially to players with plus power such as Abreu and Park.  If you miss your target, two things can happen.  One — you leave the ball up in the zone and it gets hit out of the stadium.  Two — you throw it in the dirt; the hitter lays off; and now you have to pitch to this slugger with a full count.  Wilson isn’t scared to throw his curveball in any count and that is what makes him so dangerous.  You never know when to expect it, but at the same time you have to expect that he can throw it at any moment.

The last pitch in Wilson’s arsenal is his changeup.  This pitch has a ton of downward movement and produces a lot of groundballs.  While there were many better examples that I could have shown you of his change-up in action, I wanted to show one of his bad ones.  Even when he missed his target, the batter was still fooled by the amount of movement on this pitch.  Check out the following pitch to Royals SS Alcides Escobar:

The catcher set up down in the zone and Wilson clearly misses his target.  Luckily it didn’t seem to matter as the pitch had an insane amount of horizontal movement, running in on Escobar and jamming him.

Take a look at the chart below, showing the vertical and horizontal movement on each of Wilson’s pitches:

The middle portion of this chart is empty.  All five of his pitches have a tremendous amount of movement, and none of them move in the same direction.  The fact that he is able to command each of these pitches so well and keep hitters guessing with which one will come next is the reason why he has had so much success.  A big reason why hitters are having trouble guessing his pitches is because of how well Wilson is able to repeat his delivery.  The chart below shows Wilson’s release point for each type of pitch:

As you can see, his release point is almost identical with all five of his pitches.  At this point, I have watched all of his starts from this season and was very impressed.   I then decided to do some research and was immediately impressed with stats such as his career BB rate and low WHIP, but wanted to dig further.  I began to look through the PITCHf/x data because I was curious to see how effective each of his pitches actually were.  Based on the PITCHf/x value metric, all of his pitches so far this year have graded as above average.  If you are not familiar with the PITCHf/x value scale, someone who has a fastball ranking of zero means that he possesses an average fastball.  Any value above zero means that pitch is above average.  Obviously the higher the number, the better the pitch.  The same goes for negative numbers and pitches being below average.  See the table below for the breakdown of Wilson’s arsenal:

Based on the above values, the change-up has been Wilson’s most valuable pitch this season with his curveball close behind.  Obviously it is very early in the season and we are working with a small sample size…but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun!  While doing this research, I set out the goal to find every starting pitcher who throws five or more above-average pitches.  Below is the list of players who fit that description:

IP = Innings Pitched
FA = Fastball
FT = Two-Seam Fastball
FC = Cut Fastball
SI = Sinker
SL = Slider
CU = Curveball
CH = Change-up
KC = Knuckle Curveball
EP = Eephus

There are only five pitchers who have thrown five or more pitches above average so far this season!  Wilson is in great company, as the other four pitchers are all All-Star-caliber players and borderline household names.  Being that this is such a small sample size, I decided to look back at last year’s stats to see how many players fit this description over a full season.  Using the same parameters and setting the minimum IP to 100, the following table was produced:

Once again, the names on this list are some of the top pitchers in baseball.  A few of these pitchers have a pitch that graded out as below average, but since they had five or more different pitches all individually grade as above average, they made the final cut.

As you can see, it is very rare to have a pitcher who has five legitimate plus pitches.  I am very interested to see if Tyler Wilson can maintain these results over the course of a full season, and I really hope he is given the opportunity to do so.  If he continues to pitch the way he has been, the Orioles will have no choice but to leave him in the rotation.  Although he has had limited success, Wilson has struggled in each of his starts when facing the lineup the third time around.  This could be due to the fact that he is still in the process of being stretched out from his bullpen role.  When in the bullpen, you don’t have to prepare to face the same hitter three times.  I am hopeful that once he is fully stretched out and back into his starter mentality, he will be able to make the necessary adjustments and continue to throw all of his pitches with confidence.  If he can continue to make quality pitches as he faces the lineup for a third time, I believe Tyler Wilson has the chance to become a very special pitcher.

Memorable quotes I heard during the TV broadcasts:

“Everyone thinks that I pitch with a chip on my shoulder but I really don’t.  I just go out and compete.  I don’t think of it that way.” – Tyler Wilson

“I think he understands himself.  He can maintain his game-plan throughout the game.  He’s going to keep us in the game and give us a chance to win.  What more can you ask for?” – Pitching Coach Dave Wallace

“I love that he can make the ball run in and then cut away.  He pitches to both sides of the plate.  Not a lot of young pitchers can do that.” – Manager Buck Showalter

…no Buck, not a lot of young pitchers can do that.

Twitter – @mtamburri922

After shutting out the Chicago Cubs offense over six innings of 10-strikeout ball, Drew Pomeranz lowered his season ERA to 1.80 and FIP to 2.61. He currently ranks 3^rd among qualified starters in K% and is tied for 11^th in WAR. Furthermore, Pomeranz has faced four of the top five offenses in the National League, as well as having had a season opener at Coors Field, hence we cannot claim stat padding against mediocre competition. While a .250 BABIP and 82.1 LOB% may not exhibit the greatest signs of stability, Pomeranz is finally reaching the potential that garnered him a top-30 prospect ranking from Baseball America. So what has Pomeranz done to unlock this potential?

Pomeranz has discovered his newfound success by neutralizing right-handed bats. Earlier in his career, Pomeranz’ relative struggles against righties led many to wonder whether his ultimate fate rested in the bullpen. In fact, heading into 2016 many doubted whether he could even earn a spot in the Padres rotation; he couldn’t even earn a mention in Jeff Sullivan’s positional preview post. This sentiment was understandable given his career .340 wOBA against and 7.1 K-BB% when facing right-handed hitters up to this point. In 2016, however, he has lowered the wOBA against to a measly .240 while striking out 34% of righties. By dropping 100 points of wOBA, he’s essentially transformed his average opposite-handed plate appearance from Kyle Seager to Omar Infante. As with any dramatic improvement in performance, a confluence of factors has led to Pomeranz’ success.

Since debuting in 2011, Pomeranz has gradually raised his vertical release point up nearly half a foot. This more over-the-top delivery has undoubtedly provided him greater deception against righties. More noticeably, however, Pomeranz has brought his changeup back from the dead. Early in his career, Pomeranz threw his change roughly 9% of the time to righties. From 2013-2015, when 72% of his appearance came out of the bullpen, Pomeranz lowered that rate to 3%. This season, however, Pomeranz is utilizing his change-piece over 15% of the time against right-handers. Throwing it around 87 mph, Pomeranz’s change nearly perfectly mimics his sinker in both velocity and movement, but to differing results. Pomeranz generates an above-average 44% fly balls on balls in play with his change, while the sinker gets 67% groundballs. This deception, combined with Pomeranz’s pitcher-friendly home park, have led to a dearth of quality contact on the changeup, as illustrated by the .111 ISO against on the pitch.

Despite the resurgence of Pomeranz’s changeup, his improved curveball has been the true game-changer.  He trails only the enigmatic Rich Hill in percentage of pitches that are curveballs; likewise, he employs it over 43% of the time against righties, up from 23% over his career before joining San Diego. His 4.6 curveball pitch value trails only the Phillies duo of Aaron Nola and Jerad Eickhoff, and their club’s experimental pitching philosophy, so far in 2016. After leaving the breaking-ball-murdering confines of Coors Field in 2014, Pomeranz witnessed a significant increase in both vertical movement and velocity. This, however, does not explain his recently-discovered success. Similarly, he has kept his Zone% on the curve right around his career average of 43%. The key lies in where out of the zone he locates the ball. This season, Pomeranz is hitting low-and-gloveside off the plate with almost 30% of his curves to both righties and lefties alike. Prior to this campaign, Pomeranz only hit that spot about 10% of the time, as he more evenly distributed his curveballs across the zone horizontally. Whether a change in approach or simply improved mechanics and command, Pomeranz is finding tremendous success with his hook. Using the curve against righties, Pomeranz has raised his Whiff% to a career-high 16.4% in addition to generating a career-high 39.6 Swing %. Furthermore, nearly three-quarters of his balls in play off the curve are grounders and he has yet to permit a single fly ball on the pitch vs. right-handed hitters.

As Eno Sarris noted in his discussion with him last December, Pomeranz’s success hinges on three things: “his health, his changeup, and his curveball.” Seven starts into the season, Pomeranz’s progress on these three fronts has led him to success against righties and helped him unlock his prior potential. He’s gone from a guy the Athletics traded for spare parts to a solidly above-average starter for the Padres. Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of this emergence: Pomeranz is still only 27 years old. With almost three more years of service time left, and an inevitable sell-off of Tyson Ross, Andrew Cashner, and James Shields on the horizon, Pomeranz could potentially parlay his improvement into an ace role on the Padres staff. Of course, Pomeranz could find himself on the market in the near future, and he would certainly fetch more than Yonder Alonso and Mark Rzepczynski this time around.

My friend posted something interesting on Facebook. It said:

“Dear Jays bandwagoners, stop booing Brett Cecil. Form is temporary, class is permanent.
2014 April: 5.14 ERA, May-Sept: 2.09 ERA
2015 April: 5.23 ERA, May-Oct: 2.09 ERA
2016 April: 5.79 ERA”

Maybe he is a slow starter and he should be able to go back to his second-half form as the season goes on. What I am slightly concerned about is that his April 2016 season ERA is worse than Aprils from the two previous seasons.

Let’s examine his pitches. He struggled big time in June 2015 when he posted an abysmal 9.00 ERA, but he did not allow a single run after June 30th that season. He has a 5.59 ERA as of May 11th. I went to brooksbaseball.net and researched his four-seam fastball, curve, and sinker between these three periods.

Four-seamer

Usage: 31%(June 2015) -> 21%(After June 30th of 2015 season) -> 13% (This season, as of May 4th)

Velocity: 93.9 mph -> 93.0 mph -> 92.8 mph

Horizontal movement: 3.6 inches -> 4.4 inches -> 5.1 inches

Whiff/Swing rate: 8% whiff/swing -> 17% whiff/swing -> 8% whiff/swing

GB/BIP: 13% -> 39% -> 11%

LD/BIP: 38% -> 30% -> 33%

FB/BIP: 38% -> 26% -> 56%

Horizontal release point: 0.83ft (June 2015) -> 0.89 (July 2015) -> 0.55 (August 2015) -> 0.61 (Sep 2015) -> 0.64 (This season)

Vertical release point: 6.57ft (June 2015) -> 6.49ft (July 2015) -> 6.58ft (August 2015) -> 6.51ft (Sep 2015) -> 6.54ft (This season)

Brett is relying less on his four-seam fastball as time goes. He is trying to adapt to the ‘sinker-ball’ trend. While his four-seamers have some movement, he may have felt the need to opt for a new pitch with more movement. His fastball velocity is in the low 90s and he can reach for 94 on occasion. That’s not ideal for a relief pitcher. His four-seamer is gaining more horizontal movement as time goes. He, in this season, has 1.5 more inches of horizontal movement than last season. He had big success with his four-seamer after June 2015 — it induced a 17% whiff rate, which is 9% higher than June 2015.

He also recorded a 39% GB/BIP using his four-seamer in his last three months of 2015 season, which is 27% higher than June 2015 (39% GB/BIP means that he induced 39 ground balls in every 100 balls in play off his four-seam fastball). His LD/BIP and FB/BIP also had substantial decreases in the last three months of the 2015 season, which helped him record a 0.00 ERA in that span. One of my theories of his successful 2015 season is that he changed his horizontal release point throughout the 2015 season. You can see the changes above. You can also observe the changes in the graph that I created using R:

Blue plots indicate his release points from April to June 2015 when he struggled to get batters out. Red plots indicate his release points from July to October 2015. You can definitely see that red plots clustered away from the blue plots. He made this adjustment and his command significantly improved, as well as other metrics.

April-June 2015: 25IP 11BB 5.40 ERA
July-Oct 2015: 29.1IP 2BB 0.00 ERA

Batters have adapted to him this season. His release points of this season are consistent with his 2015 second half, but he is struggling this season. His four-seam fastball is being hit hard again this season. His whiff/swing rate in the second half of 2015 was 17% and his 2016 season whiff/swing rate is 8%. If you refer to the ball-in-play stats above, his 2016 season ground ball/BIP, line drive/BIP, and fly ball/BIP rates are also worse than in the second half last season. But I don’t see velocity drop and change in release points for his four-seamer. Movement of his four-seamer is actually better. I can’t seem to diagnose what is wrong with his four-seam fastball this year and it leads to me to assume that his lackluster breaking balls are hindering the effects of his fastball as well. Now I am going to continue on researching with his other pitches and examine some specific situations.

Cecil is throwing significantly less four-seam fastballs for the first pitch of at-bats. He seems to be afraid of throwing it for the first pitch. Maybe he thinks that batters are waiting for it. Or maybe he wants to try to induce groundballs more and decided to throw a sinker more. You can see that he throws more sinkers for a first pitch instead of four-seamers.

His sinkerball approach for the first pitch seems to be a good one because most of the sinkers he throws for the first pitch are strikes. Last year, he threw 64% of his first-pitch sinkers for a strike. 19% of sinkers he’s thrown this year in his first pitch have been balls. Refer to pitch outcomes below:

However, he should avoid throwing a curveball for the first pitch, if he doesn’t want to get behind. Out of 12 curveballs that he’s thrown for the first pitch this year, nine of them were called a ball. If you look at the tables above, he did much better last year with his curveball for the first pitch.

He should not throw a curveball if he wants to get further ahead either. Look at the table below for pitch outcomes in 0-1 counts. You will notice that batters are not chasing it, and they don’t whiff on it when they swing after it. Although Cecil’s 2016 season 0-1 curveball sample is limited with only nine, you can see the pattern. 12% more balls taken by batters against Cecil in 0-1 counts this year compared to the  second half of 2015. 36% less swings have been taken this year against Cecil’s curve. No batters have whiffed against Cecil’s 0-1 curveball this year. His 0-1 curveball in the second half of 2015 served him so well, inducing whiffs in 26% of occasions. Now that he can’t do that, he is failing to get ahead 0-2 as often as last year, which gives him more trouble getting outs.

And when he does get to an 0-2 count somehow, he is struggling to get guys out with curveball. You can see here:

Half the curveballs he’s thrown in 2016 in 0-2 counts were called a ball. Worse rate than last year. Batters swung at it 61% of time in the second half last season, while they now swing at it only 39% of the time. Batters are also making more contact with 0-2 curveballs this year than last year. It’s the same story when considering when he is ahead. (In other words, all counts when he is ahead)

His refined curveball in the second half of the 2015 season was the reason why he was doing so well. According to FanGraphs, his wCu/C in the 2014 and 2015 seasons were 2.5 and 2.8, respectively. This year, it is an awful -5.2. His curveball must be refined because batters figured it out.

Let’s figure out what could be wrong with his curveball then.

His curveball’s horizontal movement deviates from last year’s second half. His curveball was great in the first half of last season as well. Last season, the horizontal movement of the curveball ranged between 0 to 1 inch. This means that his curveball’s horizontal last year moved 0 to 1 inch away from the catcher’s glove side. This season, it is moving toward the glove side of the catcher. I don’t know whether that has a negative impact. It’s inconclusive.

Brett’s horizontal release points of 2016 curveballs are up to par with the second half of 2015. So I don’t think horizontal release point has had any impact on his curveball this year.

He has more vertical depth on his curveball this season than the last. More vertical depth on his curve is a good thing. But I don’t think improving vertical depth will fix anything, given that his curveball got its job done last year with less vertical depth.

Vertical release point of his curveball this season is within the range of second half of 2015. I don’t think vertical release point of his curveball is a problem either.

His curveball velocity is down this year. This is likely the biggest problem with Cecil. This implies that batters have some more fractions of a second to judge whether the curveball is a ball or strike. This gives batters some more time to decide whether to swing or not. I am convinced that a velocity increase will help him. Fortunately, he experienced a velocity increase throughout each of his last four seasons (2012 to 2015), as you can see in this graph:

It does seem to explain his improved ERA throughout each of the last two seasons. We should monitor his velocity this May to see if there is any sign of velocity improvement. In the meantime, it’d be best to let him pitch in low-to-medium leverage situations until he is warmed up for home stretch. He looks to me like he will be okay. He is only 29 this year and I don’t think we need to worry that his velocity drop is a permanent thing yet. Message to Brett: “Just relax and stop thinking about your disappointing start to this season. It’s likely nothing and time will only solve it. Congratulations on the birth of your daughter.”

(Written before Price dominated on Thursday)

Obviously there is some concern about David Price.  So I went and dove into his numbers to see what I could figure out. (All data below was obtained through FanGraphs, who coincidentally also wrote an article about Price, with similar methodology and results.)

So let’s start at the top and look at his ERA.

| ERA
—|—
Career | 3.19
3 Year Average | 3.01
2016 | 6.75

Yikes!  His ERA this season is more than twice what we’ve ever seen out of Price.  This is no surprise to anyone. But we all know that historical ERA isn’t really a good predictor of future ERA (it includes too much “noise” from things that the pitcher can’t control).  So let’s look at some metrics that are better indicators of the way he’s pitching.

| SIERA | xFIP
—|—|—-
Career | 3.36 | 3.34
3 Year Average | 3.09 | 3.07
2016 | 2.99 | 2.94

Okay, so according to both xFIP and SIERA, Price is actually pitching as well as he’s ever pitched.  Nothing to be concerned with here, and in fact we should be really happy with how he’s pitching.

In most cases, when a pitcher’s ERA is significantly higher or lower than their xFIP and SIERA, it can usually be chalked up to variance and you should expect things to settle back to their historical numbers.

Over his career Price’s ERA has actually outperformed his xFIP by almost half a run per 200 innings pitched.  Which makes it even more peculiar why this season his ERA would be *lagging* his xFIP by such a significant margin.

So let’s go a little deeper and try to figure out *why* his ERA is so much higher than his xFIP.

Well, the obvious first things that jump off the page are his BABIP and Left on Base % (LOB%)

| BABIP | LOB%
—|—|—-
Career | .286 | 75%
3 Year Average | .298 | 74%
2016 | .373 | 54%

His BABIP is 75 points higher than his three-year average and he’s stranding 20% fewer runners.  It’s easy to look at these numbers and say he’s just getting unlucky on balls in play and getting unlucky on batter sequencing.

The LOB% I can buy being just bad luck, but the BABIP I want to check on.  Let’s look at his batted ball profile and see how unlucky he’s been on balls in play:

| LD% | GB% | FB% | Soft % | Med % | Hard %
—|—|—-|—-|—-|—-|—-
Career | 20% | 44% | 36% | 18% | 56% | 27%
3 Year Average | 22% | 42% | 36% | 17% | 55% | 28%
2016 | 29% | 40% | 31% | 17% | 42% | 41%

Uh-oh.  His soft-hit and ground-ball ratios are constant, but in 2016 he’s giving up more line drives and harder contact by a significant margin.  Giving up more line drives and harder hit balls helps explain his elevated BABIP… It’s not just bad luck.  By my calculation his xBABIP based on this batted ball profile is .361.  That’s slightly lower than his actual BABIP (.373), but still way higher than his career average.

This is definitely a bit concerning, but let’s see if we can figure out why he’s giving up such hard contact.  First place I like to look is his command and velocity numbers.

| Fastball Velocity | Fastball %
—|—|—-
Career | 94.6 | 35%
3 Year Average | 93.6 | 23%
2016 | 91.8 | 12%

Another red flag.  His fastball velocity is down almost 2mph from his three-year average.  I did check, and his velocity went up about 1.5mph between April and August last year so we should see his velocity pick up as the year goes on, but this isn’t something you want to see out of a guy you just spent $217M on.  To go along with the reduced velocity, you are seeing Price rely way less on his four-seamer.  He’s basically replaced it with two-seam fastballs and cutters, hoping the movement he gets out of them makes up for the reduced velocity.

But how is he doing with his slightly altered pitch selection?

| K% | BB% | Zone % | Contact % | SwStr%
—|—|—-|—-|—-|—-
Career | 23% | 6% | 47% | 80% | 9%
3 Year Average | 25% | 4% | 48% | 79% | 10%
2016 | 29% | 7% | 48% | 71% | 14%

First takeaway is that his strikeouts are actually up!  Despite the reduced velocity, he’s striking out more batters and inducing more swing and misses.  These are good signs that his “stuff” is still there.

Not shown above, but he’s not getting guys to chase pitches like he used to (3% drop in swing rate on balls out of the zone compared to his three-year average), but on pitches in the zone he’s getting way *more* swing and misses (12% improvement on batter contact rate on pitches in the zone).

**So what does this all mean?**

As far as I can tell, Price will be fine.  He’s lost some velocity, so you are seeing him switch from a four-seam fastball to a two-seam fastball.  Because of the movement on these pitches, he’s getting more swing and misses when he throws strikes.  But with the drop in velocity, when guys do put the bat on the ball, they are doing so with more authority. What this means for Price is he will need to get his offspeed pitches working to keep batters off balance and induce more swings on pitches out of the zone.  Namely his changeup which has seen a big drop in value so far this year.

His LOB% should stabilize and if he can start commanding his changeup better, his BABIP should drop as well, which will make his ERA start to resemble that of the Price the Red Sox paid for this offseason.

The best news of all? It’s only May, so we have a lot of baseball left.  No need to panic yet, as far as I can tell.

Noah Syndergaard was absolutely brilliant in his first full season with the Mets in 2015. He logged an ERA of 3.24 and an FIP of 3.25 last season. Identical ERA and FIP generally means the defense that played behind Syndergaard did enough. (Rule of thumb: If a pitcher’s ERA is better than his FIP, the pitcher had a benefit of his defense while he was pitching. It is generally believed that this rule of thumb is more reliable with a larger sample number. On the other hand, if his ERA is worse than his FIP, his teammates were not helping him defensively with balls that were in play.)

I digressed a little bit. Let me get back to Syndergaard. According to his 2016 season FIP, he is even better than last season. His FIP through his first five starts of the season is a stunning 1.39. His 2016 ERA is 2.51, which deviates a lot from his FIP. The Mets do have a below-average defense, but it is way too early to suggest that the Mets defense is so horrible because of a one-run difference between his ERA and FIP. It is still early May. There are many opportunities for the Mets defense to make it up to him throughout the season. After just five starts in this season, Syndergaard’s fWAR of 1.5 is half of what he logged in the 2015 season, which was 3.1. His start has been that good.

He also had great command considering that he is a power pitcher, last year logging a fantastic 1.86 BB/9 in 150 innings. This season, he has a 1.67 BB/9. His K/9 in the 2016 season is 12.25 and that is more than 2 K/9 higher than last season.

Since the beginning of the 2015 season, there are only four pitchers with a BB% less than 5% and who logged at least 94 mph average fastball in that span. (Minimum 170 IP)

I considered just two parameters to find Syndergaard’s comparables and I think they’re reasonable comps. deGrom, Sale, and Scherzer are all top-tier pitchers that have won Cy Youngs or finished very high in the Cy Young ballot in the past. Here is the takeaway message: Syndergaard only had to pitch 176.2 innings at the MLB level to be in the company of deGrom, Sale, and Scherzer. And this young 2016 season is just his second full year. He can only get better because he is only 23 years old with the best fastball among starters. His fastball velocity in the last two seasons is best among starters (97.2 mph). And you certainly can’t forget his 95 mph slider against the Royals in the opening series. He has a very nasty secondary pitch as well. According to his FanGraphs profile page, he has relied on his fastball and slider about 75% of the time this season. This can make Syndergaard a very predictable pitcher to hit against, but his simple pitch selection did not prevent him from his dominant start to the 2016 season because batters have a hard time hitting it even when they know it’s coming.

Now I want to delve very deep into Noah’s advanced metrics so that I can figure out what he is doing better than last year. For starters, his average fastball velocity (both four-seam and two-seam) increased by about one mile between the 2015 and 2016 seasons, which only make things more complicated for the batters that have to face Syndergaard. Refer to the graph below:

While horizontal movement between the 15’ and 16’ seasons decreased (not shown in this article), I saw increased vertical movement on his fastballs:

Although this is based on a very small sample size, his fastball whiff rate in 2016 has increased by 3.3% compared to the 2015 season whiff rate. It is obvious to see positive change in whiff rate when both velocity and movement of the fastball increase substantially.

His 2016 season sinker whiff rate is down from last season, but the sinker is not a good strikeout pitch anyway; it is more of a groundball-inducing pitch. According to the figure below, he has been relying on his sinker more often this year to improve his groundball rate to 57%, up from 47% last year. (Mind you, you should monitor his GB% throughout this season to see if this is a real thing, but I won’t be surprised if his GB% will be sustained all season long. The combination of heavy usage, good movement, and high velocity can make this quite possible.)

If you see the pitch usage (four-seam and sinker only) above, his sinker usage is at 35% this year, which is 10% up from last season.

Noah Syndergaard is one of the most exciting pitchers to watch this year, so I wrote about him. Not only does he have a rare explosive 80-grade fastball that he can command very well, but he is also heavily relying on a heavy sinker of his to get many batters out with a groundball. That’s why I think he will be even better this year. While I compared him to Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, and Jacob deGrom, I think this will be the year for Syndergaard to compete for the NL Cy Young with Clayton Kershaw and Jake Arrieta.

Brandon Belt is one of the most polarizing players in baseball. Even among his own team’s fans, support for the Giants first baseman ranges from ecstatic enthusiasm to downright disdain.

Belt personifies the chasm between old-school and new-school baseball analysis. According to more traditional numbers, Belt leaves something to be desired (at least so far in his career).

He’s never knocked in more than 68 runs in a season; he’s never eclipsed 18 home runs. His career batting average is an unspectacular .273. Although his naysayers will admit that he’s sharp defensively, he’s never won a Gold Glove.

However, Belt excels in less traditional metrics. His career on-base percentage is a robust .350. He’s slugged .458 despite playing half his games in the expansive and cavernous AT&T Park. Despite not yet winning a Gold Glove, his defensive stats consistently rate at or near the top of the charts. Last year, according to the SABR Defensive Index (which uses data instead of the “eye test” to evaluate defense), Belt was the best first baseman in baseball.

To look closer at Belt’s offensive abilities, we must understand a particularly useful and telling stat. According to FanGraphs, weighted runs created plus (wRC+) “is a rate statistic that attempts to credit a hitter for the value of each outcome (single, double, etc.) rather than treating all hits or times on base equally, while also controlling for park effects and the current run environment. wRC+ is scaled so that league average is 100 and each year and every point above or below 100 is equal to one percentage point better or worse than league average.” That may seem like a mouthful, but it’s critically important to use stats like this in the business of modern baseball talent evaluation.

For his career, Belt’s wRC+ is 128, which, by the definition above, means that he’s been 28% better than the league-average Major League hitter. In some of Belt’s better seasons, he’s compiled elite wRC+ totals: 140 in 2013 and 135 in 2015, and he sits at 140 so far this season.

As the numbers show, Belt has been a very good player ever since he put on a Giants uniform, despite the harsh criticism he still receives from more traditionalist fans and analysts.

One of the biggest (and perhaps most legitimate) criticisms of Belt’s game is that he strikes out a lot. For his career, Belt has struck out in 24% of his plate appearances. While this is a pretty high total, it’s not like he’s the worst in the league, or even the worst among very good players.

Kris Bryant, last year’s unanimous National League Rookie of the Year, has a 29% career strikeout rate. Orioles slugger Chris Davis (whom many Giants fans on social media wanted the Giants to sign this off-season) strikes out 31% of the time. Tigers star outfielder J.D. Martinez racked up five wins above replacement last year, and he struck out 27% of the time.

The point is, even the biggest and most legitimate knocks against Belt can be argued against.

And wait a minute. This year, the criticism doesn’t even apply. Brandon Belt isn’t really striking out anymore. Through 92 plate appearances, he’s struck out just 14% of the time.

You may be thinking:

Sure, Belt’s strikeout rate is low so far this year, but he hasn’t even had 100 plate appearances. Surely this is a mirage caused by a small sample size.

In most cases, this is the correct point. However, according to FanGraphs, a hitter’s strikeout rate is actually the fastest element of his game to stabilize (i.e. not fall victim to small sample size). FanGraphs says that is takes just 60 plate appearances for a hitter’s strikeout rate to stabilize.

Let’s take a closer look at Belt’s 92 plate appearances to see how they differ from his career norm.

For his career, Belt has swung at 30% of pitches outside of the strike zone. This year, he’s only swung at 24% of such pitches.

For his career, Belt has made contact with 61% of pitches he’s swung at that are outside of the strike zone. This year, he’s made contact with 67% of such pitches.

For his career, Belt has made contact on 76% of his swings. This year, he’s made contact on 81% of his swings.

The biggest difference appears to be twofold: he’s chasing less and making more contact when he does chase.

One explanation could be that Belt has simply started the year with one of his patented hot streaks. He’s been known to have excellent months, and he’s been known to have miserable months. But even in some of Belt’s best months his strikeout rate has remained around his career average. In May 2015, Belt batted .339/.405/.670 in 121 PA. His strikeout rate for the month was 25%. In August 2015, Belt batted .312/.395/.560 in 124 PA. His strikeout rate for the month was 27%.

Belt has had a few months where his strikeout rate was down, however. He struck out just 11 times in 95 plate appearances (13%) in August 2012. His strikeout rate was 21% in May 2013 and 19% in June 2013, but then it ballooned up to 34% in July 2013. The following month, Belt hit .350/.421/.630 in 114 plate appearances and his strikeout rate was just 16%.

So we have seen some variance in Belt’s monthly strikeout rates, but 16% was the lowest strikeout rate he’s had in a month (min. 15 games played) since 2013. This year, with just two more games remaining in the month, Belt is poised to have one of his best ever months in terms of strikeout rate.

This is particularly interesting because April is the first month of the season. Sometimes hitters come into new seasons and introduce new and sustainable levels of production.

Belt may well be onto something, and he could have a year in which we see a sustained dip in strikeout rate. Or he may simply be having a rare month in which he doesn’t strike at least 20% of the time. Only time will tell, but the early season has been particularly intriguing and promising for Belt and his supporters. For now, at least, the critics are silent.

Adam Wainwright is the star of the St. Louis Cardinals pitching staff and one of the best aces in the majors. The righty has 121 wins, a 3.04 career ERA, 1,335 strikeouts and four top-three Cy Young finishes under his belt. In 2015 he started as expected, cruising. In four starts he managed to post a 1.44 ERA and a 2.05 FIP in 25 innings with 18 strikeouts and just one walk, with eight extra-base hits (35% of the hits allowed). When everything was looking promising for another dominant season, he suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon during a plate appearance against the Milwaukee Brewers on April 25th. This injury sent him to the disabled list until late September where he just got the chance to pitch another three innings.

Before the start of this season his name was part of lots of baseball discussions: Which Adam Wainwright should we expect? The ace? Or will he show declining signs due to the long ride on the DL, his 34 years and 500+ innings in the last two seasons? The numbers speak by themselves: A 7.25 ERA, 4.87 FIP in 22.1 innings with just nine strikeouts and 10 walks, with 13 extra-base hits (45% of the hits allowed). A complete disaster if we compare this start with last April.

Those facts led us to the question: What is wrong with Adam Wainwright? Using the data sample of April 2015 and 2016 we will try to figure out the reasons behind this horrible start of the season and what should be the changes that could help Waino get back on track.

Pitch velocity and movement

The first reason that jumped to my mind was that he may be having trouble with the speed of the fastball or break of his nasty curveball. I went to Brook Baseball to check this values and compare April’15 with April’16.

​Using the four starts of last year, Waino’s fast pitches were the four-seamer, the sinker and the cutter, averaging 90.3 MPH, 90.4 MPH and 86.4 MPH respectively. Contrary to my first hypothesis, the speed chart on 2016’s April did not show any significant variance averaging 90.8 MPH, 90.3 MPH and 87.1 MPH. If anything, he is throwing faster. What about the breaking stuff? During 2015 the nasty curveball and the changeup average were 75.4 MPH and 83.7 MPH, values that are really similar to what we have seen this year: 75.4 MPH and 83.5 MPH.

We can conclude with this data that the speed is not an issue, but what do the numbers say about the ball’s movement? All his pitches were showing very similar vertical and horizontal movement compared to last year data and the career normal of Adam Wainwright. These means that the first hypothesis has to be dismissed, the power on his fast pitches and the break on the slow ones is still there.

Location and control

Other potential cause of the bad start of the season could be the location of Adam’s pitches and his control of them. A good way to visually understand the location of his pitches is using a heat map over the K-Zone. The darker the color, the biggest the frequency. To generate the great graphs that you can see below I used the PITCHf/x tool from Baseball Savant, posting side-by-side the career, 2015 and 2016 values.

The heat maps really help to get quick answers. Let’s start with the four-seamer. We can clearly see that during this season the dark cluster is located up in the zone. Compared to his career profile Wainwright is locating the fastball higher than his typical zone, something that is not a good sign for a pitcher that only throws it at 90 MPH and depends so much on control to minimize damage.

The case of the cutter is similar: low control of the pitch. 2016 graph shows a problem locating this pitch in the strike zone. The career profile indicates that he likes to throw this pitch down and outside for RHB and down and in for LHB, something that have been difficult this season when the cutter is also falling higher that normal.

In the case of the sinker I split the heat maps between lefties and righties since this specific pitch is used very differently by Waino depending on the batter handedness. Against lefties the heat maps show that he is following his typical profile, so there should not be a problem.  Meanwhile against righties Wainwright has been having troubles locating this pitch outside in the zone as he is used to. This year, lot of the sinkers against righties has been located in the center of the plate many times, low in the zone, but still in an area that MLB batters can crush easily.

Exactly the same thing happens when we see the curveball graphs. Career data showed that he has been really successful hitting the low part of the strike zone, especially last year when this pitch was falling in the ideal place, just below the K-zone frame. But this year the story have changed. The curveballs has been located higher than ever, in the hitter power zone.
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There is no doubt that Wainwright in this season is having a hard time controlling his pitches, especially falling up in the zone with the fast ones and right in the middle with the breaking ones. He is showing significant differences with his career profile that could be a direct cause of the bad start of 2016.

​Pitch mix

The speed and break are still there. The location not so much. So what about the approach to the at-bats? Is it similar or has he changed it due to the lack of control of his pitches? Let’s try to answer this question using data of his pitch mix and the results of balls in play comparing Wainwright’s career profile with the 2016 sample data.

As you can see in the table below, two things needs to be addressed: First, this season he largely ditched his sinker (-9%) in favor of more cutters (+8%) and curves (+4%). Second, the ground balls have dropped dramatically (-10%), leading to an increase in fly balls (+9%) and line drives (+1%). Why such a change in Waino’s approach to the plate?

There are quick conclusions. The sinker is an excellent groundball pitch, so obviously if you use less sinkers, you get less groundballs. But as we saw in the previous section of the article, Wainwright is having tons of problems with the location of his sinker: the majority of this pitches stay on the hitter-friendly zone, resulting in an increase of the line-drive percentage (+17%) and a .500 batting average on balls in play.

As if it were not enough with the sinker issues, the high location of his four-seamer is causing 18% more fly balls and 24% less ground balls. This critical situation left just one option of the fast-pitch arsenal of Wainwright: the cutter. As his last resource he increased the use of it 8% and some results have been good. It’s the only one that has an increase in ground-ball percentage (+4%) and a drop in fly-ball percentage (-12%). Nevertheless the resulting average of balls in play is .400, so please don’t take this as a silver bullet. Remember that we also pointed out previously that the control on the cutter has not been the best.

The other pitch that has been favored this season is the curveball. Although the rate of whiffs has dropped from a career average of 17% to only 9% and the fly balls (+11%) have increased significantly, the opponents only average .118 against the curve. This is really impressive especially after we analyzed the bad location of this pitch, but he keeps using it since it is the only pitch that is giving good results.

Conclusion

Even with a small sample of 2016 data we can derive some conclusions: The arm power and the movement on Adam Wainwright’s five pitches is still there. The long rest due the injury, the 500+ innings from 2013 to 2015 and his 34 years do not seem to be a problem right now. The problem seems to be in the location of his pitches. The four-seamer high in the zone and the sinker in the middle of the plate have been destroyed by the batters, reducing the ground balls in a dramatic way and increasing the line drives and fly balls.

Wainwright is clearly trying to make adjustments in order to reduce the damage. For now his nasty curve is saving the day being his only effective pitch even when it has been located in a dangerous zone. The cutter is not helping enough so his focus should be in taking back the control of the location of the pitches. In his last outing he showed some positive signs. Let’s see what happens in the next one against Arizona — if we get more of the ace or if he still struggles to get back to track.

The Braves’ offense is terrible.  Absolutely putrid.  Jeff Sullivan already covered that here.  If the offense has been historically bad, odds are the best player in that lineup is performing below expectations as well.  Sure enough, that is the case with the 2016 Atlanta Braves and Freddie Freeman.  Look at any stat you want and they all tell the same story.  Sabermetrically inclined?  His wRC+ (as of when this was written) is down 65 points from his career average, with his ISO down a whopping 107 points.  Prefer the more traditional numbers? He’s batting .203 with three extra-base hits in 82 PAs.  Regardless of how you want to measure them, the results have been bad, but the real question is, what is driving the poor results?

The tempting answer is bad luck.  His BABIP is down, he’s faced several of the game’s toughest lefties and it is only April after all.  Another easy explanation is lack of protection around him. Why would pitchers throw Freeman anything he can hit when he is the only one in the lineup that can punish them?  Oh wait, his Zone% is UP and he has seen more fastballs than last year? Hmm.

This leads to questions about his health — is Freddie Freeman still battling the wrist issue that plagued him last season?  He said it was fine headed into spring training but then felt some discomfort in mid-March before calling it a false-alarm.  Maybe the wrist is still a problem for Freeman — either directly with discomfort or indirectly through altered mechanics stemming from the injury — but regardless, it is my opinion Freddie Freeman is broken.

Even this early in the season, there are data indicators to watch.  Swing%, Contact% and (in my opinion) exit velocity are all useful to an extent over small samples.

Swing% is down across the board, with a marked drop in O-Swing% which is actually a good indicator most times.  The real concerns lie in the decreases in Z-Contact%, Contact% and Avg. Exit Velocity.  A large drop in Contact% accompanied by a large drop in exit velocity and ISO is a recipe for disaster — typically players trade Contact% for an increase in power.  A decrease in contact and exit velocity points to a bat-speed issue, and Freeman himself believes that to be the case telling the reporters earlier this season that “My bat speed is just not there.  I don’t know if I’m tensing my shoulders and I’ve got to get loose; that’s what I was just working on.” I agree with his assessment, the bat speed has not been there.  Freeman has made in-play contact on just eight of his 39 swings against pitches with a perceived velocity of at least 93 MPH according to Baseball Savant.  This is down compared to 66 of 194 in 2015 (the only other year with data, when he was still battling the wrist issue).  His production on fastballs in general is down as well, with a negative wFB/C mark for the first time since his debut in 2010.

The reduced bat speed also shows up in his spray chart.  Freeman’s percentage of balls hit up the middle or pulled have both decreased, leading to an increase in his Opp% of over 10%.  This increase in opposite-field hitting alone is not crippling, but combined with an unbelievable decrease in production on these balls in play — 2015 wRC+ of 180 to the opposite field, wRC+ of 31 so far in 2016 — it creates a major problem.

Clearly, the Braves and Freeman are focused on adjustments at this point, but if the struggles continue much longer it will be hard to silence questions about the health of his wrist.  Credit Freeman for working on a solution, but if he and hitting coach Kevin Seitzer cannot figure out a way to get him back to normal (or if he misses extended time due to reemergence of the wrist issue), then the Braves’ offense from the first 20 games may not improve much after all.  That is a possibility that could lead to a terrible, long and historic season in Atlanta.