Archive for Player Analysis

There’s no doubting that Kevin Gausman is a talented pitcher.  He features a fastball in the mid to upper 90’s, a split-change to fluster lefties with, and a slider with good depth to attack righties.

He even looks the part too, with a 6’3’’, 190 lb. frame, an athletic delivery, and an incredibly fast arm.  And therefore, it was for good reason that the Baltimore Orioles made him the 4^th selection of the 2012 Amateur Draft and he’s risen quickly to the big leagues.

However, Gausman’s career up to this point, at the major league level, has seen its fair share of ups and downs.  He struggled in a brief 47.1 IP in 2013 and in 2014 has hovered around mediocrity.  His ERA is alright at 3.83, but a mere 6.82 K/9 and 3.27 BB/9 is likely not what Baltimore was hoping to see from their former elite pitching prospect.

Heading into the postseason, Baltimore can expect solid performances from Chris Tillman, Bud Norris, and Wei-Yin Chen, but Gausman could be there biggest X Factor.  His stuff gives him a chance to dominate a playoff game and serve as a stopper down the stretch, but he’ll need to be more than a one-dimensional pitcher to get there.

By one-dimensional I’m referring to Gausman’s strong tendency to pitch only down and to his arm-side. See his FanGraphs pitcher heatmaps below vs. lefties and righties.

Notice, despite batter handedness, Gausman’s pitch location tendencies stay the same, as he works down-and-away from left-handers and down-and-in to right-handers.

Some of this is by probably by design. With Gausman and the Orioles trying to expose holes underneath righties hands and staying away from the lefty power zone of down-and-in.

However, a large reason for this tendency is Gausman’s inability to consistently pitch to his glove side.

In the video linked here, watch how Gausman reaches on the back side of his arm action. This reach makes it more difficult for him to command his pitches by limiting his ability to stay tall on his back side, keep a loose arm, and maintain balance.

Second, watch how he steps across his body.  By having a “crossfire delivery”, in order for Gausman to get a pitch to his glove-side, he must over-rotate and power his arm across the rest of his frame.

Gausman has the arm speed to do this, but the process of doing so, inhibits his ability to command pitches to that side of the plate, and he often misses in the strike-zone where hitters can do damage.

A great example of this was during the third inning of Gausman’s start Saturday afternoon versus Tampa Bay.

With 1 out and Ben Zobrist on 3^rd, Gausman tried to beat David DeJesus with a fastball low-and-in.  But Gausman’s fastball was never able to get to the inside part of the plate, and the left-handed DeJesus roped a single.

Now with 1^st and 3^rd, Gausman faced Evan Longoria and after throwing two split-change-ups down, he tried to beat the right-hander away with a fastball. Once again, Gausman couldn’t get the pitch to his glove side and Longoria smoked the ball to center for a sac fly.

Left-handed hitting James Loney came to bat next and immediately lined the first pitch fastball down-and-away to left field for a single.  The ease at which Loney stroked Gausman’s mid to upper 90’s fastball on the low, outside corner to left indicates he likely was cheating on a fastball there.  And judging from Gausman’s heatmaps and the previous two sequences, there was little reason for Loney to believe Gausman was going pitch him anywhere else.

This was a particularly unfortunate series of at-bats for Gausman and there are going to be times he can better locate to his glove-side. He’s a good enough athlete to overcome his delivery and arm action for periods of time, but consistent command to his glove-side is going to be difficult to achieve.

A simple question to ask at this point is why can’t Gausman make the mechanical adjustments to fix these issues?

Yet, changing a pitcher’s arm action and delivery at this stage of his career is extremely difficult. Gausman has likely been pitching this way his entire life and any changes now would probably result in a major setback first before progress could be made (and if progress could be made is even debatable).

This delivery and arm action is what Gausman is comfortable with and it’s worked well enough to make him a successful professional pitcher. Most major league pitchers do not have perfect mechanics, but rather are athletic enough to make up for mechanical flaws.  Gausman fits into this category.

However, there is an adjustment Gausman could make without changing his mechanics, and that’s better utilizing the top part of the strike zone, even if he stays arm-side. Let’s return to the heatmaps shown above once again. Take a look at the red on the bottom part of the zone and blue on the top.

Kevin Gausman has elite fastball velocity and life. His four-seam fastball has averaged 95.9 mph in 2014, which would put him 3^rd amongst starting pitchers if he qualified.  Compare his FanGraphs heatmaps to those of Yordano Ventura and Nathan Eovaldi, the starting pitchers with the most similar average fastball velocities to Gausman.

More-so Ventura than Eovaldi, but see the increased use of the upper part of the strike-zone, as well as the more diverse use of the entire plate. Ventura has been rewarded accordingly as per Brooks Baseball, hitters are only batting .196 against pitches he’s thrown in the top third of the zone in 2014.

At the very least an increased use of the upper third of the strike-zone will give Gausman another dimension to his arsenal. Hitters, like James Loney, won’t be able to cheat to get to certain pitches in specific locations.

Gausman has the dynamic stuff to be a front-line starter, it’s just about expanding the ways he can deploy his weapons and becoming more consistent in his ability to command them.

The Orioles are hoping he can improve at a rapid rate, as he could be the key to their potential success in late September and October.

Stats courtesy of FanGraphs and Brooks Baseball

Brandon Moss has wielded an immensely potent bat since joining the Athletics’ lineup in June of 2012. Between 2012 and 2013, he hit a remarkable 146 wRC+, and clubbed a homer once every 15.7 PA’s, placing him third in baseball behind Chris Davis and Miguel Cabrera over that span. Moss kept up the hot hitting to start the 2014 season, as well. The 30-year-old 1B/OF/DH posted a 162 wRC+ in the season’s first two months, further establishing himself as a key cog in one of baseball’s most potent lineups.

But Brandon Moss hasn’t been himself lately. Since his last home run on July 24th, he’s only managed three extra-base hits, resulting in a laughable .168/.317/.198 batting line. Moss’s slump has also coincided with a change in his hitting approach. Moss appears to have gotten a bit more passive at the plate, swinging at way fewer pitches both inside and outside of the strike zone. This new-found passivity took a turn for the extreme once the calendar turned to August, when his O-Swing% and Z-Swing% fell to 27% and 65%, respectively — both around six percentage points lower than his career norms.

Moss’s decision to lay off more pitches has unsurprisingly lead to a spike in both his walk and strikeout numbers, but it’s also resulted in his power completely flat-lining. Moss has basically been Adam Dunn without the power these last couple of months. That’s a pretty terrible hitter, and is part of the reason why the A’s went out and got the real Adam Dunn to help their sputtering offense.

The new swing profile is something that’s recently changed, making it the obvious culprit for Moss’s drop-off in production, but we shouldn’t immediately rule out the possibility that pitchers have changed the way they’re approaching him. It could just be that he’s swinging at fewer pitches because he’s getting fewer pitches to hit. That doesn’t seem to be the case, though, as Moss’s zone breakdown from August looks nearly identical to what it was over the season’s first four months. For whatever reason, Moss just isn’t swinging as often as he used to.

It’s not entirely clear what’s spurred Moss’ sudden reluctance to swing the bat, but all indications are that it’s done a number on his offensive performance. Unlike the Brandon Moss that — up until recently — could be counted on for a wRC+ north of 130, this latest iteration seems to be letting a few too many hittable pitches float down the heart of the plate. And based on what’s transpired over the last month or two, Moss’s best bet is probably to re-discover the more aggressive approach that’s worked so well for him in the past.

Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs; Zone breakdowns courtesy of Baseball Savant.

Coming into this season, the Boston Red Sox had high hopes. Obviously, they were coming off a World Series title, and they had every reason to expect that they could contend again. Jarrod Saltalamacchia was gone, but he could be replaced by A.J. Pierzynski; the drop-off there wouldn’t be too large. Ryan Dempster was gone, but the Red Sox’s rotation of Jon Lester, John Lackey, Clay Buchholz, Jake Peavy, and Felix Doubront was what they had gone with during last year’s stretch run anyways. Jacoby Ellsbury was gone, but Jackie Bradley Jr. (and Grady Sizemore!) should have been able to play well enough to make his departure bearable. And Stephen Drew was gone, but uber-prospect Xander Bogaerts was ready to take over the Red Sox’s shortstop position and dominate the league.

Needless to say, none of those really worked out like the Red Sox and their fans had hoped or planned. Boston currently resides in the AL East cellar, all but certain to go from first to worst just the year after they had done the very opposite. And perhaps no individual part of that failure this season has been a bigger disappointment than Bogaerts. Instead of being the hitter he was supposed to be, he has struggled mightily at the plate, to the tune of a .223/.293/.333 slash line — good for a 74 wRC+ (as of September 1) and a major contributor to his negative WAR.

Where do we start in trying to assess the reasons for Bogaerts’s struggles? Well, time-wise, we can place a pretty neat cutoff point at June 4: That is when Bogaerts started to slump (I think I cursed him). For the first two months of the season, actually, Xander was quite good: he had a 140 wRC+ through April and May, and that figure would have been higher if not for a mini-slump that came towards the very beginning of the season. He was drawing walks roughly 11% of the time (above average) and striking out at a clip a shade below 22% (not much below average). And then came June. It started out OK — he went 4-for-13 in his first 3 June games. But after that, for the rest of the month, he recorded a mere 9 hits and 3 walks in 88 plate appearances. July was better, but not good: Bogaerts managed just a .228/.253/.342 line, and now through most of August he has been even worse than he was the previous two months, with a paltry .123/.195/.164 triple slash.

His wRC+, by month:

Yeesh. Not the way you want to be trending. So what happened? Well, the easy answer is to point to BABIP:

This looks right, right? His best month by wRC+ was his best month by BABIP. His worst month by wRC+ was his worst month by BABIP. And the same can be said for every month in between. But that, of course, doesn’t tell the whole story. Why is his BABIP from the first two months so much higher? What can he do to fix it? Will he fix it? Can he? Let’s explore.

A .364 BABIP like Bogaerts had in April is unsustainable. The .421 BABIP he had the following month is way too high for even the best players to keep up. So naturally, we would expect some regression from him. But his batted ball profile did suggest a decent BABIP – high line drive rate and low popup rate. The only thing overly suspect was his 17.1% infield hit rate in June. Nothing there would suggest such an outrageously high BABIP for the first two months, but nothing would suggest the low BABIPs that were to come later either. So something must have changed. What was it?

It wasn’t Bogaerts’s average flyball distance; that stayed more or less intact. But he did start hitting many fewer line drives…

…and started striking out more, which didn’t affect his BABIP directly but did have an impact on his overall hitting (somewhat astonishingly and coincidentally, his K% has been the exact same – to one decimal – each of the past 3 months):

And in the same vein, he walked much less, which helped contribute to his very low wRC+ as well:

So while it may be easy to ascribe Bogaerts’s recent struggles to his abnormally low BABIPs, there is more to the story. He simply isn’t hitting anywhere near as well as he did earlier in the season. I can think of a few potential reasons for this:

1. Pitchers are pitching to him differently, and he will have to adjust

2. He is in a prolonged slump, and will snap out of it eventually

3. He isn’t actually that good, and his first few months were just very lucky

4. He was playing third base

I think we can ignore the last two. Bogaerts, after all, was ranked a top-5 prospect coming into the season by almost anyone worth listening to, and he has hit very well in the majors before; he’s almost certainly not actually bad at hitting. As for the last one — that was a theory many people floated out when Bogaerts stopped hitting well at almost the exact same time as Stephen Drew returned and kicked Bogaerts over to third. The argument was that since short was Bogaerts’s natural position, and he felt most comfortable there and could focus on his hitting, he would do better when playing there.

And that theory holds some water: this season, his wRC+ as a third baseman is 37 (in 180 PA), and as a shortstop it is 95 (in 312). That is too large of a difference to dismiss offhandedly. But here’s the problem: when Drew was traded, and Bogaerts returned to shortstop, he continued to hit poorly. In fact, throughout the entire month of August, Bogaerts played shortstop, and he had a -3 wRC+. I am going to say that that theory, while compelling, doesn’t really explain Bogaerts’s struggles at all. He’d tell you that himself.

So what does? Pitchers pitching him differently? Yes, to an extent. Here is how Bogaerts has done all season long against certain pitches:

And here is how he has been pitched:

The pitches in that gif are ordered by how many runs above average Bogaerts has been against them, descending. You can see that from June 4 (the date of the start of Bogaerts’s extended slump) on, he has seen many fewer fastballs and many more sinkers and sliders than before. That could be the cause of his BABIP, strikeout, and general hitting struggles since he excels against fastballs and cannot hit sliders or sinkers (sliders more so).

But there’s only one issue: the problem isn’t that Bogaerts is getting fewer pitches he can hit, it’s that he’s not hitting the pitches he used to. Here’s Bogaerts against four-seam fastballs (from Brooks Baseball; BIP means balls in play):

He’s cut down a bit on his swings and misses, but everything else looks bad. He’s drastically decreased his line drive rate and drastically increased his popup rate. His groundball rate has gone down a bit, which can be good or bad (in this case I don’t think it’s had a huge effect on anything), and his flyball rate has gone up a lot — which could be good, but Bogaerts is averaging a mere 266.75 feet on his fly balls — 230th out of 284 qualified hitters. So how has this changed his results? Again, Bogaerts against fastballs:

Wow. That is quite the drop in production. League average wOBA against four-seamers this year is .416 (which makes you question why they are thrown so much, but that’s a different article) and so Bogaerts’s wRC+ relative to other fastballs went from a 113 to a 61 in those two timeframes (park-unadjusted).

And look where Bogaerts is hitting balls, too. The following charts aren’t only fastballs — it’s all balls put in play by him. In the beginning of the year, he was sending line drives to all fields, getting grounders through the infield, and pulling balls deep. In the second part, you see lots of shallow line drives and fly balls — in fact, in the three months covered in the second half of the gif, there are all of TWO ground balls that make it through the infield, and only one opposite-field line drive that makes it to the outfield. There are more popups, too, and the fly balls seem to be shallower generally.

Now, some of the things you’re seeing here could be a result of teams shifting on him more as the year goes on, which is why no ground balls are getting to the outfield. But more likely it is Bogaerts making weaker contact and allowing fielders to get to his ground balls; in addition, he isn’t hitting many ground balls up the middle, where you’re more likely to get hits.

Take a look at the gif above. What you’re seeing is the same thing as the last one, only with the at bat result instead of the batted ball type. In the first part of the year, you see Bogaerts getting lots of hits to all parts of the outfields, including deep balls that end up in home runs or doubles. Then, many more balls end up in the infield and most of his hits are shallow balls to the outfield.

This doesn’t look good, especially since it’s been going on for so long. I’m no expert in swing mechanics, so I can’t tell you why Bogaerts has suddenly stopped hitting everything, fastballs especially. My guess is that it’s just a long, long slump that is happening because he’s only 21 years old. I don’t think this means that we should give up on him. He has already proven that he can hit, albeit in a very small sample.

Take a look at the list of all the players who had a wRC+ below 100 in a year where they were listed as top-10 prospects by Baseball America (since 1997):

There are a lot of really good players on that list. Bogaerts is one of the worst there in terms of wRC+ that year, but he’s also younger and higher-ranked than most. That doesn’t concern me. What concerns me is that almost all of the ones on that list from the past few years haven’t succeeded: all of the ones that have are from 2009 or earlier. This is consistent with semi-recent findings by Jeff Zimmerman that the aging curve is changing: hitters don’t improve with age anymore. Further research by Brian Henry shows that players who start in the big leagues at 21 tend to stay steady with their production for a while, then decline at around 30. This does not bode well for the young Red Sox shortstop.

But who knows? If I had to guess, I would say that Bogaerts regains his stroke and starts driving the ball more. He’s too good of a hitter to be so bad against fastballs. After all, he is only 21 years old. Plus… I mean, look at that swing. Number two prospects go far. All the prospects on the list above ranked first or second had some degree of success in the majors, with the exception of Rocco Baldelli, who was good until injuries ruined his career. (Brandon Wood didn’t have enough plate appearances to qualify for the list.) If he was playing a little over his head in April and May, he’s been playing well below his feet for the past three months, and those kinds of things tend to right themselves in time.

Note: This was written before Bogaerts played today, Monday 9/1. He went 1 for 4 with a double and two strikeouts.

In 2012 and 2013, Mike Trout was considered by most in the sabermetric community to be the most valuable player in the American League.  That Miguel Cabrera ended up winning in both years was the source of much debate and consternation, to say the least.  Analytically-inclined fans and writers were fed up, frustrated, and outright angry with the “old school” writers voting for Cabrera based on a different set of values.  Now, in an amusing twist, it appears that this year Trout has his best chance yet to wind up with the award, in large part by having a season that is less aligned with what the sabermetric community values, and more aligned with what the majority of the voting population values.  I took a look at the changes in various aspects of Trout’s game and analyzed how the regressions/improvements will impact his candidacy, based on what voters traditionally have cared about.

Defense

A large part of Trout’s previous MVP candidacy (particularly in 2012) centered on his defense — an area that traditionally has had fewer metrics to quantify a player’s value (as compared to say, hitting).  In 2012, DRS had Trout as worth 21 runs above average; UZR had him at 13.3.

In 2013, Trout’s defensive value declined to the point where he was worth -9 runs by DRS and +4.4 runs by UZR.  This discrepancy was a major reason why Baseball-Reference’s DRS-based WAR for Trout was 8.9 while FanGraphs’ UZR-based WAR was 10.5.

This year, Trout’s worth -6 by DRS and -7.2 by UZR.

In actuality, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to predict this regression; Trout’s arm has been consistently slightly below average, and his range ended up over-contributing in 2012 thanks to a handful of plays that broke his way.  Interestingly enough, the sabermetric crowd didn’t call any attention to this detail in 2012, choosing instead to use Trout’s defensive numbers to bolster their MVP case; now this year they’re bending over backwards to try to discredit Alex Gordon’s defensive numbers so they can justify giving the MVP to Trout as they’ve hoped to be able to do all season long…but that’s a post for a different day.

Baserunning

Likewise in 2012, Trout’s baserunning was valued at 12 runs above average, which included his other-worldly 49 SB and 5 CS.  In 2013, his baserunning added 8.1 runs, including 33 SB and 7 CS — still a great 82.5% success rate.

This year, Trout’s been worth all of 1.5 runs on the bases, with just 13 SB and 2 CS.

Hitting

Trout’s offense is down slightly, but not nearly to the extent that his defense and baserunning have been.  Like his defense, this regression was fairly predictable, given Trout’s unsustainably high BABIP in 2012 and 2013.  His OPS is down to 0.934 compared to 0.963 and 0.988 in 2012 and 2013, but he still has plenty else to hang his hat on: he leads the league in total bases; he’s already hit 30 homers, a total he hasn’t surpassed before; and, with 94 RBIs, he’ll easily pass that magical/meaningless 100 threshold soon as well.  The voters as a whole still like HRs, RBIs, and round numbers.

Clutch Hitting

In previous years, Trout was criticized (at least by me!) for not getting hits in key situations.  Here are Trout’s offensive splits with Bases Empty versus with Runners on Base:

In 2012-2013, he performed significantly worse with runners on.  Presumably most folks here would no doubt cling to the notion that this is entirely luck, and that sequencing like this is entirely unpredictable and out of players’ control.  I argue that even if so, if we’re talking about how much value a player added to his team in a given year, he’s adding more value in years when he gets clutch hits than in years when he doesn’t.  And this year, he’s actually reversed the trend.  His 2014 WPA of 5.52 has already exceeded his 2012 and 2013 marks of 5.32 and 4.60.

The Field

Fortunately for Trout this year, there haven’t been many other position players giving him a run for his money.  Josh Donaldson has cooled off as expected after a hot start.  Alex Gordon’s case is even more heavily dependent on defensive metrics than Trout’s was in 2012, and I don’t see many voters slotting him above Trout.  After that, I just don’t see the award going to Robinson Cano or Kyle Seager (the only other 2 AL players in the top 10 for position player WAR as of this writing), unless Cano truly catches fire in September and leads the Mariners to the playoffs.  In fact Trout’s best competition for the MVP may well end up being a pitcher (another Mariner, no less!), Felix Hernandez.  And we know how hard it is for a pitcher to win the MVP even when his WAR outpaces that of position players (“They only pitch every 5 days!”).

Playoffs?!

Last and perhaps most importantly, I present the Angels’ records and division finishes over the past 3 seasons:

2012: 89-73, 3rd

2013: 78-84, 3rd

2014: 81-53, 1st (through 8/30)

FanGraphs gives the Angels a 99.9% chance of making the playoffs.  In fact, as of this writing, no other team in baseball has more than 78 wins, while the Angels have 81.  This should finally appease the “MVPs should lead their team to the playoffs” voters.

The Vote

So Trout’s hitting is slightly down and his defense and baserunning are way down from when he had his previous “MVP-caliber” seasons.  Fortunately for Trout, the voters by and large don’t value defense and baserunning as much as they probably should (though that’s starting to change, albeit slowly).  And as for hitting being down, 2014 Trout is doing more of what they value: hitting homers and driving in runs.  The only thing that might work against him is if he doesn’t bat .300 (he’s at .290 as of now), and the voters like nice round numbers (and they value BA over newfangled mumbo-jumbo like OBP and OPS).  Overall though, with the Angels in line for their first playoff spot since 2009 and no other traditional MVP-makeup players in the field, Trout seems like a shoo-in.

So there you have it: Trout will win the AL MVP award for all the wrong reasons.

Last week I explored the strategic effect of seeing more pitchers per plate appearance. I love the ten-pitch walk as much as the next guy, but what I love even more is seeing a guy be able to change that approach to beat a scouting report. Let’s take a look at June 5, 2014, when the A’s went to see Masahiro Tanaka for the first time. The first batter is Coco Crisp:

So Crisp doesn’t get the best of Tanaka, but he makes Tanaka labor a bit through six pitches. If you’re going to make an out to start the game, it might as well be a long one. For the next batter, John Jaso, Tanaka decides to go right after him:

I may be looking too deeply into the narrative here, but I love to imagine Tanaka getting a bit frustrated here. Perhaps the scouting report said that both Coco is aggressive early, while Jaso’s running 15% walk rates in 2012 and 2013 suggest that he’s more patient.  Tanaka has to throw six pitches in order to get Crisp out, but after deciding to go right after Jaso, he gets taken deep.

So I wondered if there are players who are able to fulfill both ends of this spectrum. Are there any players that are capable of prolonging their time at the plate until they see the pitch they want, but are also aggressive and willing enough to hit the gas on the first pitch? I used FanGraphs for the pitches/plate appearance data, but used baseball-reference’s play index to look up all instances of first-pitch hits this season. Originally I was going to use first-pitch swings, but I decided to just stick to times when the pitcher gets punished for trying to get ahead early. After all, if your decision is to get ahead early in the count, and the guy swings but all he does is foul it off or hit into an out, then that doesn’t change your approach as a pitcher. I wanted to see guys whom the book isn’t written on yet.  Advance Warning: These stats will be about a week old by the time you see them, as I am a slow, slow man.

(For Reference: FPH% = First Pitch Hit Percentage, or how often a batter gets a hit on the first pitch they see.  P/PA = Pitches per Plate Appearance. FPHR = First Pitch Hit Ranking, or how they rank in this category compared to the rest of the league.  PPAR = Pitches per Plate Appearance Ranking.  FPHR + PPAR = The addition of these two numbers.)

I like this table!  I have wondered at times what has caused Scott Van Slyke‘s resurgence this year. Perhaps this table gives us a bit of a clue.  Van Slyke is the only person in the MLB to rank in the top 50 in both FPHR and PPAR.  That’s pretty neat.  Daniel Murphy is also quite balanced, but he’s been much more consistent over the last few years.  He’s particularly interesting in that he doesn’t have a particularly high walk rate or strikeout rate.  I guess he’s just selective at times.  Jesus Guzman’s presence on this list goes to show that a good approach doesn’t necessarily mean success; it just means that he may not head back to the bench in any predictable fashion.  I stretched out the table one spot to include Mark Reynolds, because his name on this table makes me feel better about drafting him in Fantasy Baseball for past five years.

I also wanted to look at the flip-side.  Who are the guys who don’t tend to take a lot of pitches, but also don’t tend to make any decent contact on first pitches?

Here we have a much less impressive list.  Joaquin Arias has been one of the worst hitter in the majors this year, and his dominance atop this leaderboard makes a bit of sense.  However, Conor Gillaspie is having an excellent season for the Pale Hose, despite the fact that he doesn’t seem to excel in either of the areas this article is interested in.  One pecuilar note is that this group is pretty poor at hitting for power in general; these 5 guys have 13 home runs between them on the year, and six of those are Gillaspie’s.

So now let’s look at the weird ones.  I would think that it stands that if there are certain players who tend to take a lot of pitches and who also never seem to square up the first pitch, then we know our game plan.  Get ahead early on these batters.  We can try to view that by simply looking at each players FPH Ranking minus their PPA ranking.  This is the same at looking at the absolute value of their PPAR minus their FPAR.  Here are the top five in that respect:

Golly; I’ve figured out Mike Trout!  Mike Trout ranks very highly on our list of PPAR but is unfortunately relatively average when it comes to the first-pitch punish.  All of these guys actually fit this mold.  We have three relatively poor hitters accompanied by the best player in baseball and an above average infielder on a winning team.  So we can tell that being patient isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing; it’s just that hitter’s style.  Now let’s take a look at the reverse:

It’s always satisfying when the data shows what you expect it to.  I imagined Jose Altuve as being among the more aggressive hitters, and this shows that at least.  Altuve ranks 5th in the league in FPH% and is rather mediocre in the PPA category.  Interesting to see that this top five is also sorted by wOBA; Altuve is the best hitter on the list, and Pierzynski is the worst.  So there’s nothing necessarily wrong with an aggressive approach, but it does give us a clue as to a possible plan of attack.

So all this is to say, like my last article, that no particular approach is best.  One can look to swing at the first pitch, or one can be patient and wait for their pitch to come.  That said, everybody does have an approach, and that means they’ve got something they’re not looking for.  Stats like FPH and PPAR may just give us more clues as fans as to what teams put together with scouting reports.

So to conclude by going back to our first example, perhaps Tanaka should have read this data before his start against the A’s.  Coco ranks 266th in the league in FPHR, but a respectable 76th in PPAR.  Conversely, Jaso ranks 80th in the league in FPHR, but just 225th in PPAR.  Tanaka might have been better served by going after the aging Crisp and saving his energy for the somewhat aggressive Jaso.

Nolan Ryan was a singular pitcher. He’s unique in baseball history, so distinct that it’s hard to know where to start. I’m going to begin with the obvious: strikeouts. Nolan Ryan struck out 5,714 batters, 17% more than second-place Randy Johnson. Only 16 pitchers in history recorded half as many strikeouts as Nolan Ryan. He led his league in strikeouts 11 times, the most since Walter Johnson (12).

Ryan also walked the most batters in history — 2,795. Steve Carlton is second on that list, with 1,833. Ryan averaged 4.67 BB/9 and 12.4 BB%. Both figures are higher than anyone else who pitched even half as many innings. Ryan led his league in walks eight times.

Ryan also threw 277 wild pitches, most since 1900. He allowed 757 stolen bases, almost 40% more than second-place Greg Maddux. Ryan led AL pitchers in errors four times, and retired with a ghastly .895 fielding percentage. Joe Posnanski summed up Ryan’s career, “He’s the most extraordinary pitcher who ever lived, I think. But I also think he’s not especially close to the best.”

Nolan Ryan is unique, and it makes him hard to evaluate. Casual fans and the old-school crowd have always worshiped Nolan Ryan. His uniform number was retired by three different teams, and he was the leading vote-getter, among pitchers, for the MLB All-Century Team. He got more than twice as many votes as Walter Johnson. But when you really look at his stats, Ryan doesn’t come off well.

Take wins. Yes, the pitcher win, because this is surprising. In a career that spanned 26 seasons (not including 1966, when he had only one decision), Ryan only led his team in wins 7 times. Actually, it’s 5 times outright — 7 counts two years he tied for the lead. In 11 of his 27 seasons (41%), Ryan had a lower winning percentage than the team. He lost more games (292) than anyone but Cy Young and Walter Johnson. What about ERA? Ryan led his league in ERA twice, but in one of those years, he went 8-16. The other year, strike-shortened 1981, he didn’t lead the league in strikeouts, but did lead the majors in wild pitches (16). His 1.25 WHIP ranks 278th all-time. Ryan never won a Cy Young Award and never finished among the top 10 in MVP voting.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. When you look at stats like wins and ERA, Ryan looks more like a good pitcher than a great one. He’s almost a compiler, just a guy who played forever, rather than a true standout. Then you look at FIP. Ryan had a FIP of 2.97 (84 FIP-), and he pitched 5,386 innings, giving him 106.6 WAR. By FIP, Nolan Ryan is the 6th-most valuable pitcher of all time: Roger Clemens, Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan.

I suspect the percentage of FanGraphs readers who believe Nolan Ryan was one of the six best pitchers ever is south of 5%, maybe less than 1%. He rates considerably worse by RA9-WAR, 89.5 instead of 106.6, 25th all-time. Even that would seem high to many stat-oriented fans. It’s better than Bob Feller, basically equal to Pedro Martinez. Ryan also ranks 20th in rWAR (83.8), again much lower than when judged by FIP.

I gave this post a stupid title, with an obvious answer. Is Nolan Ryan overrated by FIP? Yes, clearly. His ERA was 20 points higher — in a 28-year, 807-game, 5,400-inning career. I think the numbers stabilize before 5,000 innings. Ryan’s RA9-WAR is 17 points lower than his fWAR, the biggest deficit of any pitcher in history. Ryan is overrated by FIP. That’s not a major revelation. The interesting question is why Nolan Ryan is overrated by FIP — and whether he is underrated by RA and ERA.
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So far this season Jake Arrieta has looked like an ace, pitching to a 2.53 ERA which is over 2 points better than his career average.  His K/9 is at a career high and his BB/9 are at a career low — 9.19 and 2.32 respectively.  However, the biggest difference in Arrieta’s success comes from his ability to limit home runs this season.  His .36 HR/9 is significantly lower than his career average of 1.01.  People have been questioning whether or not Arrieta can sustain this or not and how he has become a completely different pitcher this season.

The key to this change in Arrieta could conceivably be coming from his change in pitch mix this season.

The major thing that stands out from looking at his pitch F/X data is that Arrieta has begun to use his slider more than ever before in his career this season.  Almost twice as much as his previous career high.  Arrieta has actually been using his slider as his most frequently used pitch.  The heavy increase in Arrieta’s usage of his slider has been at the expense of both his sinker and his four seam fastball which are both at or near career lows this season.  What is interesting is that Arrieta decreasing his usage of a sinker has actually lead to a career high in GB%.

This lead to an interesting idea of what other starters this season have been using a breaking pitch as their most-used pitch this season.  That found seven such starters including Arrieta.  Here is their pitch mixes according to pitch F/X.

What is interesting about this group is that most of these guys other than Arrieta have all featured their breaking stuff as either their number one or two pitch for much of their careers while Arrieta just began featuring it this season.  Although Tyson Ross did use the slider a lot early in his career, his usage of the pitch has significantly increased over the past two years — 25.5% in 2012 and 32.2% last season.  He has had a similar change in success to what Arrieta has seen this season.  Ross’s GB% is at a career high beating his previous career high that he set in 2013 by 3 percentage points.  His K/9 and BB/9 have also risen and dropped respectively over the past two seasons once he began to use the slider more and more.

Using Ross’s pitch usage changes as a blueprint for Arrieta’s potential future successes the trends seem to fit.  The only place Arrieta truly changed that Ross did not see a change is in his HR/9.  Arrieta was homer prone early in his career while Ross never was.  However, Ross’s pre-change groundball rate was higher than Arrieta’s which supports his ability to keep the ball in the yard.  Thus is it not insane to think that Arrieta could keep up the success he has had this season as long as he continues to feature his slider like he has this season.

Baseball, more than any other major team sport, has the reputation for having the least athletic athletes. Jose Molina is obligated to, at times, sprint. Jorge de la Rosa must swing a baseball bat. David Ortiz sometimes has to play in the field. Having skills like catcher defense, pitching, and hitting with power will earn you playing time, and many players have such elite strengths that it’s worth it just to deal with those weaknesses. So many of baseball’s skills are unrelated that players have to spend a lot of time doing things they aren’t good at, at least relative to other MLB talent. A good way to make anyone look unathletic is to make them perform a long list of skills that have little to do with one another and compare them to the best in the world at those tasks.

I wanted to assemble a list of players who experienced something like this phenomenon the most frequently. Essentially, I wanted to see what players’ strengths and weaknesses were the farthest apart. To determine those players whose skills varied the most between themselves, I gathered what I consider to be the six stats that best describe what a player’s strengths and weaknesses are. BABIP and K% for contact, BB% for discipline, ISO for power, and Fielding and Baserunning values. I then gathered stats from 2011-2014 to better control for less reliable fielding metrics, assigned each player’s stats a percentile rank, and calculated the standard deviation of those six stats for each player.

For instance, Mike Trout’s attributes look like this:

His strikeout rate has been higher than MLB average, but he is otherwise an exceptionally well rounded player, as we know.

The most evenly talented player in baseball has been Kyle Seager, who is almost in the middle third at every stat.

Many players have much more severe strengths and weaknesses. Here are the 10 players whose stats show the greatest variation from one another.

10. Dexter Fowler

9. Ichiro Suzuki

8. Jose Altuve

7. Curtis Granderson

6. Mark Reynolds

5. Giancarlo Stanton

4. Miguel Cabrera

3. Darwin Barney

2. Adam Dunn

1. Ben Revere

The whole list is fun to look through and play around with, so feel free to click here and look through all the qualifying players.

In 2013, Baseball Prospectus chronicled the Rays’ “changeup revolution,” explaining how the Rays’ pitching development has succeeded in part because they teach pretty much everyone to offer a plus changeup in unusual situations. But while successful small market teams have thrived off using analytics to find market dislocations on players, the Rays’ changeup prowess has actually allowed them to create them.

Recently, the Rays were ridiculed for giving up David Price for a package whose most proven player was Tigers’ 5^th starter Drew Smyly. At the time of the trade, Smyly had a 3.93 ERA and 4.08 FIP. In other words, he was an average starter. But looking closely, one can see that he pitches to a drastic LHH/RHH split, with opposing wOBA’s of .196/.355, respectively. The reason behind his inability to get righties out could very well be the lack of a good secondary pitch to use on them. For his career, his most effective pitch has been his slider, with hitters putting up a meager .226 wOBA against it. His worst pitch was none other than his changeup, which has been crushed to the tune of a .488 wOBA.

Knowing that his organization specializes in teaching the changeup, I don’t believe for a second that Rays GM Andrew Friedman gave up their ace without thinking that Smyly was essentially a good changeup away from being a potent starter. A free agent in 2019 at the earliest, Smyly should easily provide more long-term value than Price will over the next 1.5 seasons. (Obviously, the Tigers will try to extend Price, but the Rays did not have that option.)

The key takeaway here is that to most teams, Drew Smyly was probably viewed as a league-average pitcher without a secondary pitch that could put righties away. But to a team like the Rays, who have proven to be adept at implementing a changeup, Smyly’s ceiling can appear to be much more feasible. So far with Tampa (small sample size warning), Smyly has thrown 36 innings in 5 starts with an ERA/FIP/WHIP of 1.50/2.82/0.69. He will certainly come back down to earth, but a valuable lesson can be derived from this trade that appeared to be a blatant ripoff. By having an organization’s pitching development specialize so much, the Rays actually manufacture their own list of “buy low” pitchers, many of whom may have plateaued in the minds of other teams.

When they traded Matt Garza, they got current front-end starter Chris Archer in return. From Prospect Instinct’s 2011 scouting report:

The Rays got a haul for Matt Garza from the Cubs and Archer was considered the Cubs top pitching prospect. He has a plus fastball and above average slider, but he still has a lot of work to do before he becomes MLB ready. His changeup is lacking and his command has been erratic. But with enough time he does have #3+ upside.

With a Tampa Bay Rays changeup in his arsenal (.198 wOBA against it in 2014), Archer has done very well for a 3 starter, with a 3.15 ERA and 3.49 FIP over 286 innings since 2013.

Many have noted that Yankees’ starting pitcher Masahiro Tanaka has experienced so much success because he is one of the few pitchers who regularly throws a splitter in the MLB. Perhaps an organization can do what the Rays have done with the changeup and make the splitter a cornerstone of their pitching development. Obviously, such a plan comes with inherent risk. Making the splitter a more commonly offered pitch could take away some of its unfamiliarity-related effectiveness. Also, the splitter is believed to be very taxing on the elbow, a definite red flag given the recent wave of Tommy John surgeries. However, doing what the Rays did with the splitter could make it so that pitchers who are one additional plus pitch away from reaching their ceilings are safer to bet on.