Archive for Fangraphs

In this post, I take a look at the 2016 Chicago Cubs though their first 100 games. I’ll start out by focusing on the Cubs’ run differential (Runs Scored – Runs Allowed). After a historic start, they reached their pinnacle after the 67th game of the year against the Pirates. At this point, the Cubs were 47-20 and had outscored opponents by 171 runs! Since then, the ball club is 13-20 and their current run differential is at +153.

Still, the Cubs’ +153 mark is 42 runs better than the next-closest team (Washington Nationals). The Cubs and Nationals are the only clubs to have a run differential that is greater than +100. The second-place Cardinals rank third in the league at +95 right now. While the Cubs dominate the top end of the spectrum, the Reds and Braves are running away with the worst run differentials in the league. The Reds have a -143 mark, largely due to the thrashings they have taken at the hands of the Cubs so far in 2016. The Braves have the second-to-worst differential at -134 runs.

Projected Runs to Wins

In another place, I introduced the “Pythagorean Theorem’s of Baseball” which basically tries to determine the number of games a team will win based on their number of runs scored and number of runs allowed. Here are the formulas for six of the most common win-percentage projection formulas:

I added up the Cubs’ total runs scored and total runs allowed after each game this year and compared their actual number of wins to the projected number of wins based on each formula. These charts visualize the differences between those numbers.

This matrix summarizes how accurate each of the projection formulas has been in predicting the Cubs’ winning percentage and total number of wins so far in 2016. The most accurate formulas was the James_1.83 followed by the James_2 and Soolman. Four of the six formulas were very good predictors, but the Cook and Kross formulas overforecasted the number of wins that they expected the Cubs to have. Notice that at one point this year, each of those formulas projected the Cubs to have over 15 more wins than they actually had. The R^2 value (coefficient of determination) is indicative of how well the projected win percentage matched up to the actual win percentage after each game this season.

All in all, the Cubs have should have at least six more wins this year based on these formulas. Scoring as many runs as they have (4th most in the MLB) and allowing as few runs as they have (T-1st in the MLB) should result in an even better record than 60-40. We knew it was unlikely that they would keep up their record-setting start in the run-differential category, but it will be interesting to see how these numbers match up as the season progresses.

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.

For every Dontrelle Willis–who continues to get looks from Major League teams despite over eight years of complete ineptitude–there exists a handful of other players who fade into relative obscurity only a year or two removed from a dominant season. All it generally takes is a down year resulting from–or paired with–an injury to send a guy spiraling below the radar. These are often the players that can return the most value during fantasy drafts if you can make the distinction between a year that’s an aberration, and one that is a bellwether for a significant, irreversible decline in skills.

While I can’t say with complete confidence that Curtis Granderson’s 2014 doesn’t fall into the latter category, there were a couple of encouraging things going on below the subpar surface stats that make me think he can return some solid value this year, especially considering where he’s going in most drafts.

Granderson was 33 last year and coming off an injury-shortened season. He was also trading a left-handed pull hitter’s haven in Yankee Stadium for the cavernous confines of Citi Field. All things considered, it was natural to expect some significant regression. And when he hit .136 through his first 100 at-bats of the season, it seemed like the Mets might have had a disaster of Jason Bay-like proportions on their hands.

Fortunately for them, Granderson managed to right the ship to an extent, putting together a couple of excellent months. His final line of .227/.326/.388–dragged further down by a nightmarish .037 ISO, 16-for-109 August–wasn’t spectacular by any stretch. But there were some nice takeaways buried in there.

For one, his bat speed doesn’t seem to have slowed enough to justify the statistical hits he took across the board. Despite seeing 56.3% fastballs–the most he’s seen since 2010 by a wide margin–his Z-Contact % of 85% was in line with his 85.8% career average, and not far removed from the league average of 87%. I suspect the uptick in fastballs resulted from opposing teams banking on an age-slowed swing, but Granderson’s contact rates on high velocity pitches in the zone didn’t suffer for it.

Granderson also set a career high in O-Contact % with a 62.7% rate. This could usually indicate a lack of plate discipline as much as it could a sustained bat speed, except that Granderson’s O-Swing % of 26.2% is roughly the average of what he did in the four years prior. He also managed to post the second-highest walk rate of his career (12.1%) and his lowest strikeout percentage since 2009 (21.6%). These are not particularly impressive rates in their own right, but in the context of Granderson’s career they do help to dispel the notion that last year was the beginning of the end for his hitting ability.

That is not to say, of course, that I foresee a return to the 40 home run, .260+ ISO form that he flashed in his early Yankee years–there’s no way he ever touches the absurd 22 HR/FB% that sustained that run. But with the right field fences at Citi Field moving in–a change that apparently would have resulted in 9 more home runs for Granderson had it been done last season–and some improvement on last year’s uncharacteristically bad .265 BABIP, I would not be at all surprised to see a home run total between 25 and 30 to go along with double-digit steals and a batting average that won’t kill you. And that has value when it is being drafted as low as Granderson currently is.