Archive for pitching

When WAR was first introduced, it attempted to answer a baseball question that has existed as long as teams have played professionally: how much can one player contribute to a team’s record? It is an ongoing debate to this day, but WAR is widely recognized as an excellent measure of overall performance. WAR numbers for major league players are regularly cited and recognized by both Major League Baseball and the Elias Sports Bureau. However, there is another question behind WAR, also long predating the existence of the statistic, and it’s a question that has yet to be answered by it. When a front office is deciding whether or not (or how aggressively) to pursue a player, they’re ultimately searching for the answer to one question — how many more games will we win if we get this guy?

Enter pWAR.

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Over the past several years, we have watched a number of hitters in the minors display good contact skills with average or below-average power be labeled with 45s and 50s only to burst onto the scene with an explosion of power they never showed any hint of previous. Mookie Betts might be the best example, along with guys like Jose Ramirez, who show up to the big leagues and announce themselves by mashing.  Naturally, prospect hounds, analysts, and the baseball community investigated how these guys went so overlooked (unless you were Carson Cistulli). It was surmised that contact quality mixed with good exit velocity and appropriate launch angles allowed hitters to maximize their output even without Aaron Judge levels of thump.

This investigation, however, is not a hunt for the next minor leaguer who will smash his way onto the scene, but rather a search for the pitchers who will try to stop them. With modern conditioning and institutions (read: Driveline) making it more possible than ever to gain velocity, one no longer must be naturally gifted a 6-foot-5 frame with easy 95 to be considered a prospect. Furthermore, with openers, bulk guys, firemen, and more, traditional pitching roles are going by the wayside.

This analysis attempts to seek out pitchers who possess above-average command or secondary offerings but lack the prototypical velocity grades we are seeing in today’s game. Identifying these pitchers would make them intriguing candidates for these high-intensity velocity training plans. While you may not find the next Luis Severino, you could uncover an explosive fireman reliever, matchup guy, or high-octane backend starter that pushes you closer to October glory.

The process for this analysis involved using the 2018 updated prospects list from THE BOARD, developed by Kiley McDaniel, Eric Longenhagen, and Sean Dolinar at this very site. I started by sorting for prospects who either currently have > 55 command or project for the same. This brought the sample to 85 pitchers. Next, I sorted out pitchers who have a present FB grade of > 55. Our sample now sits at 38 pitchers who have or project to have above-average command and an average-to-below-average fastball. Before diving into the next set of data, I wanted to provide some broader notes about this group. Notable pitchers with top 100–130 considerations on this list include Atlanta’s Kolby Allard and Joey Wentz, Miami’s Braxton Garrett, and the Angels’ Griffin Canning. There are 16 lefties and 22 righties. The Phillies lead the way with five of these guys, the Cubs and Rockies are tied with three each, and then the rest of the league has one or two on this list. Additionally, the average age of this group is 22.8 years old.

Now that we have our assorted pool, it is time to sort through this group’s off-speed arsenal. This part of the analysis was more subjective. I have attempted to group pitchers with similar traits that could fill a variety of roles. What follows is three tables of guys who could benefit most from additional velocity.

This first group features two right-handers with a current 60-grade pitch that projects for 70. Of the 38, these two are the lone members who feature a current 60 pitch. Of the two, Morgan has the higher upside based on his slider. Both have fastballs that sit around 90 mph, but additional velo training could push the value of these guys up a tier. Guys from this tier could be featured as openers or one-time-through-the-order relievers that rely on one elite pitch. The selling point of this group is that they have that elite pitch to lean on even without elite velocity.

The next group features players with multiple 55-or-better future offerings, led by Padres righty Pedro Avila, who is rocking two future 60-grade pitches. Previously mentioned notables Garrett and Wentz also fall into this category. This group represents backend starter types who are useful during the season but less useful during the postseason. Additional velo here could push these guys into strong No. 3 starters or high-leverage multi-inning guys.

The last group of guys profile as backend starter types who live on off-speed stuff and have no margin for error with their fastballs. I identified these players by adding their FV non-fastball pitch grades together, noted as ARS in table (ARS = FCH+FSL+FCB). These guys walk the command and off-speed tightrope to end up as backend starters in the best case, or just middle-relief guys or up-and-down starters. Occasionally these guys become Kyle Hendricks, Tanner Roark, or Doug Fister, but these are exceptions and not the rule. Almost everyone in this group is older for a prospect, so the ceiling is limited, however, additional velo for these guys could turn them into more dynamic multi-inning relivers, bulk guys, or high-end No. 4-5 starters.

I should also note that all these guys fall into different buckets of age, level, and body types. Arguably, the most critical component of a prospect on this list would be targeting high-makeup guys who would be willing to experiment and acknowledge that they could use more gas to ascend to the next level. Some of these pitchers may be maxed out physically or unwilling to change what already seems to work. This analysis also looks past statistical performance, level, and even present pitch value a bit. What this analysis does do is identify guys who could rapidly improve with additional velocity due to advanced command and secondary. The margin for error is incredibly slim for this type of pitcher, but through intense training and velocity gains, pitcher X throwing 90-92 bumping to 94-96 with already above-average command and secondaries would vault them into a new tier of player. For teams looking to squeeze every ounce of value out of their farm system, this could be another way to target undervalued talent that has yet to be unlocked and developed.

The development of Marco Gonzales is essential for the Seattle Mariners immediate or long-term pitching success, insight into the very way the Mariners construct their starting rotation. Gonzales is another pitcher with long-term control (through 2023) that Jerry Dipoto found in a myriad of whimsically addictive trading, acquired in July 2017 from the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for right-field prospect Tyler O’Neill. Tommy John surgery history and analytics pushed him immediately into the safety net of the Mariners AAA affiliate, the Tacoma Rainers, with the delineation of ‘long-term’ project. However, injuries to anyone in a Mariner uniform ensured no AAA project was safe in Tacoma; Gonzales received his callup on August 5, 2017, never to look back.

Gonzales just finished the months of June and July with the Mariners second most innings pitched (59.2, just behind Mike Leake’s 62.1 innings) and a FanGraphs’ WAR of 1.3. If arguments were to be succinct by WAR, then Gonzales has been the second most stable starting Mariners pitcher with 2.5 WAR on the season after 119.2 innings pitched. The stability of Gonzales, however, is entirely despite allowing an above average BABIP and contact percentage of .305 and 80.2, respectively.

Gonzales, by design, is a breaking-ball pitcher who seeks contact, but that does not make his games any less tedious or uncomfortable. If there were an analytic for uncomfortable pitching style, where the clean-up process becomes essential, Gonzales would top that leaderboard. Context is essential to introducing his development for two-fold reason. First, Gonzales is tied to the Mariners front office vision; a pitcher that they have buried plenty of faith in his steady increase in workload around their style of development. Second, this is not a regular development process akin to the league standard; Gonzales was thrown into the MLB due to the Mariners haunting injuries through 2017, and thus has been forced to re-learn the art of the breaking ball ahead of schedule.

The Mariners noticeably began to have an immediate effect on assisting Gonzales tap into his development as a breaking-ball pitcher. His four-seam fastball was still utilized 52.5 percent of the time last season but steadily dropped throughout his August and September in Seattle. At the same time, he began to utilize his curveball, doubling the rate which he used with the Cardinals to 16.7 percent, while also slightly increasing his changeup.

There was a vision in-tact, and in 2018, that vision came to fruition. His four-seam fastball fell to 10.9 percent with a cutter and sinker appearing at the rates of 18.6 and 23.7 percent, respectively. His curve-ball further rose, effectively tying together a breaking ball type of arsenal with the sinker, changeup, and curve of equal use dependent on the situation.

This is more than a natural change to strategy, but a compelling point that Gonzales had finally overcome Tommy John surgery. He had dropped his cutter and sinker earlier in his career to alleviate torque and recover safely. Reports and commentary from catcher Mike Zunino earlier in the year signaled that this season would see a new, more aggressive Gonzales attempting to conform batters, not he conforming to batters.

Confidence from Gonzales is seen in an addiction in committing to the quickened recovery pace. Over the span of the season, the evidence already points toward Gonzales finding a natural flow to his post-Tommy John arsenal and his goal of using the zone’s shadow to pinpoint strike percentage. Further breakdown shows two important developments. First, he is using less of the zone to derive more swings, particularly outside-swing percentage. Hence, he no longer needs to use in-zone pitches to deceive batters into soft-contact on outside pitches, he can just use his natural breaking pitch. Second, at the same time, he is maintaining an uncomfortable contact percentage and BABIP rate, both are controlled with BABIP trending down on the season.

Breaking-ball pitchers are going to be more brazen in their attempt to get outs based on soft-contact, but Gonzales is showing an ability to decrease his BABIP rate on the season while also stabilizing his FIP and xFIP around 3.3 and 3.4, respectively. The stabilization of Gonzales, again, is equally impressive for how quick he has turned around, albeit, a bit surprising because of how uncomfortable his BABIP is.

Gonzales’ batting average, slugging, and ISO rates per zone are higher than average, hence the above average BABIP. His expected batting average is either similar to or the same as his functional output, but his expected slugging and ISO become worrisome, leading to the analytical insight that any moment could lead to a sudden regression.

The summary point on Gonzales’ analytics would debate the point regression is inevitable; his overwhelming confidence and ability to control the quality of contact is what makes Gonzales development as a pitcher enticing. He has maintained a steady bought of keeping launch-angle to nine degrees while holding barrel percentage to six all for the goal of making balls hit into play, easier to handle. Perfection from Gonzales may never be expected, or reasonable – his changeup floating in the upper zone to set up a low curveball does provide dangerous contact opportunity; the magic, however, in his arsenal is the crisp preciseness to obtain quick outs and double-plays if the bases are loaded. Between the sinker and curveball follow-up, spotting adequate contact on Gonzales is epitomized by the random chance of baseball.

On that note, Gonzales’ pitching style might be summarized as an ability to double-down on batting randomization.

I went over the starters version of dScore here, so I’m not going to re-visit that here. I’ll just jump right in with the list!

Risers/Fallers

Danny Salazar (+16) – dScore never gave up on him, despite him being absolute trash early on this year. He came back and dominated, launching him up the ranks even farther in the process. Current status: injured. Again.

Sonny Gray (newly ranked) – If there were any doubts about the Gray the Yankees dealt for, he’s actually surpassed his dScore from his fantastic 2015 season. He’s legit (again).

Alex Wood (-8) – Looks like the shoulder issues took a bit of a toll on his stuff, but dScore certainly isn’t out on him.

Dallas Keuchel (-8) – Keuchel’s stuff isn’t the issue. He’s still a buy for me.

Lance McCullers (-11) – Poor Astros. Maybe not too poor though; their aces have gotten hammered but haven’t fallen far at all. McCullers is going to bounce back.

The Studs

Some light flip-flopping at the top, with Kluber taking over at #1 from Scherzer. The Klubot’s been SO unconscious. Everyone else is pretty much the usual suspects.

The Young Breakouts (re-visited)

Zack Godley (11) – He’s keeping on keeping on. He barely moved since last month’s update, and I’m all-in on him being a stud going forward.

Luis Castillo (9) – He’s certainly done nothing to minimize the hype. In fact, he’s added a purely disgusting sinker to his arsenal and it’s raising the value of everything he throws. Also, from a quick glance at the Pitchf/x leaderboards, two things stand out to me. He seems to have two pitches that line up pretty closely to two top-end pitches: his four-seamer has a near clone in Luis Severino’s, and his changeup is incredibly similar to Danny Salazar’s. That’s a nasty combo.

James Paxton (15) 

The Test Case

Buck Farmer (20) – Okay, so to be honest when he showed up on this list, I absolutely thought it was a total whiff. By ERA he’s been a waste, but he’s really living on truly elite in-zone contact management, swinging strikes, K/BB, and hard-hit minimization. His pitch profile is middling (not bad, but not great either), so I really don’t think he’s going to stay this high much longer. He’s certainly doing enough to earn this spot right now, and I’d expect him to not run a 6+ ERA for much longer.

The Loaded Teams

Yankees – Luis Severino (12), Sonny Gray (17), Masahiro Tanaka (25) / Some teams have guys higher up, but the Yankees are loaded up and down.

Astros – Dallas Keuchel (14), Lance McCullers (19), Brad Peacock (18), Charlie Morton (23) / Similar to the Yankees. Morton and Peacock are having simply phenomenal years.

The Dropouts

Rich Hill (39)

Trevor Cahill (35)

Marcus Stroman (28)

Poor Rich Hill. Lost his perfect game, then lost the game, then lost his spot in the top 25. Cahill’s regressed to #DumpsterFireTrevor since his trade to the Royals. Stroman really didn’t fall that far…and his slider is still a work of art.

The Just Missed

Jordan Montgomery (26) – Too bad the Yankees couldn’t send down Sabathia instead. This kid is good.

Aaron Nola (27) – #Ace

Carlos Martinez (29) – Martinez simply teases ace upside, but frankly I think you can pretty much lump him and Chris Archer (30) in the same group — high strikeouts, too many baserunners and sub-ace starts to move into the top tier.

Dinelson Lamet (32) – He’s absolutely got the stuff. He could stand to work on his batted-ball control though.

Jimmy Nelson (34) – dScore buys his changes. He finished at #148 last year. I’ll call him a #2/3 going forward.

Notes from Farther Down

Jose Berrios is all the way down to 47. His last month cost him 19 spots, but frankly it could be much worse: Sean Manaea lost 39 spots, down to 87. Manaea really looks lost out there. I don’t want to point at the shoulder injury he had earlier this year since his performance really didn’t drop off after that…but I’m wondering if he’s suffering from some fatigue that’s not helped by that. He’s pretty much stopped throwing his toxic backfoot slider to righties, and that’s cost him his strikeouts. Michael Wacha is another Gray-like Phoenix: he’s up to 52 on the list, once again outperforming his 2015 year. I’m cautiously buying him as a #3 with upside. And finally, buzz round: Mike Clevinger (33), Alex Meyer (36), Robbie Ray (38), Rafael Montero (41), and Jacob Faria (43) are already ranked quite highly, and outside of Montero and maybe Meyer I could see all of them bumping up even higher. Clevinger’s really only consistency away from being a legitimate stud.

My next update will be the end-of-season update, so I think I’m going to do a larger ranking than just the top 25; maybe all the way down to 100. Enjoy the last month-plus!

The Mets are the talk of the town…for all the wrong reasons. They currently sit at a 31-41 record and are 12 games behind the Washington Nationals in the NL East, which as of now seems to be theirs for the taking. The Mets boast one of the worst bullpens in the majors and have been plagued by injuries as well as underperformance from the bulk of their lineup. With the results of this season, many are beginning to wonder if it’s time to turn the page on this current pack of Mets players, many of whom were on the 2015 team that lost to the feisty Kansas City Royals in the World Series. I will attempt to go group by group in an effort to determine whether or not the Mets should begin a new rebuilding process, the most dreaded phrase in sports.

Starting with the outfield, Yoenis Cespedes is locked in for three more years in his current contract. It’s understandable why the Mets were looking to sign him in the offseason based on his performance in 2015 and 2016. However, injuries and poor performance have contributed to the current record that the Mets have. Cespedes still won’t lose his spot in left. Curtis Granderson, due to his age, will most likely not be re-signed, as well as Jay Bruce who, if he is not traded before the deadline, will most certainly test free agency. Juan Lagares has been injury-prone the last couple years but the one piece of good news is that Michael Conforto has seen a resurgence since coming back from Triple-A Las Vegas. Also, one of their top prospects, Brandon Nimmo, should receive regular playing time in the outfield, if not this season, then definitely in 2018.

Next, we have the infield, which has been decimated by injuries. Neil Walker and Asdrubal Cabrera have struggled through injuries (and who knows if/when David Wright will ever step on a baseball field again). Jose Reyes and Lucas Duda have mightily underperformed. The good news for the Mets is that Cabrera, Walker, and Reyes will be gone after the season, which means that the infield can get much younger. Top prospects Dominic Smith and Amed Rosario will be September call-ups and, if all goes well, can be regulars in the lineup next year. T.J. Rivera and Wilmer Flores have proven to be reliable pieces in the lineup. Despite some injuries from Flores, he has made up for it with his versatility in both the field and in the lineup, giving manager Terry Collins options to choose from. While Flores and Rivera may not be long-term solutions, they are the best options that the Mets have at the moment. As far as catching is concerned, Travis d’Arnaud is probably the Mets’ best option right now, although he has severely underperformed since being traded to them. The Mets should try to get another catcher in free agency.

Finally, the best pitching staff is a huge question mark, but also a big concern among scouts. Matt Harvey clearly no longer has any interest in remaining with the team and Noah Syndergaard, Zack Wheeler, and Steven Matz are just injuries waiting to happen. Even Jacob deGrom, who has been I believe the best starter this season, has a history of arm injuries that makes Mets front-office personnel nervous. Even Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo are recovering from injuries sustained during this season. The bullpen has been just as bad. The bullpen so far has logged 257 innings to the tune of a 4.97 ERA. Not to mention they have not had a reliable closer since Jeurys Familia has been both suspended and injured this season, and the rest of the bullpen outside of Addison Reed and Jerry Blevins has been downright horrendous.

Overall, the Mets need to begin the next phase of the rebuilding process. With aging veterans and current players underperforming, it’s clear that the time for a championship has come and gone for this group. The Mets need to get younger and it starts with the old addition-by-subtraction technique. By dumping aging veterans with big contracts, the Mets will be able to allocate their resources and maybe pick up some pieces in free agency while simultaneously giving their top prospects playing time and allowing them to develop. As the great Cosmo Kramer once said on Seinfeld, “I think it’s time that we shut down and re-tool.”

Almost one year ago, I took my initial stab at sabermetrics writing about how the Twins’ fabled philosophy of “pitch to contact” was being stifled by the club’s own inability to field the ball. If you are putting that much faith in your defense, it would make sense that you would have the defensive ability to back up your philosophy. For a while, this was true for the Twins. I am not going to rehash what I already wrote in August of 2015, but if I haven’t summarized myself adequately enough yet, I’ll attempt to do so again: the Twins fostered a philosophy in pitch to contact that relied on their defense, yet from 2010-2015 their defense slowly deteriorated, as did their pitching and overall record. My thought was that if the Twins were able to improve on this sub-par defense, they would be able to bail out their pitching, rather than continue to hamper it. I relied a lot of the idea of fielding-independent pitching, so if you are unaware with that concept, read about it here.

Fast forward to 22 months later, and the Twins have some new captains running the ship. These guys value math, and have started to take a more analytical look at the Twins. The most noticeable difference so far in the Twins’ somewhat surprising season (although as of this posting the team has fallen back to earth somewhat) is their improved defense. To this date, the Twins have the fourth-best defense according to Defensive WAR. Last year, they were the second-worst defense. This idea has already been written about, showing that my prediction nearly two years ago was correct. The whole idea that, on average, a good defense can bail out pitching still holds, and I ran a regression to prove it. On average, a one-unit increase in your FIP-ERA difference increases your defensive rating by 49 points. This is quite the turnaround, showing how valuable a defense can be, and this number, in combination with batting and pitching WAR, can be quantified to show its overall impact on a club’s record. I’ll spare the calculation, but one can see how this improved defense has helped lead the Twins to their surprising start.

Unfortunately, the Twins’ pitching (besides two great starts from Ervin Santana and Jose Berrios) has been awful, so any defensive gains this season have been erased by having the second-worst ERA and FIP in baseball, despite the 13^th-best FIP-ERA metric. To this point in the season, the Twins have the same ERA as they did last year, but their FIP-ERA difference was a horrendous -0.52. They have a positive FIP-ERA difference this year at 0.12, showing that their pitching has actually gotten worse from last year to this current season. In some ways, their defense has kept the team above .500. Turns out my prediction was right: improve the defense, and the team will be noticeably better. If the Twins’ pitching would have stayed at the same point as last season, (4.57 FIP), in combination with their FIP-ERA metric, the Twins would be in the top-20 for pitching this season. Unfortunately, the regression of the pitching staff (independent of the defense) has kept the Twins from fully benefiting from their improved defense.

Before I wrap this up, a quick side-note on the Cubs this year. Last season, the Cubs had far and away the best defense in baseball, the best FIP-ERA in baseball, and the best ERA in baseball. This year, as any baseball fan would recognize, the Cubs have been struggling, especially with their pitching. Coincidentally, the Cubs’ pitching this year has dropped to 14^th by ERA, along with their defense, which is also ranked 14^th. Their FIP-ERA metric is at 13^th in baseball, so their regression in defense may be partly to blame for their pitching struggles.

To sum, from 2010-2015 the Twins’ defense deteriorated, leading their pitching staff to do the same based on their pitch-to-contact philosophy. I wrote a year ago that the Twins needed to improve their defense if they wanted to continue this philosophy. They improved their defense, which has fueled a surprising start for the club, and has kept the team from bottoming out with their horrendous pitching staff.

Appendix

Linear Regression and Plot

Michael Pineda is having by far the best season of his career ever since he broke into the big leagues with Seattle in 2011. This is good news for Pineda who is in a contract year and looking to earn a huge payday on the open market this winter. However, this is bad news for teams, especially the Yankees, who have many questions surrounding their starting rotation with CC Sabathia also in a contract year and Masahiro Tanaka having the chance to opt out of his current contract after the season (although the latter seems unlikely at the moment). Pineda reminds me of one player in particular: former Yankee Ivan Nova.

Like Pineda, Nova has a fastball in the mid-90s and good secondary pitches, including a nasty curve and a change-up which he has begun to develop under Pittsburgh Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage, aka “the pitcher whisperer”. While Nova’s strikeout numbers have gone down, he has learned to pitch rather than just throw, which has resulted in fewer guys getting on base against him as well as his K/BB ratio going down, which I believe have been key contributing factors to his success in Pittsburgh. Also like Pineda, Nova hit the ground running, going 16-4 with a 3.70 ERA in 2011, and he was arguably the Yankees’ second-best starter behind Sabathia. However, as teams began to expose tendencies, combined with mounting injuries, Nova was never able to maintain the same level of success in New York.

The same could be said for Pineda, who missed two full seasons and most of 2014. Even after coming back in 2015, Pineda still struggled to maintain any level of consistency, after posting respectable numbers as a rookie. Now, Pineda has harnessed the power of his wipe-out slider and has become a ground ball pitcher (51.5%) to cope with the home-run haven that is Yankee Stadium. His K/BB ratio has gone down and his WHIP has dropped from 1.35 to 1.13 this season. The formula is simple: the fewer baserunners there are, the better a team’s chances are of winning. Also, like Nova, Pineda is using a change-up more in his pitching repertoire, to complement his slider. As a result, he has generated a 43.3% swing and miss percentage on pitches outside the zone, a 7% increase from last season. Additionally, they are close in age, since Nova was 30 when he signed his new contract, and Pineda will be 29.

The Pirates ended up giving Nova a three-year, $26-million contract last offseason. As long as Pineda continues to have success this season, he will also end up getting a similar deal. I predict he will end up staying with the Yankees for three years for somewhere in the range of$36-39 million simply because the Yankees will be desperate for starting pitching and may even pay a little bit over his market value to keep him. These types of deals are always risky, and many look to the Dodgers signing Rich Hill. However, Pineda has proven that he has always had the talent to pitch in New York and it seems that he finally has his head in the right place to help him reach his full potential. I believe that the Yankees will also re-sign Sabathia to a one-year deal in the range of $5-10 million, considering he will be 37 next season. If the Yankees manage to acquire another lefty or even sign Jake Arrieta, the Yankees starting rotation could be something to look out for in 2018.

Confession: fantasy baseball is life.

Second confession: the chance that I actually turn out to be a sabermetrician is <1%.

That being said, driven purely by competition and a need to have a leg up on the established vets in a 20-team, hyper-deep fantasy league, I had an idea to see if I could build a set of formulas that attempted to quantify a pitcher’s “true-talent level” by the performance of each pitch in his arsenal. Along with one of my buddies in the league who happens to be (much) better at numbers than yours truly, dSCORE was born.

dSCORE (“Dominance Score”) is designed as a luck-independent analysis (similar to FIP) — showing a pitcher might be overperforming/underperforming based on the quality of the pitches he throws. It analyzes each pitch at a pitcher’s disposal using outcome metrics (K-BB%, Hard/Soft%, contact metrics, swinging strikes, weighted pitch values), with each metric weighted by importance to success. For relievers, missing bats, limiting hard contact, and one to two premium pitches are better indicators of success; starting pitchers with a better overall arsenal plus contact and baserunner management tend to have more success. We designed dSCORE as a way to make early identification of possible high-leverage relievers or closers, as well as stripping out as much luck as possible to view a pitcher from as pure a talent point of view as possible.

We’ve finalized our evaluations of MLB relievers, so I’ll be going over those below. I’ll post our findings on starting pitchers as soon as we finish up that part — but you’ll be able to see the work in process in this Google Sheets link that also shows the finalized rankings for relievers.

Any reliever list that’s headed up by Chapman and Miller should be on the right track. Danny Duffy shows up, even though he spent most of the summer in the starting rotation. I guess that shows just how good he was even in a starting role!

We had built the alpha version of this algorithm right as guys like Edwin Diaz and Carl Edwards Jr. were starting to get national helium as breakout talents. Even in our alpha version, they made the top 10, which was about as much of a proof-of-concept as could be asked for. Other possible impact guys identified include Grant Dayton (#14), Matt Bush (#19), Josh Smoker (#26), Dario Alvarez (#28), Michael Feliz (#29) and Pedro Baez (#30).

Since I led with the results, here’s how we got them. For relievers, we took these stats:

Set 1: K-BB%

Set 2: Hard%, Soft%

Set 3: Contact%, O-Contact%, Z-Contact%, SwStk%

Set 4: vPitch,

Set 5: wPitch Set 6: Pitch-X and Pitch-Z (where “Pitch” includes FA, FT, SL, CU, CH, FS for all of the above)

…and threw them in a weighting blender. I’ve already touched on the fact that relievers operate on a different set of ideal success indicators than starters, so for relievers we resolved on weights of 25% for Set 1, 10% for Set 2, 25% for Set 3, 10% for Set 4, 20% for set 5 and 10% for Set 6. Sum up the final weighted values, and you get each pitcher’s dSCORE. Before we weighted each arsenal, though, we compared each metric to the league mean, and gave it a numerical value based on how it stacked up to that mean. The higher the value, the better that pitch performed.

What the algorithm rolls out is an interesting, somewhat top-heavy curve that would be nice to paste in here if I could get media to upload, but I seem to be rather poor at life, so that didn’t happen — BUT it’s on the Sum tab in the link above. Adjusting the weightings obviously skews the results and therefore introduces a touch of bias, but it also has some interesting side effects when searching for players that are heavily affected by certain outcomes (e.g. someone that misses bats but the rest of the package is iffy). One last oddity/weakness we noticed was that pitchers with multiple plus-to-elite pitches got a boost in our rating system. The reason that could be an issue is guys like Kenley Jansen, who rely on a single dominant pitch, can get buried more than they deserve.

With the special attention pitchers receive today, such as pitch counts, innings limits, as well as the host of PITCHf/x data that can notify teams of when a pitcher is fatigued, it seems like they days of 300-game winners have come and passed. And for the most part, some of this is true. We’ve seen pitchers be shut down during their earlier years to prevent injuries, such as the Nationals keeping a close eye on Stephen Strasburg. When we think of 300 wins, the math isn’t that hard. It’s some combination of 15+ seasons of 15+ wins over an entire career. Let’s dive in to what further breaks down these pitchers.

I gathered data on pitchers who finished their careers after 1980 as well as pitchers younger than that; I did this to avoid looking at pitchers such as Cy Young who are a little tough to compare to the modern day, with rule changes and the different run-scoring environments. In my query, I looked at pitchers with at least 250 wins. This gave me more data, and since 250-win pitchers are reasonably close to 300, it will allow me to get at what exactly creates a pitcher of this caliber.

My list included 19 names:

Greg Maddux

Roger Clemens

Steve Carlton

Nolan Ryan

Don Sutton

Phil Niekro

Gaylord Perry

Tom Seaver

Tom Glavine

Randy Johnson

Tommy John

Bert Blyleven

Fergie Jenkins

Jim Kaat

Mike Mussina

Jamie Moyer

Jim Palmer

Andy Pettitte

Some of these guys were absolute iron men, pitching over 5000 innings in their career. Maddux did this, as well as Carlton, Ryan, and Sutton. Most of this group barely reached 12 wins per season, showing that they reached the 300-club with longevity, not necessarily dominance. The other guys on this list, by default, either had higher win totals or pitched forever, but without racking up a ton of innings (Kaat, Moyer). Surprisingly, or perhaps not, only four of the 19 pitchers did not pitch for 20 seasons, so again, dominance might not be the key factor — instead, longevity.

I then looked at where these pitchers were at when they were 30 years old. Thirty years seems to be about a halfway point, but the data indicates otherwise. In fact, only three of these 19 pitchers had at least 150 wins at 30. This again drives home the point that these pitchers do not necessarily have to be untouchable every single year they pitched; it just means they have to be pitchers that stay healthy and can pitch for a long, long time. At the same time, the average pitcher on this list had 115 wins at 30, so they did need to have a productive youth in terms of racking up wins.

Here is a table displaying the careers of our 19 pitchers:

The amazing part, at least in my opinion, is that these pitchers almost seemed to get better with age, at least in terms of wins. I know that wins is not a good stat for tracking the effectiveness of pitchers, but since we are talking the 300-win club, it is what we have in front of us. Anyways, 17 of these 19 pitchers had more wins after 30 than they did before. Again, this hammers home the idea that longevity and durability is more important than complete dominance. Yes, you have to be a good, if not great, pitcher, but you also have to stay healthy.

So when looking at current pitchers that possibly have a chance at 300, I filtered through active pitchers fulfilling a few different qualifications. First, the pitcher must have at least 190 innings pitcher per year, including years of injuries (this helps get at longevity and durability). Also, the pitcher must also average at least 12 wins per year. I came up with a group of pitchers who where close to matching these requirements. From this list of 14 pitchers, I think eight or so have the best chance of eclipsing 300.

Here is a table of possible contenders:

This list includes: Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, Justin Verlander, Madison Bumgarner, David Price, Rick Porcello, Jon Lester, and Felix Hernandez. CC Sabathia, although at 223 career wins, does not make this list, since I don’t think he has 5-8 more seasons of decent pitching in front of him. I will go into each pitcher in more detail to describe what each pitcher needs to do to have a chance.

I’m going to start with Lester. Lester is currently at 146 wins, with 2003 regular-season innings pitched. He has been great through his first 11 seasons, in nine of which he was a full-time starter. In those nine seasons, he failed to pitch 200 innings just once, when he posted 191.2 innings pitched. He has been an iron man, and at age 32, the recipe is simple. He just needs to stay healthy and he needs his game to age well. This is going to be a repetitive theme, but to be honest, that’s what we would expect. Things helping Lester? Well, playing for the Cubs is one. Not only do they have a great defense, but they also create great run support, which can help Lester pick up a lot of wins. He was 19-5 this past year, matching his career high in Boston in 2010.

Now on to Justin Verlander. After an injury-riddled 2015, Verlander was great this year, posting a 16-9 record and an ERA of 3.04 (FIP of 3.48). Currently, he sits at 173 wins and is 33 years old. I mentioned his injury struggles in 2015. He only pitched 133 innings. In his 11 years as a full-time starter, that was the only the second time he failed to reach 200 innings pitched. People may worry that Verlander is starting to lose his velocity, which could mitigate his effectiveness, but in 2016, he struck out batters at a career-high rate and also had a career-best strikeout to walk ratio. Verlander is back with the elite, and if he can avoid injury trouble, he deserves to be in the discussion for a possible 300-win flirtation.

I’ll now move on to Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw has been the best pitcher in baseball for the past five years, and has only struggled with injuries for this past year, when he hit the DL with back issues. He still picked up 12 wins, and looked like peak Kershaw when he came back. Kershaw continues to strike out hitters and not allow walks, and in his shortened 2016, he posted a career-best FIP. Kershaw currently sits at 126 wins, and is 28 years old, in the middle of his prime. I think there are two factors that could keep Kershaw from getting close. The first one is his back. The Dodgers shut Kershaw down for half the year, and hopefully it heals, but if it is one of those lingering injuries that can also affect his timing a delivery as well as his overall health, he won’t be able to age his game to the necessary limits needed to hit 300. Also, he should get more wins. I’m not sure this will be a big factor now that the Dodgers have Andrew Friedman at the helm, but if he cannot get the run support he needs, that could lead to two or three fewer wins every year.

Chris Sale is next. Sale sits at 74 wins and is 27. He has some work to do. He has been relatively healthy, however, over his five full years as a starter. I think the best bet for Sale is to get out of Chicago, or at least the White Sox, and get on a team that can give him some good defense and offense. His win totals just aren’t high enough, but he is young enough where if he finds a new team and can age well, he might be able to hit 250.

I’ll do Bumgarner next. He really hasn’t had any injury trouble in his six years as a full-time starter. He is 27 and has 100 wins. He is a little harder to project, but I would say he’s got a better shot than Sale. I mean, he is already at 100 and only 27. Kershaw might have a leg up on him, but MadBum has been able to stay healthy. To be honest, Kershaw had been healthy too before this year, which somewhat shows that pitching 20 full seasons does not happen to often. Anyways, Bumgarner hasn’t quite been as dominant as some of the other names on this list, but he has been very good, and has stayed healthy. He is on a solid team with a good defense. The conditions are correct, he just needs to age well and stay healthy. I still like Kershaw’s odds a little more, but Bumgarner’s are not far behind.

Now I’ll move on to David Price. Price is 31, has 121 wins, and has pitched relatively healthy for seven full seasons. He is on the Red Sox now, which — although their poor defense won’t help some of his pitching metrics, they should give him the run support he needs. He wasn’t terrible this year; I have a feeling people think he fell off the map. He had 17 wins, and a ERA of 3.99 and a FIP of 3.60. His ERA and FIP were at career highs, but the FIP really wasn’t too far off what we’d expect. I’d credit the higher ERA to playing in Fenway with not the best defense behind him. Price may not be as dominant as he once was, but the Red Sox should give him support. He might be a little behind pace, but he could be the next CC Sabathia or Mike Mussina, where upon retirement, we say, “I didn’t realize he had 260 wins!” For the record, I doubt CC gets there, but the point is that if Price can stay healthy and moderately effective on a team that will support him, he may be able to move up in the wins chart. Will he hit 300? I don’t see it, but realistically, I’m not sure any of these guys will.

Now I’ll move on to the other Red Sox pitcher on this list: Rick Porcello. Porcello had a modest beginning in Detroit, but his FIP always seemed to outperform his ERA, so he has that going for him. Porcello is only 27 and somehow has 107 wins already. Although he is on the Red Sox, who can support him, Porcello really hasn’t been able to stay healthy over his career, and only eclipsed 200 innings pitched in a season twice: 2014 in Detroit, and this past season in Boston. Still, he is young, and if he can hang around awhile, he might be able to pick up 100 wins or more if he can stay decent on an offensive team. Again, he doesn’t need to contend for the Cy Young, but he has to stay relatively effective, so he keeps his starting spot and racks up wins.

Finally, I move on to my dark horse, King Felix Hernandez. Felix is only 30, but has been a full-time starter for 11 years. He sits at 154 wins. I feel like as a baseball community, we tend to forget about Felix. He has been very durable, although he hit the DL this past season by injuring his calf when celebrating a win. But hey, forgive the guy; he plays in Seattle, who hadn’t given him much help until recently. He is my dark horse on the list. He now plays on a good Seattle team, so he should be able to pick up wins. He might not be as good as he once was, but if he can stay effective, he has the best chance of anyone on this list. He can age well, he has stayed healthy, and he now plays on a winning team. The conditions are there, and I think he has the best shot of anyone on this list.

Realistically, if I had to choose between none of them winning 300 or one of them winning, that would be a much harder choice than picking one out of the group. Realistically, do I think any of these guys have a shot? Sure, but a shot is a lot different than actually getting there. Who knows, maybe one of these guys will age well and will stay healthy. Your guess may be as good as mine.

You’ve probably read countless treatises on the reasons that Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, or Justin Verlander would be more deserving of the Cy Young Award this year.

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint, but Rick Porcello is probably going to win the award. It’s going to upset a lot of quantitative purists that adjust for everything. Pick your favourite value-added statistic, and Rick probably doesn’t quite win it, or there is an inherent flaw where you can take something away from him on the stats that he did lead (WHIP and BB allowed). The truth is that this year’s winner will reflect quantitative and qualitative considerations.

Consistency, volume, and increasing difficulty  

He, of the never-meltdown. Rick allowed five runs once, and never failed to give his team 5.0 IP in any start this year. Not to suggest that innings-eating alone should be rewarded — Wade Miley, take a bow — but Porcello has provided a quality start in every start since June 28 (with the exception of one 4 ER, 6.2IP appearance on July 24). Tim Britton captures it well in a recent article for the Providence Journal, noting that every other candidate has been shelled a few times, and Hamels not once, not twice, but fifce! I’m sure it was nice for the boys in the dugout to know that if they played reasonably well offensively, that there was a very good chance to win every time Porcello was on the mound, and with it, a good chance that losing streaks would be rare for the team. A casual observation, much as any season-ticket holder in Boston might note, is that Porcello made one of the worst pitchers’ parks into a graveyard. 13-1, with a 2.88 ERA in Fenway, is no easy task.

With a decent start Friday night, Porcello finished with 223 IP. Both Sale and Verlander just clipped that, but Porcello finished near the highest inning total of the candidates, so workload could also be a consideration.

It also got no easier as the game wore on as he was better each time through the order: .264, .230, .195, and .121. Yes, Kluber has managed to pitch to some of the best soft contact this season, but that alone is not going to win the award, and is a fringy measure that does not have full traction from the press.

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Porcello puts in the work, keeps his head down, and would appear to be pretty humble about it. Most people didn’t even notice him over there in Boston. Porcello perhaps did not need to contend with throwback jerseys, but making confetti of your uniform isn’t the spirit of the game, and may well have left a Windy City starter as another man out this year.

Punishing wins & The Contender Effect

While it may be in vogue to punish pitchers for having good teammates, making allowance for consistency, Porcello has still won 22 games. Say what you will, but most people want a winner. A winner in a big market, with big stories, and a big slugger, are good things all-around for the league. Too often pitchers are victimized for the fielders behind them, but what is rarely addressed is that a pitcher can sometimes deploy this to his advantage, and Porcello has certainly made the best use of his team in this regard.

Frequency bias in the awarding of the AL Cy Young

Major League Baseball’s penchant for sharing has been well documented. This is well covered by a certain Managing Editor with a man who hits and walks, and who has been oft-written as being the ‘best-hitting guy’ every year, but who will likely finish second because, gosh, he’d much rather share with a friend from Boston with a winning smile. The writers association hasn’t allowed a repeat AL Cy Young winner since Pedro in the 99 & 00 seasons, and what I will call a ‘gap’ winner since 04 & 06 with Johan Santana. In both those cases, first-place votes were unanimous, and that certainly won’t be the case with this year’s crop. Kluber is ‘too soon’ (2014) and Verlander is too, well, I don’t know what, but he won it in 2011. Since Detroit failed to make the playoffs, I suppose you could pull in the Contender Effect that leaks into the psyche of proletariat, and certainly to some extent, with the voters.

Conclusion

It’s not that Porcello is so much more deserving of the award, but rather, that nobody else has distanced themselves from the pack so as to make themselves most deserving. In addition, he’s made a timely run for it against other guys who have ‘been here before’ or have given other reasons to not vote for them. He’s had some luck, but he has also shone in two of the leading controllable areas — by limiting walks (first among starters) and hits (first among starters in WHIP). There are qualitative factors that will affect the outcome and for these reasons, I think we’ll be crowning someone that has not won the award yet and that’s good for the game.