By the Numbers: Rangers making their pitch
One of the majors' most mysterious rotations just gets harder and harder to pin down.
Going into the season, the Rangers trusted two slots to starters -- Colby Lewis and C.J. Wilson -- who had made one major league start between them over the previous four years. Scott Feldman was coming off of a 17-win season, but still had much to prove to skeptical owners, and Rich Harden arrived as a $7.5 million injury-prone free agent gamble. While Harden has offered Texas plenty of risk with little reward so far, Lewis, Wilson and Feldman have been providing value to owners, especially in recent weeks.
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Can owners trust this relatively unproven trio as we head towards Fantasy's second half? The batted ball and BABIP data from our weekly Lucky/Unlucky analyses have something to say about that. These Lone Star hurlers and other rotation staples are featured in the tool and summaries below.
Players' stats are for all games played through Sunday, June 20.
Who has probably been lucky?
C.J. Wilson, Texas: In general, it's a very good thing to be a ground ball pitcher, but a low BABIP is rarely one of the common side effects. Wilson has done a pretty good job of avoiding contact, but by inducing less than one flyball out of every three hit balls and walking a batter close to once every other inning, we should expect a WHIP higher than 1.24. Wilson's ground ball tendencies and control issues are long-standing, so unless he can somehow find a way to sustain a .257 BABIP, both his WHIP and ERA are bound to soar.
Clay Buchholz, Boston: As a groundballer with better control, Buchholz should be more valuable than Wilson, but he, too, is seeing his value inflated by an abnormally-low BABIP. The 25-year-old hasn't had any apparent good luck on the line drives and flyballs hit against him, but batters are hitting .177 against him on grounders. We should expect that average to rise into the .200s, just as it did in each of the past two seasons. Buchholz will continue to be an above-average AL starter, but his ERA could easily be more than a run higher than its current 2.47 level the rest of the way.
Carl Pavano, Minnesota: Congrats, Carl, you got the better of Roy Halladay on Sunday, so what will you do for an encore? His complete-game domination of the Phils is just part of a legitimate comeback season, but his pitching-to-contact ways won't always generate such good results. Only three of the 28 balls put in play against Pavano were liners, which made it easy for him to limit Philadelphia to four hits. Even when allowing a larger share of line drives, Pavano has been able to avoid base hits, posting a .268 BABIP to date, but it is very unlikely that he can sustain that trend. Though he is pitching better than he has in years, he is much closer to league average than his 3.64 ERA and 1.08 WHIP would indicate.
Randy Wolf, Milwaukee: If Wolf can't find a way to regain his command of the strike zone, things could go from bad to worse. After three straight solid campaigns, the lefty has been a shadow of himself in the first half, striking out fewer batters, issuing more walks and allowing batters to launch 16 home runs over two-and-a-half months. A 4.79 ERA is much worse than what we expected from Wolf, but he is fortunate that it is not over 6.00.
Who has probably been unlucky?
John Lackey, Boston: The Red Sox's free agent acquisition has been one of the most reliable control pitchers in baseball over the course of his career, so his frequent dispensing of walks this year has been a mystery. Over his last four starts, the old Lackey has returned, but you wouldn't know it from his WHIP. His 1.54 mark over that span has been inflated by a total of 33 base hits in 26 innings. As a result, Lackey's BABIP has shot up to .323, even though he has compiled line drive and flyball rates that are on the favorable side. It has taken him a while to round into form, but with better luck ahead, you can start to expect Lackey to be the quality pitcher that Boston -- and Fantasy owners -- bargained for this past offseason.
Felipe Paulino, Houston: Owners are bailing on Paulino, and it's no mystery why. He dropped his eighth decision of the season last week and got shellacked by the Royals in the process. He gets precious little run support from a weak Astros lineup. Still, there are many positives for Paulino, including a high strikeout rate, a record of low line drive rates, and a newfound aversion to the long ball. His .343 BABIP is bound to recede, and when it does, games like the disaster against the Royals will become less and less frequent.
Scott Feldman, Texas: Through the first two months of the season, it looked like the Feldman of 2009 was long gone, as this year's version wasn't striking many batters out or getting nearly as many ground balls. Feldman has turned the tide over his last three starts, fanning 16 batters in 18 2/3 innings and inducing 27 grounders versus 10 flyballs. While these are encouraging signs, his 5.16 ERA and 1.57 WHIP to date are not, but those stats are likely to drop substantially. Even if Feldman's strikeout and ground ball rates tail off, he is unlikely to be dogged by a .343 BABIP going forward. Better yet, if he can build on his recent improvement and have better luck, we could see the Feldman of a year ago throughout the second half.
Anibal Sanchez, Florida: I surmised in a recent blog post that Sanchez's Fantasy numbers could be even better than they have been if only he had a better infield defense behind him. Consisting of some of the least rangy infielders in baseball, the Marlins' infield probably should bear some responsibility for his 1.40 WHIP, but none of Sanchez's rotation-mates have a ground ball batting average against as high as his .323. It seems as if Lady Luck has just as much to do with Sanchez's numbers as Hanley Ramirez or Jorge Cantu does.
Who has been neither lucky nor unlucky (based on current batted ball rates)?
Javier Vazquez, N.Y. Yankees: Some might think Vazquez is lucky to have a 5.01 ERA, given the 13 homers and 30 walks he has allowed over 70 innings. At face value, having a well-below-average BABIP of .260 would lend credence to that belief. While that rate may rise somewhat over the rest of the season, it doesn't look so fluky once you realize he is allowing flyballs on 45 percent of hit balls. That explains his high homer rate, but it also explains the measly .233 batting average that opponents have mustered against him. With Vazquez's homer and walk rates improving in recent weeks, his Fantasy stats should improve, rather than decline, over the coming scoring periods.
James Shields, Tampa Bay: With a career-high strikeout rate and his usual sharp command, at first, Shields' recent meltdowns look like a case of misfortune. However, in addition to his strikeouts starting to decrease of late, he is also getting hit very hard when he does allow contact. Unfortunately, the latter trend has been one that has plagued him for much of the season, so if he maintains a chronically high line drive rate, we cannot expect his BABIP to fall too far below its current .335 level.
Colby Lewis, Texas: Fellow Rangers Wilson and Feldman have their share of question marks, but Lewis appears to be the real deal. His .224 BABIP is too low to last, but he has the profile to maintain a below-average rate as the season wears on, generating flyballs and keeping liners to a minimum. Though Colby's cheese isn't the hardest, he is still striking out nearly a batter per inning, which further helps his cause.
Paul Maholm, Pittsburgh: Even though Maholm doesn't have notably good command, his 3.77 ERA looks right on target. He allows too few flies to be of much help with WHIP, as demonstrated by his current 1.47 mark, but he is consistently stingy with homers, which allows him to get away with clogging up the bases with runners. Maholm's ERA is not the result of smoke and mirrors, as his .311 BABIP is right where we would expect it to be.
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| Runs Created per 27 Outs (RC/27) -- An estimate of how many runs a lineup would produce per 27 outs if a particular player occupied each spot in the order; ex. the RC/27 for Miguel Cabrera would predict the productivity of a lineup where Cabrera (or his statistical equal) batted in all nine spots; created by Bill James Component ERA (ERC) -- An estimate of a what a pitcher's ERA would be if it were based solely on actual pitching performance; created by Bill James GO/AO -- Ground out-fly out ratio GB/FB -- Ground ball-fly ball ratio Batting Average per Balls in Play (BABIP) -- The percentage of balls in play (at bats minus strikeouts and home runs) that are base hits; research by Voros McCracken and others has established that this rate is largely random and has a norm of approximately 30% Left-on-base rate (LOB) -- Also known as strand rate. The percentage of baserunners that a pitcher allows that does not result in an earned run scoring. The research that established LOB norms and benchmarks was conducted by Ron Shandler. His research established that a certain level of variation in LOB can reflect differences in pitchers' abilities to prevent baserunners from scoring. Isolated Power -- The difference between slugging percentage and batting average; created by Branch Rickey and Allan Roth Walk Rate -- Walks / (at bats + walks) Whiff Rate -- Strikeouts / at bats |
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