By the Numbers: Rocky road ahead for Ubaldo?
One pitcher is an NL All-Star; the other is an All-Star also-ran.
One has been the target of nearly universal acclaim and Cy Young chatter, while the other has toiled in relative obscurity. The former has been owned in nearly every league on CBSSports.com since Week 1, whereas the latter is still available in nearly one out of every five leagues. Here's how their rate stats shape up.
Pitcher A: 8.1 K/9, 3.3 BB/9, 0.5 HR/9, 52 percent ground ball rate
Pitcher B: 7.2 K/9, 3.4 BB/9, 0.5 HR/9, 53 percent ground ball rate
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Pitcher A gets the edge in this comparison, because he misses a few more bats, but would you have guessed that Ubaldo Jimenez, aka Pitcher A, and Clayton Richard were having such similar seasons? One of the two main things that separate them is their batting averages on balls in play (BABIP), as Jimenez has benefitted from a very low .259 rate, while Richard's is a more normal .298. The other is wins, as Jimenez (14) has more than twice as many as Richard (six). It will be difficult for Jimenez to keep such a low BABIP in the second half, so his ERA and WHIP should start to look more Richard-like. He is even less likely to win 28 games, so as good as Jimenez has been, he has earned a place in the "likely lucky" portion of this week's Lucky/Unlucky analysis.
BABIP and batted ball trends for these All-Star caliber arms -- and an assortment of pitchers from across the performance spectrum -- are assessed below.
Players' stats are for all games played through Sunday, July 4.
Who has probably been lucky?
Ubaldo Jimenez, Colorado: Jimenez is one of the best pitchers in the majors, but already his stats have started to tail off. The regression is not done yet, as his line drive rate is not low enough, nor is his flyball rate high enough, to jive with such a low BABIP rate. If anything, a ground ball pitcher like Jimenez would normally have a BABIP north of .300. In Fantasy terms, this translates into Jimenez having an ERA close to 3.00 and a WHIP above 1.20 going forward.
Trevor Cahill, Oakland: Cahill has taken huge strides forward this season, but that means that his strikeout, walk and home run rates have progressed from poor to merely pedestrian. His 15 percent line drive and 55 percent ground ball rates are far from pedestrian, and both bode well for his future development. They simply don't portend that he can maintain a .232 BABIP this season. Actually, we shouldn't expect any pitcher to maintain a rate that low, given that the lowest full-season BABIP over the previous three seasons was Dave Bush's .239 rate in 2008.
Jaime Garcia, St. Louis: As mentioned above, it's unusual for ground ball pitchers to have below-average BABIPs, but one way to accomplish that is to have a stellar infield defense behind you. Fortunately for Garcia, he has just that, and it has helped him to compile the second-lowest ERA among major league starters, just behind Josh Johnson. We can give the Cards' defense some of the credit for Garcia's .273 BABIP, as well as for Adam Wainwright's .270 mark. Though both hurlers have strong ground ball tendencies, Wainwright's low BABIP is a bit more believable, due to a stingy 16 percent line drive rate. Garcia (19 percent line drive rate) hasn't helped himself nearly as much, making him the more likely candidate to decline over the coming weeks.
Bronson Arroyo, Cincinnati: Recall Bush's trend-setting BABIP from two seasons ago, just mentioned above? That rate is one of only four to fall below .249 over the previous three years. Arroyo's BABIP is currently at that magical .249 level, but unlike Chris R. Young and Tim Wakefield -- owners of two of those four microscopic rates -- Arroyo is not very prone to allowing flyballs. If you're wondering how he has been able to keep his ERA near league average with subpar command (1.3 K/BB), now you know why. Unless he can find the strike zone with more regularity, we could see Arroyo's ERA inch its way towards 5.00 in the second half.
Who has probably been unlucky?
A.J. Burnett, N.Y. Yankees: Burnett's strikeouts are down so far this season, but not so much that we would expect that his ERA, currently at 4.90, to shoot up nearly a run above his career average. He has done a good job of minimizing line drives, but batters are getting to Burnett via the ground ball this season, hitting a collective .289 when they put the ball on the dirt (or, in Tampa Bay, on the field turf). There is no reason why Burnett should rank fourth among major league starting pitchers in batting average against on grounders, and there is a very good chance that he'll be inducing more ground ball outs in the future. Even if he doesn't bring his strikeout rate back up, you can strike a good deal by finding an owner who wants to unload the disappointing 33-year-old.
Kevin Slowey, Minnesota: Owners have been disappointed with Slowey's mediocre performance to date, but he's not doing much differently now than he did in his last full season in 2008. A decent strikeout rate, superb control, gopherballs galore ... these are the landmarks of a typical Slowey season and they've all been in evidence in 2010. Slowey's .201 BABIP on flyballs, the 14th highest rate in the majors among starters, is a problem for someone who allows flies on a majority of hit balls. Not surprisingly, the bevy of flyball base hits has sent his ERA and WHIP soaring. He will continue to allow more than his share of homers, but Slowey should see fewer singles and doubles as the season rolls on.
Nick Blackburn, Minnesota: For the first two months of this season, Blackburn was not unlucky, he was just ineffective. He struck out fewer than four batters in nine of his first 11 starts, and he went without a single K in five of those starts. Lately, he has been missing more bats, but his improvement has been overshadowed by his continued struggles to prevent base hits on balls in play. It's especially hard to believe that he won't improve his .334 BABIP, given that he posts consistently lower-than-average line drive rates. It's an important part of what made him so successful over the previous two years, despite his penchant for pitching to contact. Now that Blackburn is back to striking out at least a few batters, we can expect to see the Blackburn of old for the remainder of the season.
Dan Haren, Arizona: The normally-consistent Haren had a shockingly bad start to the year, giving up 16 homers in the first two months alone. His bouts of dinger-induced whiplash have subsided, as batters have homered off of Haren only three times over his last seven starts, but owners may not have noticed the trend. Though he has shaved almost a run off his ERA over that span, Haren's WHIP has only nominally improved from 1.34 to 1.31. The blame for his stagnant WHIP lies not in declining strikeouts or worsening control, but in a .336 BABIP rate that is out of line with both his current batted ball rates and his long-term BABIP track record. The time to target Haren is now, before more owners start to notice his recent progress.
Who has been neither lucky nor unlucky (based on current batted ball rates)?
Clayton Richard, San Diego: As noted above, Richard has been nearly Ubaldo-good. His performance is backed up by across-the-board improvements in his strikeout, walk, home run and ground ball rates, as well as by a perfectly normal BABIP. The biggest risk for Richard is that he could give back some of these gains in the second half, but the risk is probably not that great. He has made advances in each of these areas before, but just not all at the same time. As a 26-year-old, it would not be all that surprising to see Richard "put it all together" over the course of this season.
Joel Pineiro, L.A. Angels: For those who thought that last season was a fluke for Pineiro, he's showing that he can still be an asset to Fantasy owners, even after getting sprung from Dave Duncan's reclamation refuge in St. Louis. Pineiro's fastball may not have the same juice that it had earlier in his career, but last year's renaissance was based in a newfound ability to generate grounders. While he is striking batters out at his highest rate in years, he is also succeeding by virtue of a 56 percent ground ball rate. As an extreme groundballer, Pineiro's .295 BABIP is at some risk of rising, but not enough to seriously jeopardize his ERA and WHIP.
Max Scherzer, Detroit: Scherzer has been sharp in his last five starts, but even as he racks up one high strikeout count after another, owners need to be aware of the trouble that could lurk when hitters put the ball in play. In each of his three seasons, Scherzer has compiled BABIP rates of .315 or higher, and in two of those seasons (including this one), his line drive rates have been in excess of 23 percent. As Ricky Nolasco and Jorge De La Rosa have shown, having great strikeout stuff does not ensure Fantasy success when you have chronic problems preventing hits when batters do make contact. Owners may not see Scherzer's Fantasy numbers get much better than where they are currently.
Craig Stammen, Washington: Stammen has teased us with occasional bouts of effectiveness, only to have a terrible start every few times out. To say the least, Stammen is not a strikeout pitcher, but as we have seen with the likes of Pineiro, Blackburn and Tim Hudson, a pitcher can be very valuable in Fantasy without Ks. He just has to be extremely good in one area (e.g., high ground ball rate, low walk rate) or at least very good in all other areas. Stammen has very good control, but he is definitely not good at keeping hitters from smacking the ball around on contact. His career line drive rate is an outrageous 25 percent. For those owners who might think that Stammen is just a start or two away from getting on track for good, it's time to stop waiting. There's a reason why he has a 5.37 ERA in his 33 big league starts.
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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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