Scott Feldman - Legit?
by Dewey Finn on Sep 10, 2009 9:44 PM EDT
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Season Stats: 163.2 IP, 16W-4L, 3.46 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, 95 K, 54 BB
Post-All Star: 67.1 IP, 8W-2L, 2.94 ERA, 1.31 WHIP, 49 K, 22 BB
I've been waiting all season for him to "come back to earth", but he just keeps rolling along, and even getting better. I recently came across a very interesting article on Fangraphs http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-evolution-of-scott-feldman which discusses his cut fastball as perhaps being the best in all of baseball.
What are your thoughts on him? Do you think he is for real? One thing's for sure, he's been clutch for the Rangers.
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obviously no yearly cy young candidate
but I could see him being a nice #3 or a very good #4 when it’s all said and done.
Adoptive parent of Kyle Nicholson
Those season stats include the few weeks he was a reliever at the start of the year
Those numbers go down when you take those innings away.
Scooter is a huge talking point amongst Ranger fans. Last year he was a reliever through spring training, like hed been in his first few years as a professional, and at the end of spring the decision was made to switch him from a sidearming reliever to a over the top starter. He spent all of a month in the minors (threw a 7 inning no hitter I believe in AA) before being rushed to the majors due to a rash of injuries.
Let me say that again. He had been a reliever for several years and within a month not only switched from a 1-3 inning at a time reliever to a starter but completely changed his pitching motion.
He came up and was pretty good last year. I maintain it was as simple as the manager pushing him too long in games or his numbers would have been better than they were. If you took out the last inning or partial inning of his starts last year he was about a 3.75 ERA pitcher averaging a tick under 5 inning per start.
Thats not great but considering the circumstances it was a solid building block.
This year he came into camp seemingly locked into a rotation spot. He was out of options so there was no sending him down. He had a solid spring and did absolutely nothing to lose his spot in the rotation. However for some unexplainable reason the Rangers decided to go with Kris Benson as our #5 starter. So Feldman was sent to the bullpen. Less than a month into the season he was back in the rotation.
His success has been amazing to watch, especially for us Ranger fans who have been pitching starved for years. He is not flashy. He won’t strike out a ton of guys (11 against B a few weeks ago was by far his most in his career). He utilizes the Rangers improved D to his advantage. He throws a sinking fastball that has a ton of movement and is about 92-94 mph. Then he mixes in that cutter which he learned this past winter. It kills lefties. I cant tell you how many bats he has sawed off. His curve also is pretty god. When he can command it he is unhittable.
Since the ASB his K/9 has ticked up and is about 6.6/9 which if he can maintain that level along with his GB tendancies he could ultimately be a Roy Halladay lite. I wouldn’t say a true #1 starter by any means but a solid 2/3 and someone I would have complete confidence in him in the playoffs.
Oh and hes only 26 this year which is just added goodness. Feldman (26), Hunter (23), Holland (22), and Feliz (21) make up an exciting core for us Ranger fans
Bryan Smith (12:17:17 PM PT): Justin Smoak and Josh Hamilton. The AL West might just have found their Bash Brothers, v. 2.0.
Thanks for the informative response!
Scott Feldman as a Starter this year: 3.10 ERA, 1.19 WHIP
Good call bro.
http://deweymoney.blogspot.com
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ya
I have him in my roto league. I’ve been waiting for him to come back down, but really he is making me a believer. The Rangers are a good, young team. He is on my short list for next year, though I think most others lists too.
I was a Scooter skeptic
Until I started watching his starts recently.
He’s got a killer cutter, the curve shows potential, and the fastball is above-average. Having above-average stuff is new to him, so he hasn’t fully learned to use it yet. He’s begun using the curveball as a Strikeout pitch more frequently, and It’s working for him. I think that going forward he can maintain a K rate of 6 or 6.5, which with his fantastic GB rates and good control point to a very solid 3 or servicable #2 starter.
I like steak.
I recently watched a start
I had been seeing his stats all year and wondered what was going on. Then I saw him and I realized how effective he is. Control and Stuff are ace like. I know there are stat dorks out there who think that in order to be an ace you have to throw 95. I am not saying he is an ace, but he had ace control, pitch mixture, and stuff. In other words, in the game I saw he had all of the necessary weapons to possibly continue in his success. He controlled the at-bats several times through the order. cut and sink, fastball on the corner, effective off-speed.
Chris Carpenter, is a guy that he reminds me of in the sense that Carp was a guy who put it all together by learning how to manage at-bats using cutters, sinkers, and 4 seam for strikes.
know there are stat dorks out there who think that in order to be an ace you have to throw 95.
lol…what?
Yeah...
One of Billy Beane’s principles early in the decade was to sell off all the 95 MPH+ guys in his system for players he wanted more.
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by Andy Seiler on Sep 11, 2009 11:33 PM EDT up reply actions
No. he's clearly not a legitimate ace.
His Babip is .255 which is not sustainable. His FIP is 4.20. He is among the top ten bets among major league starters to regress next year.
The comparison to Chris Carpenter is interesting and revealing. When Carpenter was at his peak, pitching for the Cardinals, he was striking out between 7.5 and 8 batters a game and walking less than two. Feldman is striking out 5 a game and walking more than 3. That’s a monumental difference. Carpenter also got a higher percentage of ground balls (52-55% v. 47% for Feldman) This year Carpenter’s k rate has dropped to 7 but his walk rate is about half of Feldman’s. Carpenter did put up Feldman-like peripherals his first four years with the Blue Jays and the results weren’t pretty.
Perhaps Feldman will improve as Carpenter did though it took the latter five years. But if Feldman doesn’t improve his peripherals, there will be a big drop off next season, with an ERA closer to 4.5 than 3.5.
He may regress, but you may be overstating it
He’s only been throwing the cutter for a year and right now it’s among the very best pitches in baseball. His stuff has improved and he’s only been starting for less than two years after making significant changes to his delivery and adding pitches.
His career BaBIP is .281 so he may not regress as much as you think. His K rate has come up recently, may be small sample, too early to tell. With that cutter and that defense behind him, he may be a solid #2. With a different defense probably a #3.
G G G E-flat_______ F F F D__________....
Isn't the curve a new pitch too?
If I remember right he threw a slider last year.
The 2009 Texas Rangers offense: sigh...
by Kinslerhomer on Sep 11, 2009 10:32 AM EDT up reply actions
Yes it is
An above poster made a good pt about Feldman’s stuff improving. As a pitcher when you start throwing a certain pitch it takes a while to really believe that pitch will move that much EVERY time. That affects control A LOT. I think recently Feldman has finally realized how good his stuff is. He knows that his cutter will break a certain amt, his CB will, his 2 seamer will, etc.
08/03/2009 A day that will live in infamy for the rest of the AL West.
by Michael Cave on Sep 11, 2009 12:58 PM EDT up reply actions
even as a rangers fan
i was skeptical for a while. but like others that have already posted, he keeps impressing me more and more every time he pitches, and he pitches well even against the best teams in the league. To me, the tell tale sign of a pretender is getting rocked by the best teams in the league, but that hasnt happened with him. He saws off bats on a regular basis with his cutter. another poster made a comment about statheads, and sure enough statheads came out and started talking unsustainable this and unsustainable that. watch his games guys, dont look at the stats. he gets more weakly hit ground balls and little bloop hits than most other pitchers in the league. he’s given up a miniscule 15 hr all season, despite playing in one of the most favorable hitters parks in the league. he has a good whip and one of the lower BAA in the league. all this from a guy throwing new pitches with a new delivery. he may not get the k’s that youd expect from an ace, but all season long he’s definitely had the reliability of one. no baseball player, pitcher or hitter, will have flawless stats. but i hardly see any negatives in his stats, let alone enough to throw him in the pretender category. and just watching him will convince you he’s for real. the rangers typically let pitchers like feldman go only to watch them blossom with other teams. for once, it looks like it is happening with one of their pitchers while he is still with the rangers
by rangersfan24 on Sep 11, 2009 1:29 PM EDT up reply actions
I consider myself a giant stathead
And I’m sold on Feldy. As I stated in my earlier post, the peripherals are trending up.
I think the best way to explain my belief in Feldman is this; I regard him as a prospect, not as a 26-year old 30th rounder. The pitches he’s throwing are still new to him, he’s still finding his proverbial sea legs.
I like steak.
He also got
4th round money so he’s not the typical 30th rounder.
The 2009 Texas Rangers offense: sigh...
by Kinslerhomer on Sep 11, 2009 2:45 PM EDT up reply actions
And he's got experience in the bigs, too.
He was only 22 when he debuted, so we’re not talking about a guy that reached AA at age 25.
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by Andy Seiler on Sep 11, 2009 11:35 PM EDT up reply actions
Perhaps . . . but
Looking at his game log, he has improved his peripherals in August/September. In the last seven games he pitched in 44 innings he struck out 30 and walked 16. That’s not the ratio of a staff ace — which was my central point — but it’s better the first four months of the season.
I realize you too are wary of the sample size. Feldman had one monster game in that 7 when he struck out 11 and walked 2 in 7 innings. Remove that and he at 37 innings with 19 strikeouts and 14 walks. Those aren’t the numbers of a #2 starter or even a #3.
As for his career BaBIP, you’re including this year’s unsustainable figure, and since he has only pitched 400 or so innings, that unreasonably low number makes up more than 40% of the career BaBIP. Remove this year and his career BaBIP was .292 and at only 230 innings you can’t conclude much from that.
If I had a dime for every time a pitcher developed a new pitch or motion, I’d be rich. While we all hope to spot the next Mike Scott, the reason his story is so notable is that it’s so rare. When I spoke of Feldman regressing, I didn’t write he would regress but rather that he would regress if he didn’t improve his peripherals. That’s his challenge. Doing it over seven games is evidence that he might. I simply pointing out that unless he sustains that — which is in some doubt — he will regress quite a bit.
I think
a lot of what a good deal of rangers fan here are saying (myself included) is that Feldman is one of those you have to see him to believe him type of guys. The progression over the past 2 yrs has been impressive. He basically retooled before this yr. He slotted his arm a little differently, developed a cutter and a CB (which he has sharpened up in the past 1.5 month or so). That is a lot of change in one year.
As an aside i hate it when ppl remove one good performance to make numbers look worse or remove one bad performance to make them look better. It is part of the overall sample. If you remove the best, you have to remove the worst outing as well which makes the sample size even smaller.
08/03/2009 A day that will live in infamy for the rest of the AL West.
by Michael Cave on Sep 11, 2009 4:39 PM EDT up reply actions
I am relying on numbers so I appreciate your sharing of your observations
I am not a Rangers fan (though I have Andus, Borbon, Holland and Smoak on my roto team so I do follow them) and I haven’t seen Feldman’s progression.
As for your aside, my point was to demonstrate the inadequacy of the sample size. If you look at his numbers the past two year, they aren’t impressive. If you look at them thi year, they are middling. If you break down this year to a smaller sample size — which you must do to see some improvement — you’re basically left with the last seven games. And that selection of that sample size is just as arbitrary as removing the best game, since it’s selected by picking the first good game in that stretch and excluding the last bad game.
Gotcha
sorry for the later response.
08/03/2009 A day that will live in infamy for the rest of the AL West.
by Michael Cave on Sep 14, 2009 12:05 PM EDT up reply actions
No problem
I do value hearing firsthand observations — may come in handy in my roto league. Rangers have an exciting future.
Maybe
but we have no money.
The 2009 Texas Rangers offense: sigh...
by Kinslerhomer on Sep 17, 2009 11:01 AM EDT up reply actions
You can't combine his first three years with his last two for his career stats though
Those first three years he was a reliever who threw sidearm and didn’t have the pitch that has been rated as one of the best in all of baseball this season.
The last two years he switched to a over the top starter and has developed one of the best pitches in baseball. Ive probably seen 90+% of his starts the last two years and I can say he is better than his numbers indicate. He can maintain a low BABIP. Last year it was .285 and this year its .267 according to B-R. SO if he does regress I wouldn’t expect it to be too much. Maybe in the .275 range.
Trust me, watch his starts on a consistent basis and you will see how many weak little grounders, sawed off bats, weak popups, etc he gets. Guys simply can’t square up a ball on him.
Bryan Smith (12:17:17 PM PT): Justin Smoak and Josh Hamilton. The AL West might just have found their Bash Brothers, v. 2.0.
"He can maintain a low BABIP"
nope
not when your LD% against is over 20%.
he’s going to regress. simple as that. the sooner you realize it the easier it’ll be to take.
baseball rules.
His career BaBIP is low
and his LD rate was over 20% previously with a low BaBIP. Feldman is not an ace, but he’s something of a cipher when it comes to explaining his success. Yes, he’s going to regress, but he’s not going to fall off the face of the earth. I don’t think any of the Rangers fans here think he’s an ace, but he’s not going to suddenly be a 5th starter. I think he will persistently outperform his peripherals, but still be a #3 that sometimes looks like a #2 (as now).
G G G E-flat_______ F F F D__________....
His last two years of stats aren't impressive
His peripheral numbers have improved the past seven starts but that is too small a sample size to project changes in a statistical basis.
Thanks for sharing your personal observations. Have you noticed them all season or just during this last 7-game stretch when his peripherals improved?
Ive noticed him improving over the last two years
Like I pointed out in my post above last year its my theory that he was simply left out too long. That seriously skewed his stats. He didn’t strike alot of guys out which hes gotten better at this year especially since hes incorporated the cutter.
Also last year he had a BABIP of .285 with the Rangers defense which was not good at all. This year the defense has improved and his BABIP has gone down. He has accepted the Rangers philosophy of pitch to contact and it has shown in the results. With the Rangers defense set for the forseeable future I don’t see a whole lot of regression in that number.
I do not think he will be a true ace by any means but he can and I believe will be a solid 2/3 for the Rangers for the next few years. I wouldn’t be suprised to see him settle into a 200 IP, 3.75 ERA type pitcher. If he can do that I could care less how many guys he strikes out.
Bryan Smith (12:17:17 PM PT): Justin Smoak and Josh Hamilton. The AL West might just have found their Bash Brothers, v. 2.0.
This
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
I'd bet my left pinkie-toe...
Neither he nor Edwin Jackson come close to their numbers this year next year (if we’re talking w/l and ERA).
Player/ FIP/ tRA
Jackson/ 4.11/ 4.64
Feldman/ 4.21/ 5.27
Scott Feldman meet Gavin Floyd...
Ya, the subject line is screwy, but the comparison I believe will be valid. After the 2008 season, many insiders had Floyd as their #1 regression guy going into 2009. And if you just looked at the numbers, it was tough to argue against. 3.84 ERA vs 4.77 FIP, lowish K rate (6.3), low BAPIP (.268), and just average GB numbers. But those that watched him regularly saw it differently. They saw a guy with improving stuff and confidence that was finally living up to his hype as a 1st round draft pick. Even more importantly, the Don Cooper magic was starting to kick in.
Looking at 09, Floyd is turning those doubters into believers as one of the better pitchers in the AL, with peripherals to match. His ERA currently sits at 3.84, identical to 08, with an equally low FIP (3.76). His K rate has increased to 7.78, and his GB% is up to 44%. The BABIP has also increased to a more sustainable rate of 289. Beyond the numbers, his stuff is also getting better, adding 1mph to both his FB and SL (which to me looks more like a cutter). He’s also throwing it more often, 26% in 09 vs 20% in 08. So, what’s all that mumbo jumbo have to do with Feldman? I don’t know to be honest, I’ve written more than I thought I would. But the story sounds similar, a group of eyes seeing something different than what the numbers are saying. Feldman’s new stuff is playing up as he gets more comfortable with it, and his velo has gone up each month since he’s become a starter:
http://www.fangraphs.com/winss.aspx?team=Rangers&pos=all&stats=pit&qual=0&type=4&season=2009&month=5
He currently throws one of the most effective pitch’s in baseball (cutter), one that won’t light up the K/9 rate but will induce weakly hit GB’s and flyballs. Do I expect Feldman to go 16-4 in 2010? Who knows and who cares to be honest, it’s irrelevant. But I do expect him to be an extremely valuable cost controlled starter for the Rangers, probably slotting somewhere behind Feliz and Holland over the next few years.
ProspectTube.com
You Video. You Scout.
by ProspectTube.com on Sep 11, 2009 7:09 PM EDT reply actions
Floyd did regress, he just improved at the same time as he regressed
The first year, he had an ERA that was much higher than his FIP. Next season, the two were essentially identical. The force which separated the two in 2008 was, by all appearances, luck.
Actual improvement by a pitcher in controllable areas does happen sometimes. It’s just not typically a great idea to predict it.
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
regression
Every time I read talk about a player “regressing” from season to season it makes me cringe.
The sample size over an entire season is large enough that its very unlikely “luck” has anything to do with measures of performance. Very unlikely as in p << 0.001.
The better explanation is that your analysis is flawed. If FIP deviates significantly from ERA+ (or whatever run prevention stat you choose) the more likely explanation is that FIP is not reliably predictive of performance. It’s not luck. There are way too many pitches thrown in a season by these guys for luck to play a part.
BABIP
Floyd’s BABIP rose from its unsustainably low 2008 total while the team’s UZR remained quite similar across the two years (regression in an area determined by luck) while he significantly improved on the amount of swings and misses generated (improvement in an area he more directly controls).
Look at the list of the top 10 lowest BABIP against for starting pitchers from 2008, it’s a veritable who’s who of pitchers that regressed sharply in ERA in 2009, minus Floyd and Wakefield (who is an anomaly anyways):
David Bush
Tim Wakefield
Armando Galarraga
Gregory Smith
Scott Olsen
Daisuke Matsuzaka
Jeremy Guthrie
Joe Saunders
Gavin Floyd
Cole Hamels
I understand the point you’re trying to make regarding FIP/ERA, but there were other indicators that Floyd was lucky last year.
the same point applies to BABIP
It’s extremely improbable that a deviation in a stat measured over thousands of samples (i.e. one per pitch that results in a ball in play, over the course of a normal starting pitchers season) is due to luck. As in “winning the lottery” improbable.
It’s far more likely that these guys just had better results in 2008 than they did in 2009. There are a lot of reasons that might be the case… better conditioning in ’08, more motivation, better defense in ’08, hitters made adjustments this season, etc.
A pitcher can be lucky for a hitter, or for an inning, or even a game. But not a season, at least not a season in which they make more than a few starts.
As BABIP is calculated, a normal starting pitcher's season does not produce thousands of samples of balls in play
From the standard formula used for BABIP, Floyd had 160 BIP in 2008.
actually I'm way off
i only listed the hits, not all balls in play
It's really not a good idea to make wild claims about statistics in forums where people actually know something about statistics
That might work on Newsmax, but it is almost certainly going to get caught on a serious baseball blog.
The graphs on this article are damning, and there is plenty of other evidence that the role of luck substantially trumps that of pitcher skill in observed BABIP outcomes. Hsu and Tango’s study is actually, if anything, controversial with respect to how MUCH credit it gives pitchers— and they still think that luck is 50% more potent than pitcher skill in determining BABIP over a season.
Other analysis done by Tango has indicated that the point at which track record overtakes regression to the mean (or to put it another way, the point at which a pitcher’s observed BABIP should only be regressed 50% of the way to league average) is after about six full seasons of play. Barry Zito actually has BABIP-limiting skill. Gavin Floyd doesn’t, at least not that anyone can tell right now.
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
Thanks for the references Paul
As I read them, they aren’t claiming that pitchers don’t influence BABIP. Just that pitching skill doesn’t have as big an influence as “luck.”
The BABIP graph isn’t “damning” unless you choose to interpret a correlation of 0.2 in BABIP year to year as evidence that pitchers don’t affect BABIP. But correlation is a tricky way to compare stats. In some contexts a correlation of 0.2 or 0.15 is pretty significant.
The DIPS article says "So, can we say that when a starter has 700 BIP, the influence on those BIP as a group can
be broken down by:
luck : 44%
pitch: 28%
field: 17%
park : 11% "
Well in a sample of 500 or so you’d expect random variation to influence the outcome. The presence of random variation in the data doesn’t have any relevance to the question of whether a pitcher’s skill can influence the outcome of a batted ball. The authors contend that the pitcher has a much greater influence than the fielding or the park… and that there is a lot of random variation in the results. Ok, that is not controversial.
Sure, you need to observe a pitcher over several seasons to know for certain that his results are due to consistent skill. That’s also not a controversial statement. What is controversial is the statement that pitchers don’t influence outcomes of batted balls. Yet neither the BP article nor the DIPS article establishes that.
The ultimate point here
is that FIP in year x correlates better, with respect to ERA in year x+1, than ERA in year x does.
There’s just no getting around that fact. FIP is better than ERA for predicting next year’s ERA. xFIP and tRA are even better than FIP.
I see you’ve backed off your wild claims from earlier in the thread, which is nice.
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
That predictive value of FIP might just mean
that power pitchers that strike a lot of guys out have longer, more consistent careers, on average.
What it doesn’t mean, is that if pitchers like Feldman are successful it’s because they are lucky. Feldman is successful because his pitches move a lot, and induce a lot of weak popups and grounders, resulting in a low BABIP.
It also isn’t true that “regression to the mean” acts as an inexorable force, pulling down an individual pitchers performance whose BABIP in a season exceeds that which would be predicted by FIP. That’s a fallacious way to interpret statistics. Those were the points I was trying to make, in between misinterpreting the definition of BABIP.
Um
If something is indicative of the fact that a given pitcher is likely to have a shorter, less consistent career— isn’t that rather, you know, relevant?
What it doesn’t mean, is that if pitchers like Feldman are successful it’s because they are lucky. Feldman is successful because his pitches move a lot, and induce a lot of weak popups and grounders, resulting in a low BABIP.
Even taking as given that Feldman really does have a lot of movement on his pitches, I’m not aware of any research showing that pitch movement has any real impact on BABIP— at the very least, this is conjectural. Anecdotally? Brandon Webb has savage movement on his fastball and a career BABIP of .294, which is fractions away from league average.
W/r/t batted ball types… pitchers can generally have a fair degree of control on the launch angle of balls. So let’s look at Feldman’s more closely.
IFH%: 10.2%
Slightly above average.
GB%: 47.4%
Somewhat above average, not elite. But… high ground ball rates INCREASE BABIP. Oops. So, somewhat below average from a BABIP standpoint.
There’s nothing here.
It also isn’t true that "regression to the mean" acts as an inexorable force, pulling down an individual pitchers performance whose BABIP in a season exceeds that which would be predicted by FIP.
Actually, that’s exactly what regression to the mean is. Well, it’s not a “force,” but… if you have a pitcher who has an ERA of 2.00 halfway through the season, and his true talent ERA is actually 4.00, you’d expect regression to “pull” his ERA up to 3.00 by the end of the year.
You’re confusing this with the gambler’s fallacy, which would suggest that the pitcher would have an ERA of 6.00 in the second half to “even things out.” That really IS wrong, and no one is suggesting that Feldman is about to implode and start putting up a 6 ERA or something.
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
IFH should read IFFB here
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
Pitchers have been demonstrated to have some control over the number of popups they induce
It’s definitely not randomly distributed. IIRC it’s one of the factors underlying Barry Zito’s BABIP success against right-handed hitters.
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
Hmmm...
Just basing it off a quick and dirty study RJ Anderson at DraysBay did in relation to Matt Garza.
Kind of simple, so who knows.
I think he overstates his conclusions in that study substantially
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
Always a possibility.
I’d be interested to see something more definitive if you know of something off the top of your head.
glad you cleared up IFH%
A couple comments on this.
If something is indicative of the fact that a given pitcher is likely to have a shorter, less consistent career— isn’t that rather, you know, relevant?
It is relevant to a lot of things, but not to the question of whether a pitcher who has a lower than expected BABIP in a season is necessarily “lucky.”
if you have a pitcher who has an ERA of 2.00 halfway through the season, and his true talent ERA is actually 4.00, you’d expect regression to "pull" his ERA up to 3.00 by the end of the year.
The fallacy at the core of your argument is the presence of a “true talent ERA.” Pitchers aren’t parameterized random processes, with those parameters set to constant values at the start of their careers, or even of a season.
GB%: 47.4%
Somewhat above average, not elite. But… high ground ball rates INCREASE BABIP. Oops. So, somewhat below average from a BABIP standpoint.
This is a false inference:
i) Pitcher A has a higher than average ground ball rate.
ii) Ground ball rate is positively correlated with BABIP across all pitchers.
Therefore if Pitcher A has a lower than expected BABIP, it is not due to his elevated ground ball rate.
There are a lot of holes in this, but I’ll point out just one: ground ball rate is probably not positively correlated with BABIP in the Rangers park, and also quite possibly not for the Rangers pitchers in general, in any park, because of the unusual range of their shortstop and second baseman.
You are swinging these statistics like a blunt club, smashing reason and logic indiscriminently. These numbers might allow you to draw broad conclusions about pitching in general (“something is indicative of the fact that a given pitcher is likely to have a shorter, less consistent career”) but not for a given pitcher in a given season. It takes more than one or two numbers, tRa, FIP+ or FIP- or IFH or whatever — to explain the performance of an athlete.
If I've forced you to fall back on the standard po-mo disclaimers
about there never being any absolute truth and we can never really know what a player’s true talent is, as it seems I have, my work here is done.
The only further point that needs making is that Rangers pitchers have given up a BABIP of .216 on grounders and .102 on fly balls.
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
Wow, way to throw in a statistical term to make yourself sound smart!
Unfortunately for you, I actually know what p-values are. Turns out you can’t just make them up and declare them to be reality.
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
The better explanation is that your analysis is flawed. If FIP deviates significantly from ERA+ (or whatever run prevention stat you choose) the more likely explanation is that FIP is not reliably predictive of performance.
So, so wrong.
Here’s the order of year-over-year correlation strength in descending order:
tRA
xFIP
FIP
RA
ERA
Controllable areas like...
adding a new pitch, or changing arm angle, or health improvements? I’d be curious to know if guys who throw cutters typically have large gaps between FIP and ERA.
ProspectTube.com
You Video. You Scout.
by ProspectTube.com on Sep 12, 2009 12:07 PM EDT up reply actions
hmm, okay
Then I guess I’m guilty of not knowing the definitions. From that small a sample you’d expect several pitchers a year to be lucky, in the sense that their results were due to random noise.
The premise that pitchers don’t have an influence on “batting average of balls in play” seems specious on the face of it though. The chance that a batted ball will make an out, independent of defense, would seem to be determined by the speed and angle at which it leaves the bat. Popups, lazy fly balls and slow grounders are likely to make outs; line drives, hard grounders and long flies less likely. If the ball were coming in at a straight line and constant velocity every pitch, then the angle and speed of impact would be entirely due to the hitters skill. Whereas obviously the ball is moving and the pitcher is changing speed, in an effort to make the hitter fail to the ball squarely with maximum bat speed.
Some kinds of pitches, like knuckleballs and cutters, may be easier for the hitter to make contact with (and put in play, putting the event into the sample in question) but harder to square up.
Obviously an entire community of people spends way more time thinking about this than I ever will… but the idea that pitchers like Feldman who have good late movement on their pitches and low BABIP, but low strikeout rates, are “lucky” seems logically and statistically flawed.
Exactly
“but the idea that pitchers like Feldman who have good late movement on their pitches and low BABIP, but low strikeout rates, are "lucky" seems logically and statistically flawed.”
Guys who throw cutters are doing so to pitch to contact, and likely have less hard hit balls against them.
ProspectTube.com
You Video. You Scout.
by ProspectTube.com on Sep 12, 2009 12:10 PM EDT reply actions
Leaders in Cutter % thrown
2009
Bannister – .303 BABIP
Doug Davis – .288 BABIP
Halladay – .311 BABIP
Feldman – .266 BABIP
Buehrle – .282 BABIP
Billingsley – .292 BABIP
Haren – .268 BABIP
Danks – .285 BABIP
Blackburn – .311 BABIP
Pettitte – .301 BABIP
Lester – .325 BABIP
James Shields – .313 BABIP
2008
Jesse Litsch – .285 BABIP
Roy Halladay – .293 BABIP
Andy Sonnanstine – .312 BABIP
Jamie Moyer – 294 BABIP
Andy Pettitte – .339 BABIP
Nick Blackburn – .309 BABIP
Mark Buehrle – .314 BABIP
Jon Lester – .299 BABIP
James Shields – .292 BABIP
Chad Billingsley – .323 BABIP
David Bush – .245 BABIP
Jake Peavy – .285 BABIP
John Danks – .299 BABIP
Daisuke Matsuzaka – .267
I don’t buy the premise based on circumstantial evidence, as it seems to me that there are just a few outliers both years – Feldman being one of them in 2009.
To my knowledge there has been a lot of studies that show that pitchers have an extremely small control over their BABIP beyond their entire team pitching staff’s BABIP (Feldman’s is 22 points lower than the Rangers’ staff FWIW), and a pitcher’s BABIP for one given year means very little in prediction of future individual BABIP. If there are any other studies that state anything to the contrary, I’d be interested to read them.
Mike Maddux
thinks he will be in the same class as Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz
one day.
wow
Deolis Guerra = Daniel Cabrera ?
I tend to think so
by SteveHoffmanSlowey on Sep 12, 2009 5:35 PM EDT reply actions
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