As I started preparing for the fantasy baseball season, I found myself wondering which pitchers would maintain their low ERA despite their higher peripherals and which pitchers I should shy away from even though they have great peripherals. I couldn't help but think that there is some missing piece, a systematic flaw, in the peripheral metrics like FIP and SIERA. I then started thinking about what that flaw could be. For a few weeks I made no headway at all, until it just came to me. I thought back to this article I once read on Johan Santana consistently outpitching his peripherals. The article hypothesized that Santana's success in undeviatingly overperforming his peripherals had to do with his changeup inducing weak flyballs. The reason something like this would lower Santana's ERA while not effecting his FIP or SIERA is because peripheral based metrics cannot differentiate between flyballs. All flyballs are looked at the same in a stat like SIERA, which is obviously not true, but does not make any quantifiable difference to the vast majority of MLB pitchers. Apparently it does for changeup artists like Santana.

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I apologize in advance to Eno Sarris for writing a post on the exact same subject he covered in this great piece a week ago. The reason I still decided to write this is because my piece covers a totally different angle in the discussion.  While Eno Sarris focused on the plate discipline process, I will be focusing more on its outcome and on batted balls.

As most of you already know, the Mets have pretty much stopped hitting home runs since David Wright and Ike Davis were DL'd and Beltran's three homer game in Colorado.  The Mets approach has been based on speed and hitting the ball with as little backspin as possible.

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Tyler Chatwood is pitching against the Mets today and since he's a rookie from the American League, I thought it would be enlightening to look into him a little bit.

The Basics:

He is 21 years old, throws right handed, is 6'0 and 185 pounds.  

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This idea was taken from WTM over at Bucs Dugout but I believe will give us some much needed information on Terry Collins.  Its anyone's guess whether Terry Collins will use the same in-game tactics he used 12 years ago, but nevertheless it'll be interesting to study his past.  The best managers, tactically speaking, are the ones who dabble in and do not overuse managerial tactics.  Sabermetrics is very strong on managers letting the players play and not controlling the game from the dugout.  No one really knows the extent of a manager's effects on his clubhouse atmosphere and player's psychological states leaving tactics as the only concrete area fans have to judge their manager.  You can't quantify what isn't tangible.

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As all of you have witnessed to this point in the season, Jason Bay hasn't been, well Jason Bay this year.  He has only six homers thus far in 2010, a little less than a third of the amount he had last year at this same time.  There are a few elements in Jason Bay's game that are uncharacteristically different this season and might be attributable to a new team philosophy focusing on putting more balls in play equating to fewer strikeouts and fewer walks.  The Mets have a paltry team wide BB/K rate of .44 (9th worst in the majors) and an O-Swing rate (swinging percentage on balls out of the strike zone) of 31.9% good for second to last in the majors.  When plate discipline becomes a team wide weakness one should attribute such failures to non other than the hitting coach.  Swinging at balls is not the right approach if the Mets want to win baseball games.  Anyways, back to Jason Bay. 

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