SB Nation User Blog: Doghouse

Nats Stats: Ks per 100 pitches...

Doghouse — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:23:04 -0000

More photos » by Manuel Balce Ceneta - AP

RAAAAR! I STRIKE U OUT!!

I saw this article today about a pitching stat I hadn't seen much about before: strikeouts per 100 pitches. It essentially combines control with efficiency: can a pitcher get a lot of Ks, and get them quickly? Apparently it correlates quite well with the number of runs a pitcher allows. To give an example of the range of K/100P, the current MLB leader among starters qualified for the stat crowns is Javier Vazquez at 7.96. Other notables near the top include Tim Lincecum (7.54), Justin Verlander (7.33) and Jake Peavy (7.07). Rounding out the pack at the absolute bottom is Washington's own Shairon Martis, with a paltry 2.38K/100P.

A look at how the rest of the staff are doing with this stat, and what it means going forward, after the jump (including the Triumph of DCMR and the Doom That Comes For Smarty...).

(Updated to add a bit about whether these stats are reliable.)

First off, let's take a look at how the starters are doing:

Starter	K/100P
John Lannan	3.18
Shairon Martis	2.38
Ross Detwiler	4.19
Jordan Zimmermann	5.90
Craig Stammen	2.88
Scott Olsen	3.93

J-Zimm leads the pack: he gets strikeouts, and he gets them quickly. By way of comparison, his K/100P is between Cole Hamels and Chad Billingsley! As for Shairon Martis, his K/100P is pretty close to Daniel Cabrera's 2.08... Ross Detwiler's K/100P is a bit below the middle of the pack--below Jair Jurrjens, but above Paul Maholm.

Now, what about the bullpen?

Reliever	K/100P
Joe Beimel	3.06
Jesus Colome	5.05
Joel Hanrahan	5.57
Mike MacDougal	3.95
Garrett Mock	2.70
Julian Tavarez	4.94
Ron Villone	3.01
Kip Wells	4.18

See, this is why I love looking at stats in isolation: Colome and Hanrahan are obviously the bullpen aces--just like the other night against the Red Sox! Let's pair up the K/100P with a few other things that pitchers can and can't control to get an idea of why people are doing well (or aren't) and whether we can expect it to continue. Things the pitcher can control (and by "control" I mean that they may depend on pitcher's particular style, rather than being random) are GB% (more balls on the ground is better) and LD% (more line drives are bad). Things a pitcher can't control are Home runs per fly ball (whether a fly ball goes out doesn't depend on how the pitcher pitches once he gives up the fly; whether a pitcher's HR/F is above/below league average is bad/good luck) and defensive efficiency ratio (DER is how many hits turn into outs; it depends on where the balls land and your defense, and if it's much above or below league average that's usually due to luck). Now, I was going to put this all in a nice table, but SBN's table tool doesn't want to let me paste into it directly from Excel, and I'm not going to do it all again by hand, so I'll just describe the results:

Martis worries me. His K/100P is awful, as is his K/BB (0.83!). He has a low GB rate (40%), but he manages to hold hitters to an also-low LD rate of only 15.6%--lowest of all the current Nats pitchers. His DER is a probably-unsustainable 0.753 (average is just below 0.700), and his HR/F is around 9%, below the league-average of around 11%. As Shairon regresses to the mean, he'll get more dingers and base hits driving in all those people he's walking and not striking out. Things may get ugly for Smarty later in the season (like Tuesday?).

Lannan confounds his stats, too, to an extent. His K/100P is not dominant, although he manages to strike out more people than he walks. He's had bad luck with dingers (above-average 14% HR/F) but good luck with fielding (0.731 DER). However, he's got a strong 51% GB rate, and an average 18.7% LD rate, which may warrant the above-average DER. As the dingers regress to the mean, Lannan has a good shot at maintaining his magic.

Zimmermann can bring teh Kayz, but when he gets hit, he gets hit hard. His GB rate is a low 40%, while his LD rate is a fences-rattling 25% (highest on the staff). He's had some poor luck (17% HR/F, 0.667 DER), although some of that, especially the below-average DER, may come from his high LD%. His K/BB is a team-leading 3.32, so his hard hits won't find a lot of free baserunners to drive in (his 2.7BB/9IP is second-lowest on the staff). Zimmermann is one to keep watching--as he learns what to pitch, he could turn into a real star.

Detwiler isn't particularly good, bad, or lucky. The middling K/100P is nice for a young pitcher. He's been a bit lucky with his 7% HR/F, but his 0.700 DER is almost exactly league average. His GB% is lowish at 40.3, his LD% is slightly high at 20.9. He's doing about as well as he should be doing, so don't look for dramatic improvements or disastrous regressions later in the season.

Stammen is another mixed bag. The low K/100P comes with a lucky 6% HR/F and 0.729 DER. He gets a fair number of ground balls (47.9%--second to Lannan among starters), but he gives up a lot of line drives (21%). His walk rate is still pretty low (2.4BB/9IP--lowest on the staff), so he'll have fewer freebie runners when the HRs inevitably creep upward.

I won't comment on the bullpenners in detail, except to say that Hanny and Colome have atrociously unlucky DERs, and Colome has been extremely lucky not to give up any HRs, especially given how much of a flyballer he is. There's hope that Hanny, at least, might turn things around--Colome could get worse! Tavarez and Villone have both been lucky to have high DERs and low HR/F, although Tavarez has a high GB% (51.4)--some of his is skill. MacDougal has a sick 66% GB rate, more than justifying his 0.733 DER--that's only based only 10.2 IP, though, so check back with me after the AS break.

Much as I hate to predict this, look for Martis to fade in the second half--perhaps catastrophically. Lannan will continue to be dependable, unless he gets sick of the lack of run support and starts walking everyone in protest. Zimmermann is looking like a real comer if he can keep the ball down. Detwiler looks about like he should, so any changes in his performance will come from learning, not luck. Stammen could become a solid back-of-the-rotation guy or could end up back in Syracuse.

Update! Are any of these numbers meaningful?

Basil makes a good point in the comments about there being a good chance that we're catching Smarty at a fluky part of the season. I consulted this post about how many batters a pitcher has to face before his stats become "reliable" to get a point of comparison. The important nuggets for this comparison are that a pitcher's LD% and GB% become reliable quickly, after 50 batters faced or less. Strikeout rate per PA (which roughly correlates to K/100P) becomes reliable at 150 BF, while K/BB and BB/9 take 500-600 BF before they're reliable. So, how many batters has our current rotation faced?

Starter	BF
John Lannan	391
Shairon Martis	353
Jordan Zimmerman	267
Craig Stammen	170
Ross Detwiler	175

We've seen enough from all of the young guys to be confident that their LD and GB rates are close to what they should be, rather than representing statistical fluctuations. We've also seen enough to be fairly confident in their K/100P rates--especially for Lannan, Smarty, and DCMR. My carping/crowing about walks is a obviously a bit premature, however--it'll take most of the season before we can say for sure how well pitchers are doing with walks.

[As an interesting side note, the speed with which pitching stats become "reliable" depends on how closely the stat is driven by pitcher skill. The more a stat is linked to pitcher skill, the fewer BF it takes to become reliable; conversely, the more a stat is random or linked to batter skill, the more BF it takes to become reliable. The implication, then, is that strikeouts (which converge quickly) are largely a function of pitcher skill (throwing strikes, being deceptive, having good "stuff"), while walks (which converge slowly) depend on both pitcher skills (inability to throw strikes or fool hittings) and hitter skills (ability to recognize pitches and not chase). Stats like DER and HR/F never become reliable, even after an entire season--they don't depend on the pitcher's skill, being either random (DER) or dependent on the hitter's skill (HR/F).]

(Stats courtesy baseball-reference.com and hardballtimes.com, through 6/23/09)

Projected Type-B Free Agents... DNTNJ?

Doghouse — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:05:36 -0000

Projected Type-B Free Agents... DNTNJ?

Mlbtraderumors projects Nick Johnson and Joe Beimel as Type-B free agents, with Ron Villone on the edge. That means if they refuse arbitration and leave the team at the end of the season, the Nats get a draft pick as compensation. Some former Nats on the B-list: Brian Schneider, Felipe Lopez (?) and Luis Ayala (?!). No one on the Nats projects as a Type-A so far this season (worth two picks).

SoxNation takes an unexpected turn in NatsTown™

Doghouse — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:29:31 -0000

SoxNation takes an unexpected turn in NatsTown™

Sox fan posts on Nats.com forum to ask for advice on where to go near the ballpark... Hilarity ensues! Childish, but cathartic after tonight's loss. (The bars mentioned are within a few blocks of my house--good neighborhood places, both.)(In all fairness to Sox fans, The Ugly Mug at 723 8th St SE is really a Sox bar, plus it has free game-day shuttles to the park.)

Tuesday Nats Stats: Bad Luck or Curse?

Doghouse — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:33:31 -0000

More photos » by Manuel Balce Ceneta - AP

Washington Nationals' Austin Kearns (25) argues home plate umpire Andy Fletcher, as Nationals manager Manny Acta approaches to break the argument during the ninth inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds, Tuesday, June 9, 2009, in Washington. Cincinnati won 3-2. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Browse more photos »

As this season goes ever-more-ridiculously into impossible badness, let's take a quick look at how much of it we can pin on bad luck. Keep in mind that the majority of the awful comes from not enough good players--even my most optimistic pre-season calculations had us at 75 wins.

Pythagoras, call your office

The top-level look at the team's performance is the Jamesian Pythagorean Win Expectancy, the average W/L expected based on runs scored and allowed. Through Sunday, the Nats had scored 277 runs and allowed 360. Their Pythagorean W/L based on those totals is 23-38; their actual record is 16-45. Based on our scoring, we're 7 wins behind where we should be. WTH? This boils to down to losing a lot of close games, and only winning the blowouts. Here's a quick summary of how we've done (and how we "should" have done) as a function of how close the games are:

Extra innings: 0-8 (Pythag: 3-5)

1-run games: 6-11 (Pythag: 8-9)

2-run games: 1-11 (Pythag: 5-7)

3-run games: 3-9 (Pythag: 3-9)

4 or more: 6-14 (7-13)

And there you are--we're losing a lot of close games, more than we should be based on how many runs we score and allow. In fact, almost that whole pile of 7 games we "should" have won is in games we've lost by 1 or 2 runs. Maybe some of that is bad luck or questionable home run calls, maybe it's our regrettable bullpen (early season) and prolonged offensive slump (recent). Either way, bad luck for Nats fans...

Hit 'em where they AIN'T

Beyond that team-wide luck (or lack thereof) in close games, we can look at how individual batters are doing with a stat called batting average on balls in play (BABIP). BABIP is (# hits) divided by (# times ball put into play)--it's a measure of how many times a batter hits a ball far enough away from a fielder (or hard enough, or soft enough, or out of the park) that it goes for a hit. This is kind of random, and league-average is about 0.300. If a player has a BABIP much above league-average, he's probably getting a lot of seeing-eye singles and other lucky hits--expect his batting average to come down as his luck averages out over the season! The reverse is true of a player with a low BABIP: his batting average will likely improve as he regresses toward average.

How are the Nats doing? Well, team BABIP is .309 so far this season, compared to a league-average of .296--our luck with balls falling in for hits is about average, maybe a bit better. Notably above league-average are Cristian Guzman (.366), Nick Johnson (.369), and Ryan Zimmerman (.339). Notably below are Josh Willingham (.259), Ronnie Belliard (.207), Austin Kearns (.275) and Willie Harris (.259). Should we expect the first bunch of players to hit a little worse in the second half, and the second bunch to hit better?

BABIP is something a hitter has some control over, based on how hard he hits the ball and how many line drives he can hit. Predicting what a batter's BABIP "should" be (as opposed to assuming it should be the league-average .300 or so) is not the most reliable statistical endeavor out there, but I took at look at a simplified "expected" BABIP model based on this work at The Hardball Times. Anyhow, according to the magic formula, we'd expect Guz, NJ, and Zimmy all to have BABIPs around .305. They hit the ball hard, so we expect them to do better than league-average--but not as well as they've done so far. Sadly, they're all likely to do worse as they regress back to the mean. On the flip side, Hammer's BABIP should be up around .290, TAWH's should be .310, Belliard's should be .311, and AK's should be .313! All four stand to show significant improvement in the rest of the season--if they get enough playing time and/or don't get DFA... On the whole, I'd say luck with batting is slightly in our favor so far this season.

Black holes

This brings us to pitching and defense. There's a flip side to BABIP called Defensive Efficiency Ratio (DER). DER is a measure of how often balls put into play result in outs--if a pitcher pitches to contact, this is the percentage of the time that the defense comes through for him. The pitcher can control some of this depending on how many ground balls he gets, but mostly it's up to the defense behind him and the luck of where the ball lands. League average DER (higher is better) is .697, but the Nats have a league-trailing .677. Nats pitchers are the least likely in the NL to get outs behind them if batters make contact--and we wonder why they nibble and give up walks!

Starters with high DERs include John Lannan (.722), Craig Stammen (.729) and Sharion Martis (.750). Lannan and Stammen both get a lot of ground balls (51.4% and 48.5%, respectively--tops on the rotation), so they might be able to keep that up. Smarty, with his 40.5% ground-ball rate has probably been getting lucky. Look for his DER to fall, meaning his ERA will climb. In the 'Pen, Vill0.96ne has a DER of 0.800--look for his ERA to go high enough that we can no longer replace the "O" in his name with "0.xx"! Taverez manages .729, but his GB% of 53.6 probably warrants that. Notable on the low-DER end of things are Joel Hanrahan (.584), Jesus Colome (.559), Scott Olsen (.639), and Jordan Zimmermann (.656). We might expect low performance from fly-ballers Olsen and Colome, although I'd expect better from poor Hanny.

Another way to look at the impact of defense is Fielding-Independent Pitching (FIP). FIP tries to remove the effect of fielding, looking purely at things the pitcher controls (strikeouts, walks, HR, IBB, and HPB) and computing a number meant to be equivalent to ERA. The difference between FIP and ERA tells us whether the pitcher is getting lucky or unlucky with the fielding. Unluckiest pitcher on the team? Jesus Colome--his FIP is 2.38, lowest on the Nats! Crazy, but it's probably because he's only pitched 9 innings and hasn't given up any HR yet. J-Zimm and Ross Detwiler both have FIPs around 3.85, nearly 1.5 runs/game worse than their 5+ ERAs. Martis (despite his high DER) and Tavarez are both pitching with ERAs close to their FIPs, while Villone (4.17 FIP, 0.96 ERA) and Lannan (5.09 FIP, 3.51 ERA) are doing much better. Interestingly, Lannan's ERA has always been about a run better than his FIP over the last three seasons--maybe he's got something going on that FIP doesn't see. Villone, though--look for him to revert, while Martis and Tavarez stay steady, and J-Zim and Rosswiler continue to improve. Overall, the pitching has been more bad than unlucky, although it has been unlucky.

(Note: Stats through June 15, courtesy baseball-reference, The Hardball Times, and Baseball Prospectus.)

Rare good Nats news: HONDO BOBBLEHEAD!

Doghouse — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:01:39 -0000

Rare good Nats news: HONDO BOBBLEHEAD!

This year's bobblehead giveaways will be Adam Dunn (Aug 8) and Frank "Hondo" Howard (Aug 22). Do you think this is to make up for the Matrix-style statue at the ballpark? Which do you think will end up being the better artistic likeness? I'm sure there are still plenty of good seats available, so line up now to get your Capitol Punisher bobblehead!

(Side note: does this an all-but-guarantee that Dunn gets traded at the deadline? Typical.)

(h/t: Nats320)

Loverro: Dibs is a punk

Doghouse — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:42:52 -0000

Loverro: Dibs is a punk

Yes, I'm wildly overstating Thom's critique, which basically boils down to, "tell us something we don't know." (I'd add, "stop talking about the Quality Start stat until you understand what it means.") At this point I'd much rather argue about Dibbler than try to guess the exact time Manny gets fired.

Family business?

Doghouse — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:10:40 -0000

Family business?

"One of the pitchers taken on Day 3 was Shane McCatty, son of Nationals pitching coach Steve McCatty. The younger McCatty had an 11.89 ERA in his senior season at Oakland University, but the Nationals took a flier on him with the 1,012nd overall pick. "

Just when you think it can't get any more ridiculous...

Doghouse — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:15:13 -0000

Just when you think it can't get any more ridiculous...

DC Fire Chief unilaterally cancels post-game fireworks? Come on, I've had those little specks of paper fall on my plenty of times--it's not like they're ON FIRE!

Here's the best way to crystallize it: San Fran's three starters have combined for six Cy Young...

Doghouse — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:20:06 -0000

Here's the best way to crystallize it: San Fran's three starters have combined for six Cy Young awards. Washington's three starters have combined for two career victories.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/nationalsjournal/2009/06/the_gulf_between_them.html

Are you freaking KIDDING me?

Doghouse — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:50:19 -0000

Are you freaking KIDDING me?

FOURTH? Zimmy is FOURTH among NL 3Bs in AS voting? He is the best-hitting 3B, the best-fielding 3B, and has the highest overall win value of NL 3Bs (a full win ahead of #2 Wright). Zimmy is the AS NL 3B. Period.