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Do Say More: The (Nudge, Nudge, Winck,) Winckowski Thread
ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 31, 2021 2:33:33 GMT -5
There are only 32 pitchers aged 23 or younger in the high minors that "qualify" according to FanGraphs. It looks like 16+ IP. That's not a lot guys and not a lot of innings, but can you blame me for looking at his numbers after his last outing?
He's 2nd in IP, 3rd in BFP, but 7th in pitches thrown among the 32.
He ranks 24th of the 32 in Swinging Strike%, 17% below the average of the group. His K rate is 19% below and ranks 22nd.
His FlyBall% ranks 16th and is just 2% better than average, so he's going to get a plain-vanilla HR rate in xFIP. He ranks 16th in BB%, 9% better than average, and that all adds up to a 4.04 xFIP, which ranks 20th, 7% below the group average.
So far ... so what?
He ranks 3rd in strike percentage with 68.1%. That's 7% better than the group, which is a lot for this stat. He's 5th in fewest P/PA. (MacKenzie Gore, BTW, is 31st in Strike%.)
He's 3rd in lowest LD%, 45% better. He's 7th in GB%, 20% better, and he's 7th in IF-FB%, 57% better. All that adds up to a .183 BABIP, but it seems to be mostly earned.
His HR/Contact ranks 15th but is 35% better than the group average.
Efficient, quick outs. Genuinely limited hard contact. Hence 4th in ERA, 61% below average.
Now, if you've forgotten his scouting report (as I had), read it now. And you'll get why you forgot it. He's doing something that's not mentioned there yet, I think.
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Post by jclmontana on May 31, 2021 10:22:17 GMT -5
There are only 32 pitchers aged 23 or younger in the high minors that "qualify" according to FanGraphs. It looks like 16+ IP. That's not a lot guys and not a lot of innings, but can you blame me for looking at his numbers after his last outing?
He's 2nd in IP, 3rd in BFP, but 7th in pitches thrown among the 32.
He ranks 24th of the 32 in Swinging Strike%, 17% below the average of the group. His K rate is 19% below and ranks 22nd.
His FlyBall% ranks 16th and is just 2% better than average, so he's going to get a plain-vanilla HR rate in xFIP. He ranks 16th in BB%, 9% better than average, and that all adds up to a 4.04 xFIP, which ranks 20th, 7% below the group average.
So far ... so what?
He ranks 3rd in strike percentage with 68.1%. That's 7% better than the group, which is a lot for this stat. He's 5th in fewest P/PA. (MacKenzie Gore, BTW, is 31st in Strike%.)
He's 3rd in lowest LD%, 45% better. He's 7th in GB%, 20% better, and he's 7th in IF-FB%, 57% better. All that adds up to a .183 BABIP, but it seems to be mostly earned.
His HR/Contact ranks 15th but is 35% better than the group average.
Efficient, quick outs. Genuinely limited hard contact. Hence 4th in ERA, 61% below average.
Now, if you've forgotten his scouting report (as I had), read it now. And you'll get why you forgot it. He's doing something that's not mentioned there yet, I think.
I want to believe, I really do. However, he has only faced 2 teams (Hartford and New Hampshire) during those 5 games, so I wonder if his pitching performance is more about those teams or his own progression as a pitcher. |
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Post by voiceofreason on May 31, 2021 11:24:25 GMT -5
There are only 32 pitchers aged 23 or younger in the high minors that "qualify" according to FanGraphs. It looks like 16+ IP. That's not a lot guys and not a lot of innings, but can you blame me for looking at his numbers after his last outing?
He's 2nd in IP, 3rd in BFP, but 7th in pitches thrown among the 32.
He ranks 24th of the 32 in Swinging Strike%, 17% below the average of the group. His K rate is 19% below and ranks 22nd.
His FlyBall% ranks 16th and is just 2% better than average, so he's going to get a plain-vanilla HR rate in xFIP. He ranks 16th in BB%, 9% better than average, and that all adds up to a 4.04 xFIP, which ranks 20th, 7% below the group average.
So far ... so what?
He ranks 3rd in strike percentage with 68.1%. That's 7% better than the group, which is a lot for this stat. He's 5th in fewest P/PA. (MacKenzie Gore, BTW, is 31st in Strike%.)
He's 3rd in lowest LD%, 45% better. He's 7th in GB%, 20% better, and he's 7th in IF-FB%, 57% better. All that adds up to a .183 BABIP, but it seems to be mostly earned.
His HR/Contact ranks 15th but is 35% better than the group average.
Efficient, quick outs. Genuinely limited hard contact. Hence 4th in ERA, 61% below average.
Now, if you've forgotten his scouting report (as I had), read it now. And you'll get why you forgot it. He's doing something that's not mentioned there yet, I think.
I want to believe, I really do. However, he has only faced 2 teams (Hartford and New Hampshire) during those 5 games, so I wonder if his pitching performance is more about those teams or his own progression as a pitcher. Yes it absolutely could but on the flip side the more you see a pitcher the easier it becomes to hit that guy. |
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Post by vermontsox1 on Jun 1, 2021 9:09:55 GMT -5
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Post by ramireja on Jun 1, 2021 16:24:06 GMT -5
Footage from his last start:
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jun 1, 2021 17:27:02 GMT -5
Theo needs to mandate dead center camera angles at all affiliated and MLB parks...
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Post by kingstephanos on Jun 1, 2021 17:59:02 GMT -5
His early season milb numbers are great.
It does make me wonder whether or not he could be packaged in a deal to get a Major League player.
Is he a guy you keep long term, or better yet a prospect used to fill holes elsewhere on the roster?
Players of this ilk have me intrigued for the trade deadline.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Jun 1, 2021 18:25:49 GMT -5
...or he could be a major league player all by himself. Teams can never, ever, have enough pitching and at the top of the list of wants are starters.
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Post by kingstephanos on Jun 1, 2021 20:39:30 GMT -5
...or he could be a major league player all by himself. Teams can never, ever, have enough pitching and at the top of the list of wants are starters. I agree totally, Norm. On the other hand, If another team grades him higher than you (for purposes of this hypothetical), that's when it gets interesting - as minor league starting pitchers are extremely volitile, as you know (i.e. Espinosa, Groome, Mata, Kopech, Sherff, Ball, Barnes, Owens, Webster, Ranaudo, De La Rosa...) Remember when Henry Owens was a top 100 prospect w/o a major league fastball or breaking ball. |
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Post by ramireja on Jun 24, 2021 13:31:07 GMT -5
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Post by vermontsox1 on Jun 24, 2021 13:34:01 GMT -5
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ericmvan
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Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,925
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Post by ericmvan on Jul 5, 2022 3:56:29 GMT -5
Here's a puzzle:
How can a Sox prospect rank 12th in MLB among 141 SP in xwOBA (minimum 75 BFP) since June 1, and 29th in wOBA ...
And go a year without anyone posting in his thread? 
It's only four starts, but is it possible for someone who has a "ceiling of a back-end starter" to pitch like a #2 in his first four MLB starts after his nerve-wracked debut? His expected slash line is .247 / .276 / .352.
Can the scouting dudes opine how much of this real? I note with interest (since I had completely forgotten about it) that I concluded last May 31 that he had a BABIP skill, and that's exactly what we've seen so far.
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Post by patford on Jul 5, 2022 7:14:17 GMT -5
Here's a puzzle:
How can a Sox prospect rank 12th in MLB among 141 SP in xwOBA (minimum 75 BFP) since June 1, and 29th in wOBA ...
And go a year without anyone posting in his thread?
It's only four starts, but is it possible for someone who has a "ceiling of a back-end starter" to pitch like a #2 in his first four MLB starts after his nerve-wracked debut? His expected slash line is .247 / .276 / .352.
Can the scouting dudes opine how much of this real? I note with interest (since I had completely forgotten about it) that I concluded last May 31 that he had a BABIP skill, and that's exactly what we've seen so far.
Is there any type of pitcher who is more fun to watch than the pitcher who induces weak contact? In my book the real immaculate inning would be a three pitch inning. |
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Jul 5, 2022 13:35:59 GMT -5
I'm going to wait until he faces a big league lineup with a pulse before I get too excited.
Don't get me wrong, I'm excited. If he does to MFY what he's done to OAK, DET, CLE, CHC, then I might get too excited...
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Post by jimed14 on Jul 5, 2022 14:43:33 GMT -5
Cordero (0.7 fWAR) + Winckowski (0.6 fWAR in 5 starts) have almost caught up to Benintendi (1.6 fWAR)
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Post by ramireja on Jul 5, 2022 15:16:11 GMT -5
I'm going to wait until he faces a big league lineup with a pulse before I get too excited.Don't get me wrong, I'm excited. If he does to MFY what he's done to OAK, DET, CLE, CHC, then I might get too excited... More offenses in baseball resemble the teams you listed (at least CLE and CHC) rather than the MFY. What Winck is doing deserves credit. They may not be the best lineups in MLB, but they are MLB lineups nonetheless. It counts. |
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jul 5, 2022 15:44:32 GMT -5
Oakland and Detroit are the two worst offenses in baseball, and Baltimore isn't great, but Cleveland and the Cubs are roughly league average.
For what it's worth, I think UJ was making a joke about that he would get overexcited if he handles the Yankees similarly, not suggesting that it's all meaningless unless he handles the Yankees that way.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Jul 5, 2022 15:53:46 GMT -5
Oakland and Detroit are the two worst offenses in baseball, and Baltimore isn't great, but Cleveland and the Cubs are roughly league average. For what it's worth, I think UJ was making a joke about that he would get overexcited if he handles the Yankees similarly, not suggesting that it's all meaningless unless he handles the Yankees that way. ^This, and I am extremely curious to see how Winck does on Thursday, perhaps even more curious than about Bello tomorrow. This has the potential to be a watershed week for Sox prospects the likes of which hasn't been seen in a long while.
I am not and was never down on Winck, not even after his skittish first start when there was an avalanche of posts in the gameday thread to the effect of "He's a bum; he'll be lucky to make it as a reliever." You people know who you are...
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cdj
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Posts: 14,021 
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Post by cdj on Jul 5, 2022 16:48:50 GMT -5
Brandon Webb Jr omg
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ericmvan
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Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,925
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Post by ericmvan on Jul 6, 2022 5:27:37 GMT -5
Well, this is interesting.
I looked at how each of the 36 hitters Winck has faced in his 4 excellent starts have fared against him. And it's not a normal distribution.
Granted, it's 2 or 3 PA for each guy ... but there's no one with an xwOBA between .315 and .351.
14 guys have combined for a .391 wOBA and a .459 xwOBA.
The other 22 guys have combined for .187 / .142.
So, the first group has to be good hitters and the second ones bad, correct?
Here are the same two figures for each group, collectively for the season (weighted of course by how many times Wink faced each guy)
.301 / .319 guys who raked .297 / .319 guys he owned.
So there's zero difference in quality between the guys who've had his number and the guys he dominated.
Among guys who have faced him 3 times, there's no significant correlation between how they've fared on the season (using wxOBA) and against Winck (r = .12, p = .60). The quality of the hitter explains 1% of the results.
Guys who have faced him 2 times, it's r = .05, p = .86.
If you use wOBA rather than xwOBA to measure hitting skill, the correlations are stronger, which immediately suggests that a lot of the difference between the two stats is for real. But it's still not significant; r = .19, p = .42 for the 3 PA guys, r = .28, p = .29 for the 2 PA guys.
Now, in the long run there will of course be a correlation between how good the hitters are and how well a given pitcher fares against them. Better pitchers tend to flatten that relationship. What these numbers suggest is that Winck is showing the pattern of a good pitcher, so four starts is too small a sample to show the expected correlation.
He has collectively faced weak hitters. You have to add .010 to his xwOBA and .012 to his wOBA to adjust for that. When you do that, he's .283 in both stats.
There are exactly 150 starting pitchers with 150 BFP.
With the adjustment, Winck is tied for 17th in xwOBA and is tied for 40th in wOBA. The latter is still pitching like a #2 starter (top 45), adjusted for quality of the hitters.
The average of these 150 starters is .315 / .334, and the difference is successful defensive positioning. The Sox lead MLB in the difference, last time I checked. It's unclear whether he's actually been unlucky on balls in play, or whether his ability to get legit week contact negates (in whole or in part) the value of having good defenders. The latter does make some sense, and can be looked at with the numbers ...
Re the first finding, it could well be random. But it could be that a certain type of hitter hits him well and its opposite type doesn't ... but the the type would have to have little or no relationship to quality. If this patterns keeps up, I'll look into it.
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Post by jaffinator on Jul 6, 2022 9:08:29 GMT -5
Well, this is interesting.
I looked at how each of the 36 hitters Winck has faced in his 4 excellent starts have fared against him. And it's not a normal distribution.
Granted, it's 2 or 3 PA for each guy ... but there's no one with an xwOBA between .315 and .351.
14 guys have combined for a .391 wOBA and a .459 xwOBA.
The other 22 guys have combined for .187 / .142.
So, the first group has to be good hitters and the second ones bad, correct?
Here are the same two figures for each group, collectively for the season (weighted of course by how many times Wink faced each guy)
.301 / .319 guys who raked .297 / .319 guys he owned.
So there's zero difference in quality between the guys who've had his number and the guys he dominated.
Among guys who have faced him 3 times, there's no significant correlation between how they've fared on the season (using wxOBA) and against Winck (r = .12, p = .60). The quality of the hitter explains 1% of the results.
Guys who have faced him 2 times, it's r = .05, p = .86.
If you use wOBA rather than xwOBA to measure hitting skill, the correlations are stronger, which immediately suggests that a lot of the difference between the two stats is for real. But it's still not significant; r = .19, p = .42 for the 3 PA guys, r = .28, p = .29 for the 2 PA guys.
Now, in the long run there will of course be a correlation between how good the hitters are and how well a given pitcher fares against them. Better pitchers tend to flatten that relationship. What these numbers suggest is that Winck is showing the pattern of a good pitcher, so four starts is too small a sample to show the expected correlation.
He has collectively faced weak hitters. You have to add .010 to his xwOBA and .012 to his wOBA to adjust for that. When you do that, he's .283 in both stats.
There are exactly 150 starting pitchers with 150 BFP.
With the adjustment, Winck is tied for 17th in xwOBA and is tied for 40th in wOBA. The latter is still pitching like a #2 starter (top 45), adjusted for quality of the hitters.
The average of these 150 starters is .315 / .334, and the difference is successful defensive positioning. The Sox lead MLB in the difference, last time I checked. It's unclear whether he's actually been unlucky on balls in play, or whether his ability to get legit week contact negates (in whole or in part) the value of having good defenders. The latter does make some sense, and can be looked at with the numbers ...
Re the first finding, it could well be random. But it could be that a certain type of hitter hits him well and its opposite type doesn't ... but the the type would have to have little or no relationship to quality. If this patterns keeps up, I'll look into it.
Statistics taken from a large series of very small samples do not necessarily consistently converge to their "true" values. |
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jul 31, 2022 16:52:35 GMT -5
Far from a hater I just don’t have much faith in pitchers like Winck. His batted ball profile all ranked in the bottom 25% entering today (hard hit, barrel rate, exit velo, xBA, xSLG, xwOBA), and he’s 1% in whiff and 4% in chase rate. I just don’t believe a guy with those metrics can consistently be effective relying on soft contact. All his overall numbers are a function of his good stretch / bad stretch ratio.
He had 4 great starts in a row, where he had a .661 strike %, which is 71st percentile (based on 240 pitchers with 40+ IP) ... and all the more impressive given that he does not get chases out of the zone (I may use Statcast later to find his % for pitches in the zone). He had a .174 K rate (15 %) and an .043 W rate (95 %).
He then had 3 awful starts in a row where he has a .612 strike %, which is 10 %. He had a .119 K rate (next to last) and .119 W rate (6 %).
He was really good today and I hypothesized that he had a strike % similar to .661. It was ... .662. This is not random variation. It turns out that most of of the bad numbers for the bad stretch are from the Yankees game, where his strike % collapsed to .531 and he walked 5. It returned nearly to its older rate in his next two starts, but he got hammered, and I'm confident that Statcast will show that his percentage of fat pitches went up, because he preferred to take his chances with pitches in the zone rather than walk the ballpark again, when he didn't have the command to paint the edges.
Still, his 4 best walk rates were in the 4 good starts. If you add today to the good pile and include HB with BB (which is how I had things before I did the % rankings), just the BB rate alone, examined start-by-start, is statistically significant (p = .01). If I added his batted ball metrics the odds of this being random would be silly.
He may well end up pitching on a continuum from having his plus command to not having it at all, but we haven't seen that so far. I bet that this (bimodal distribution, to get technical) is common with pitchers who rely on plus command.
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Post by philip on Jul 31, 2022 17:50:59 GMT -5
Have no problem leaving in rotation this year and next. Add cutter and Bello to that also
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jul 31, 2022 19:06:14 GMT -5
Have no problem leaving in rotation this year and next. Add cutter and Bello to that also As I imply, you really don't know how good he is until you find out how often he has his plus command. So keeping him in the rotation the rest of the way is clearly the way to go. Kutters has simply been good enough to keep his spot.
I think Bello may go to the pen when Paxton comes off the IL, and if not then, when Sale does, to limit his innings, and to get a look at him in the pen. You might use him as a multi-inning reliever in 2023 and have him take a rotation spot the next year.
I also want to see Murphy, Walter, Mata, and Groome all get looks, and Seabold get a chance at enhance his trade value. I have no idea is there's room on the roster and in the schedule for all that, though.
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radiohix
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'At the end of the day, we bang. We bang. We're going to swing.' Alex Verdugo
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Post by radiohix on Aug 19, 2022 7:44:24 GMT -5
Yikes.
I don't think that the "he's a rookie, give him time" excuse can apply to him.
When Kutter was getting hit around, you could see the quality of the stuff and that he's a tweak away from being very serviceable to good, same thing applies to Bello and to a lesser extent Seabold but not in Winckowski's case because of mediocrity of what he throws.
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