Post by ericmvan on Nov 20, 2020 4:08:15 GMT -5
Why are you using a data set of pitchers with at least 200 IP to evaluate a pitcher who threw 17 innings? You're making a data set of only pitchers who have thrown a ton to evaluate a player who threw the sinker all of 65 times. I don't get that.
The more reliable the data you use to build a model, the better the model will be. The model can then be used to show what a pitcher actually did in a small sample size.
I don't really think I've been unclear about the meaning of the results, but it's easy to forget that, because I'm not continuously saying "in these three games." That he had 86 sinker movement in these three games is an actual fact. That doesn't mean it will be sustained.
You're tying yourself up in knots over the limited data regarding movement on his sinker and ignoring the fact he's throwing too many balls and the outcomes on his sinker aren't particularly great. There was a lot of good and a lot of bad. But here's the thing - this idea that the entire scouting community missed that he had a scale-breaking sinker or something is nuts. Your problem is your assumption that your model is correct and relevant. Have you done anything to show that positive outcomes result from what your model pops out?
Houck's sinker definitely moved a lot! Here's a chart showing he had the second-most drop on his sinker of anyone who threw at least 50 of them this year: baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/pitch-movement?year=2020&team=&min=50&pitch_type=SIFT&hand=&x=diff_x_hidden&z=diff_z_hidden
Here's a chart sorted by whiff percentage on sinkers in 2020. Houck's 16.7% whiff rate on sinkers ranked 169th out of 398 pitchers. Although I typically think of a sinker as a pitch-to-contact offering, if his sinker was this movement unicorn, presumably he'd have been inducing all kinds of swing-and-miss with it, and he wasn't. baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/pitch-arsenal-stats?type=pitcher&pitchType=SIFT&year=2020&position=undefined&team=&min=1&sort=11&sortDir=desc
Here's a chart sorted by whiff percentage on sinkers in 2020. Houck's 16.7% whiff rate on sinkers ranked 169th out of 398 pitchers. Although I typically think of a sinker as a pitch-to-contact offering, if his sinker was this movement unicorn, presumably he'd have been inducing all kinds of swing-and-miss with it, and he wasn't. baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/pitch-arsenal-stats?type=pitcher&pitchType=SIFT&year=2020&position=undefined&team=&min=1&sort=11&sortDir=desc
Here's the chart sorted by Hard Hit %. Houck was 37th, and that's with a bunch of guys ahead of him who threw a handful. Much better. In other words - a very good standard sinker. baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/pitch-arsenal-stats?type=pitcher&pitchType=SIFT&year=2020&position=undefined&team=&min=1&sort=17&sortDir=asc
So in other words, he didn't give up hard hits, but he also wasn't missing bats. It's a sinker so that makes some sense. But it also wasn't this godly pitch. He wasn't missing bats with it. Stop with this "it's a 90 movement pitch" nonsense.
Another issue: He wasn't throwing strikes. Here's a chart of his out-of-zone % baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/custom?year=2020&type=pitcher&filter=&sort=5&sortDir=desc&min=50&selections=z_swing_miss_percent,oz_swing_percent,oz_swing_miss_percent,out_zone_percent,&chart=false&x=z_swing_miss_percent&y=z_swing_miss_percent&r=no&chartType=beeswarm
So he threw 58% of his pitches outside the strike zone, 33rd-highest out of 469 pitchers who faced 50 hitters. His OOZ swing percentage was just 26.6%, 259th-highest on the list. So it's not like he's getting a bunch of chases outside of the zone. I don't care how much a pitch moves, if you can't throw it for a strike, hitters are going to lay off of it. I don't know how to get strike percentages on pitch types - please advise if you do! - but presumably, we can apply his overall failure to throw strikes to one of the pitches he most relied on.
So in other words, he didn't give up hard hits, but he also wasn't missing bats. It's a sinker so that makes some sense. But it also wasn't this godly pitch. He wasn't missing bats with it. Stop with this "it's a 90 movement pitch" nonsense.
Another issue: He wasn't throwing strikes. Here's a chart of his out-of-zone % baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/custom?year=2020&type=pitcher&filter=&sort=5&sortDir=desc&min=50&selections=z_swing_miss_percent,oz_swing_percent,oz_swing_miss_percent,out_zone_percent,&chart=false&x=z_swing_miss_percent&y=z_swing_miss_percent&r=no&chartType=beeswarm
So he threw 58% of his pitches outside the strike zone, 33rd-highest out of 469 pitchers who faced 50 hitters. His OOZ swing percentage was just 26.6%, 259th-highest on the list. So it's not like he's getting a bunch of chases outside of the zone. I don't care how much a pitch moves, if you can't throw it for a strike, hitters are going to lay off of it. I don't know how to get strike percentages on pitch types - please advise if you do! - but presumably, we can apply his overall failure to throw strikes to one of the pitches he most relied on.
You've answered your own question here, haven't you? He had very good hard-hit numbers despite subpar command and below average velocity! How the hell did he do that? Scratching my head here ... oh, maybe it was elite movement?
The 4-seamer was in the zone 56% of the time, the sinker 37%, and the slider 33%.
Percentages for either in the zone, or in "shadow" but outside the zone, 4S 72%, SI 62%, SL 56%.
That gives us, for pitches that were near the zone but missed, 16%, 25%, 22%.
This might be the best number: pitches in the zone as a percentage of in or near: 77%, 60%, 60%.
A confound here is that the average hitter he faced had a 120 wRC+, which is going to make you err on the side of caution when trying to paint the corners.
Here's another chart, showing that his xERA was more than 3 runs higher than his ERA, making him the third-luckiest pitcher in baseball this season based on that metric: baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/expected_statistics?type=pitcher&year=2020&position=&team=&min=50&sort=15&sortDir=asc
Here's another, showing he was the 9th-luckiest using xwOBA: baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/expected_statistics?type=pitcher&year=2020&position=&team=&min=50&sort=12&sortDir=asc
Here's another, showing he was the 9th-luckiest using xwOBA: baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/expected_statistics?type=pitcher&year=2020&position=&team=&min=50&sort=12&sortDir=asc
Here's the thing - I think what you're looking at is useful in showing why he might have success with his pitch set. It's interesting to show why his sinker has been successful. But if his sinker isn't being thrown for strikes, if MLB hitters are able to identify when he's throwing it, they're going to start laying off and destroying the four-seam, which as you say, he'd need to throw with some regularity to make the sinker play up. I'm not trying to be glass half-empty, but if you need to throw a bad pitch a third of a time to make one of your other two pitches good, I don't see that as a good thing necessarily.
The sinker is innately hard to square up. The 4S is not. The model shows that the effectiveness of both is highly dependent on the difference in movement between them, which in these three games was elite. That suggests that tunneling them will be very successful, and that as long as they're not correctly guessing four-seamer, the pitch should be effective. And I believe that's what they did in these three starts.
It ill be very interesting to see if they can sustain that, but if you have a way of being unpredictable (e.g, tossing dice), that works forever. Having an extra pitch would be very helpful here, as it would reduce the odds of a correct guess. I'll be very surprised if they don't teach him a cutter as soon as he's made some progress with the splitter. Remember that E-Rod starting throwing a cutter while already in MLB.
I'm really only making a handful of points, and I actually think they're relatively modest.
- His sinker has extra effective movement that you can't see, because of its contrast to the 4S, so it's simply a better pitch than it looks. That's not reflected in his scouting report or ranking.
- He had elite slider movement in his 17 IP, which is better than his scouting report suggests is possible for the pitch.
- His repertoire is particularly well-suited for tunneling and other analytic-driven sequencing, and they've already run a very effective demo of that, which again makes him project better than he looks to the scouting eye.
- The SI and SL movement likely adds about 10-15 grade points, so if he can just develop 55 command of them he's got a pair of plus to plus-plus pitches. That really cranks his ceiling up. Which is again not reflected in the scouting report or ranking.
- He's therefore rather underrated here. He's much more interesting than advertised and has a legit shot at being a mid to top of rotation starter.
Now, here's a challenge for folks, because we all tend to remember our successes rather than our failures. I can remember being higher on Ryan Lavarnway's bat than other folks, but I don't really recall making a long argument that he needed to be higher in the rankings here. Am I wrong? And am I forgetting someone else? I can remember being higher on lots of fringe guys, basically arguing that something might be there when they were being written off (Derrick Gibson, Jordan Weems), and having fave upside picks in the lower minors (Carson Blair, Kyle Stroup, who I'll go to my grave thinking could have had an MLB career had he stayed healthy) -- but that's a different thing than arguing that a guy on the home page is underrated,
I do recall telling Mike Andrews, at a SABR chapter meeting where we were both on a panel, that Jed Lowrie was way too low at (IIRC) #23 here--that was after the year he had the bad ankle injury. I was way higher on Steven Wright than everyone else, after comparing his career path to Wakefield's, and way higher on CV when he was being projected as a backup catcher, based on his hitting so well when he repeated a level, and was one of a few guys way higher on Travis Shaw, after his EV results from the Arizona fall league. It's a good track record.
If you put a gun to my head I'd say he's going to be a nice mid-rotation starter, a #3 rather than a #4.