SS Pitching Matchup of the Day! 6/25/13

I'm still trying to settle on what to title these daily posts...anyway.

I don't have a lot of time today, as I was busy playing Monopoly on my iPad with my sister in law all afternoon, but here's today's pitching matchups around the league.

As you can see, quite the opposite of yesterday's schedule, as everyone is in action tonight.  

Now, for the Safety Squeeze Pitching Matchup of the Day™ ™

For me, it's got to be Chris Sale against Zack Wheeler.  Wheeler was outstanding in his major league debut last week against the Braves and Chris Sale, though he doesn't have the record to show it, is still heading towards being one of the elite pitchers.  I don't have time to explain why this is going to be a good one, but just trust me.  Chris Sale hasn't won a game since May 17th, five weeks ago.  He's still good, though.

One more thing, how many times does a starter dazzle everyone in his debut, and even for the first few times out, and regress back to where he's supposed to be?  Scouting reports.  Once guys see a pitcher a few times, they learn how to hit them.  Take a look at Barry Zito and Dontrelle Willis.  Perfect examples of that.  Some guys never regress, and only progress, like Verlander, but most of the time, a rookie comes up and looks outstanding, then regresses.  Happens all the time.  Anyway, that's what I expect out of Wheeler.  I imagine Wheeler will dominate again tonight, mostly because it's against the White Sox, but I also expect him to get rocked a few times as the season progresses.  I've seen this movie before.  

Anyway, I gotta jet.  Have a good night.  Go baseball.  

Starters for 6/24/13 Around the MLB

There are only four games on the schedule today, which has to be one of the lightest schedule days of the entire season.  That's good because game six of the Stanley Cup Final is tonight.  Got to be watching some hockey tonight.  BUT, if you don't like hockey so much, or if maybe you are just not into this final because you don't like the teams or whatever reason you can come up with, there's some ball to be played tonight.  Here's the starting pitchers for this evening.

I had originally planned on the advanced stats post from yesterday on Cliff Lee instead of Jhoulys Chacin, but when I found that interesting stat, I had to change course.  I spent a lot of time scouring over Cliff Lee's stats yesterday and found them to remarkably average.  I mean, average for his standards and for the league in general.  He's doing nothing out of ordinary to indicate anything other than the usual success for Lee for the remainder of the season, of course if he can remain healthy.  The health factor goes for all players, that goes without question.

Anyway so I have to decide which of these pitching matchups I'm going to declare the Match Up Of The Day ™ ™

I'm going to choose the Giants and Dodgers game form good old Dodgers stadium late tonight.  Partly because perhaps after the hockey game ends, I can turn this on and watch.  Madison Bumgarner is the future of that pitching staff in San Francisco.  Throught equal amount of starts to begin a career, Bumgarner's stats are shockingly similar to the highly regarded lefty in Los Angeles, Clayton Kershaw.  Kershaw has been around longer, so his numbers are better, but if you dial it back to what he was doing when he was at the spot that Bumgarner is at, they're very similar.  One would tend to believe that Madison Bumgarner will soon be recoginized as the next great lefty pitching in California, if he's not there with all the fans around the league just yet.  As a Braves fan, I've watched him pitch twice this season against the Braves, and he was just about unhittable in those starts.  I'm not sure what he's looked like in his other starts, but judging by the fact that he's actually lost four games this year would indicate that he's just super good against Atlanta's lineup.  If he pitched like he did against the Braves all the time, you might as well rename the trophy after him instead of Cy Young.

His opponent (use a Howard Finkel voice for this), weighing 255 lbs, from Incheon, Korea HYUN-JIN RYUUUUUUUUUU.

But seriously, Ryu has an amazing Haduken, but I've always perfered Ken, probably because I'm a white American male.  I watched Ryu pitch last wednesday against the Yankees in a day game and he was okay.  Not lights out, but he was effective.  6.0 IP, 5H, 3ER, 2BB, 4K and took the loss.  Hiroki Kuroda was just better that day.  Also, Ichiro had a good game.  It was a super Asian afternoon in the Bronx.  Ryu will be seeking his first win since he beat the the Angels Angels back on May 28th.  His 2.57 ERA looks good.

Also, along with the pretty good pitching match up, it's always nice to watch the Giants and Dodgers play.  There is certainly no love lost here, as these two have been rivals for over 100 years.  Also, with the Dodgers already being involved in two bench-clearing brawls this season, that might happen, too.  Oh and that hot-head Yasiel Puig just might be a shit-stirrer again.  I wouldn't put it past him.

Also tonght, Esmil Rogers, who is so good they named the Blue Jays stadium after him, will try to keep the Blue Jays' 11 game winning streak alive against the Rays in Tampa.  Jeremy Hellickson gets the start for the Rays.  Hellickson beat the Red Sox last Wednesday, but he gave up seven hits over six innings.  I'll take the Jays.

And I suppose I have to mention that Ubaldo Jimenez starts for the Indians against the Orioles and Zach Britton. Here you have two second place teams trying to gain some ground on their idle division leaders. I'm sure this interests someone out there.

So enjoy the hockey tonight.  It could be the last of it until the fall.  And if you don't, you're a crazy person.  Watch baseball tomorrow.  That's the beauty of the game.  You can watch it tomorrow. It's okay.

The Detroit Tigers are the Taco Bell/Pizza Hut Combo of Baseball

I mean think about it. Some items are a real value, while some items are pretty expensive. And they're both looking for closers. 

  

Dan Haren "Physically, I'm okay" But Placed on the DL Anyway

Yesterday, I remarked on Twitter that I had watched 8 and a half innings of a Nationals Rockies game, and that I have a sickness, an illness, that makes me watch baseball games that I shouldn't care about, or perhaps  didn't even care about a few weeks ago.  Anyway, as I watched, Dan Haren was getting lit up, and I predicted he was injured.  I've suspected he was injured for a while, because I heard his fastball velocity was down, but according to his FanGraphs pitchfx, even though his fastball velocity has dropped every year he's pitched in the majors, there wasn't a major drop like I was expecting to find.  Anyway, he's hurt, but if you read his quote, it sounds more like managment is telling him he's hurt, but want to sit him for a few starts because they can't afford to keep throwing out a liability like Dan Haren every five days.

"There's aches and pains." he said on Sunday, "nothing I haven't pitched through in the past.  Physically, I'm okay."  It's easy to say he has a "stiff shoulder" because what major league pitcher doesn't have a stiff shoulder the day after he pitches in June?

Jhoulys Chacin has an Unsustainable HR to FB ratio! My first sojourn into the world of Advanced Stats

Okay, here's my first go at taking a good look at a guys advanced stats to figure out what kind of pitcher he really is. Hang on tight, because it's probably going to be ugly and wrong.   The subject is Colorado Rockies pitcher Jhoulys Chacin.  I have heard his name pronounced properly a number of times by now, and I still don't know how to pronounce it, so to me he's Jew-Hoolies Cha-Seen.  I know that's not correct, but that's what I'm going with in my head.  I've decided to use Mr. Chacin because I stumbled across a number that shocked me.  Jhoulys Chacin leads the majors in HR/FB ratio.  And his home park is Coors Field.

The basic, standard stats suggest a middle of the road, perhaps slightly above average pitcher, which is something that is required if you're going to have any pitching success with the Rockies.  Obviously pitching in that ballpark is not ideal, so they have to overpay guys and take chances on others to get anyone to pitch there.  The overpay part is dedicated to Mike Hampton, the take a chance on him guys include Roy Oswalt and Jamie Moyer.  Two of those three haven't worked out so good and the other, it's too early to tell.  Good luck Mr. Oswalt.  Anyway, they can also draft and sign young pitchers who want to make it to the majors and test fate by coming up in the Rockies organization.

Jhoulys Chacin, let's get into it.  Homeboy didn't win a single game in the month of May.  That's not good.  However, he has won his previous three starts, two against the Nationals and one against the Phillies. He has an overall record of 6-3 in 14 starts. Okay, getting better, but we all know that wins is not a good stat to judge a pitcher on.  Okay, lets continue on.  His ERA currently sits at 3.92, and some of that is inflated by his horrible month of May where his ERA ballooned to 5.87.  He's pitched better as of late, so that'll bring that down to earth.  1.24 WHIP is not great, but not terrible.  The number that stood out to me is his home runs given up, which is TWO!  A Rockies pitcher that has only given up two homers.  One on opening day against AT the Brewers and one on June 1st at home against the Dodgers.  So that means one home run given up at Coors Field in nine starts.  Yes, a mediocre Colorado Rockies pitcher has the major league's best HR/FB ratio, at 2.5%.  Yeah, that's not sustainable, is it?  He does boast a nice 48% ground ball percentage, which ranks him 35th in baseball.  So it's not like he's getting all grounders, which would explain the lack of homers, but the league leader in ground ball percentage, Trevor Cahill at 58%, has a HR/FB of 10.7%.  So what gives?  Shouldn't these two numbers correlate?

In fact, in the top 10 of guys for GB%, there are only two guys who have HR/FB rate under 10%, and none of them are below 5%, and that's Doug Fister and Jon Niese.

And that's when I scroll a little further down the page and realize that another Rockies pitcher, Jorge de la Rosa also has a HR/FB ratio that's shockingly low, he's at 7%,  Alright, is this what all the pitchers are doing out there in Colorado?  Let's have a look.

The answer is no, they've been terrible.  Jeff Francis, Juan Nicasio and John Garland have all been pretty not great.  Jeff Francis had a HR/FB of 20.4%, for crying out loud, but he did have a 7.44 K/9, which was best on the team.  He also got sent to the minors four days ago, and in came Roy Oswalt.  Of the five Rockies starters I'm talking about here, they've all got FB ratios between 27%-33%, but it's only Chacin and de la Rosa that are managing to keep those fly balls in the park.  They weren't hitting line drives off Francis (18,1%) but they sure were hitting the home runs (11).  They are hitting line drives off de la Rosa (26.5%), but not many home runs (five, 7%, as I mentioned before).  And Chacin has a line drive rate of 23.5%, which is pretty good.  5.26 K/9 for Chacin as well...I don't really get how this is happening.

So what am I trying to say here?  I guess I'm trying to say that Jorge de la Rosa and Jhoulys Chacin have been pretty good, but I don't know if it's sustainable with that park.  If this is what has driven some of their success, I would be worried.  I wish I had time to go back and look at the history of the Rockies starting pitchers and see if any of these numbers have ever been sustained by anyone.  Like I said , I'm really only getting started in this crazy world of advanced stats (something I just a few weeks ago wrote a post rallying against as a regular old fan of the game) so I don't know if comparing HR/FB ratio to GB% is even something I should be doing, but as a fan of baseball, it would make sense to me that if you induce a lot of ground balls, they're not going to go for a lot of home runs, unless everyone is really fast base runners who get inside-the-parkers. I don't think that's ever going to be the case.  And it would also make sense to me that if you are giving 28.5% of the balls hit off you are going for fly balls, more than one at Coors field should have left the park by now.  The other starters have similar fly ball numbers and theirs ARE leaving the park.

So despite Jhoulys Chacin's pedestrian 6-3 win-loss record and 3.92 ERA, he's actually pitched pretty good so far because he has avoided the long ball.  But how long can that be sustained with a fly ball rate at 28.5%?  I would guess that whatever mediocre stats he's put up thus far, be it ERA, wins, WHIP, BABIP what-have-you, will only get worse once the unsustainable HR/FB ratio evens out and he starts giving up dingers at a more acceptable clip.  It should REALLY be noted here that he has a career HR/FB ratio of 9.5%...so expect regression.

All this work, and I'm sure any Rockies fan that has actually watched their games would tell me, NO SHIT.  I guarantee that what I'm writing does nothing to change the experience of the average Rockies fan, nor educate that fan.  I put in all this work and now I'm thinking "so what?"  So they haven't given up home runs, have they won games in which they've pitched?  Yeah, sure they have.  It's a crowded west, with the Padres suddenly finding life.  It's just something to keep in mind the next time you're watching a Rockies game.  Jhoulys Chacin has the lowest HR/FB ratio this season in all of baseball and he plays for the Rockies.  That's just interesting.  

Starters for 6/23/13 Around the MLB

I'd like to do this daily, but I doubt I will.  I will do this as often as I can, because I think it's interesting, at least.

It's Sunday, and you know what that means!  That means every team in all of Baseball is in action today.  Looking at the schedule, I noticed that there is only four games on the schedule tomorrow, so set your fantasy rosters accordingly.  But lets not get ahead of ourselves here, let's focus on today's games.

Here's the starting pitchers for today, as of this writing:

 As you can see here, there's a few interesting match ups today, but mostly I see a lot of mismatches.  Samardzija vs Jordan Lyles, perhaps?  But then you stop and realize it's the Astros vs the Cubs, so that's not interesting.  The one that pops out to me is Mat Latos and the Reds against the (still) first place Diamondbacks and Randal Delgado.  Former Atlanta Brave Delgado was part of the Justin Upton trade.  I've been to three Braves games in my life.  The starting pitchers for those Braves games were John Smoltz, Tim Hudson...and Randal Delgado.  You can imagine which one the Braves lost, right?  Yeah, but anyway, he's made two appearances and one start for the Diamondbacks this season.  That one start was this past Tuesday evening, where gave up eight hits and two runs while striking out six over seven innings against the suddenly resurgent(?!) Miami Marlins.  By all accounts, a solid outing.  He was given a no-decision but the DBacks won on a Paul Goldschmidt walk-off home run.  Delgado was a top prospect in the Braves organization before sputtering out in his chance in the majors, and ultimately dealt to Arizona along with a number of other prospects and my beloved Martin Prado for Justin Upton, a trade that at this point has been won by Atlanta, I think.  But Delgado has an upside.  At first, it seemed to be a trade of Prado for Upton, but who knows?  Maybe Delgado will thrive in Arizona and somewhere down the line, we'll be asking ourselves "They traded him for HIM?!?"  I guess a lot of that future began last Tuesday, and continues today against the Reds and their highly touted offense, led by my fantasy hero, Joey Votto.  

(no one cares about my or your fantasy team...remember that in the future.)

Other pitching highlight today is the next start from the electric Matt Harvey.  It's against the Phillies, so you never know how that will go.  

Highly touted pitching prospect TBD (awful parents for naming their child that!) gets the start for Baltimore

I'm very interested to see what Matt Cain does today against the Marlins.  His starts have all kinds of inconsistent numbers lately.  We'll have to see which Matt Cain shows up today.  He has a 7.22 ERA in day games, but I don't know how many day games he's pitched.  I know he got lit up by St. Louis in a day game, and I'm sure that's probably throwing that number off.  Anyway, We shall see. 

Joe Blanton will go for his 11th loss today.  Cole Hammels got his on Friday night.  At least Hammels has more than one win, however.  Ouch.

Adam Wainwright pitches tonight. Not a good pitching match up though, so it don't get featured here.  It just gets mentioned at the end.  

So enjoy the games today and mostly, enjoy the pitching.  

New Direction

I've been struggling with what to do with this space.  I know I want to write about baseball, but I've been trying to figure out a new way to do it.  I don't have the time to dig for the real interesting, perhaps obscure tidbits from around the league, but that was my first inclination.  You know, sort of an "in case you missed it" sort of thing.  Well, I probably missed it, so I can't do that.