#2: San Francisco Giants -110
Not all ERA’s are created equally and consequently not all pitchers with the same ERA’s are the ‘same’. This is a scenario in this matchup today. While both Bumgarner and Volquez sport 3.0 and 3.1 ERA’s respectively, their advanced stats tell a different story. Bumgarner has an elite 25% K-rate, only a 5% BB-rate, 5.1 K/BB, and 3.1/3.0/3.0 FxS. His xFIP and SIERA rank 15th each out of 171 qualified starters in my database, indicating that he’s been an elite pitcher this season. By comparison, Volquez has only a 17% K-rate, a pretty high 9% BB-rate, 1.9 K/BB, and 4.2/4.2/4.2 FxS. His xFIP ranks 141st out of 171 qualified starters and his SIERA is 133rd. Bumgarner’s ranking indicates that he’s a middle-tier #1 starter (#16 overall and there’s 30 teams in MLB), while Volquez is a middle-tier #5 starter (#135 ranking divided by 30 = 4.5). Volquez has a -1.1 FIP, which is 6th highest in the league and his .263 BABIP is greatly responsible for keeping the ERA artificially low. Still don’t believe that he’s the same mediocre pitcher he was in the past? Let’s compare Volquez’ numbers for the last 3 seasons:
2012: 22% K%, 13% BB%, .292 BABIP, 4.1/4.2 FIP/xFIP and 4.1 ERA
2013: 18% K%, 10% BB%, .325 BABIP, 4.2/4.1 FIP/xFIP and 5.7 ERA
2014: 17% K%, 9% BB%, .263 BABIP, 4.2/4.2 FIP/xFIP and 3.0 ERA
Looking at these numbers, we see that Volquez’ K-rate has been dropping YoY but at the same time his BB-rate has been getting lower as well. He’s sacrificing strikeouts for better control. Regardless, his FIP/xFIP has been pretty identical for 3 years running and pretty much on pace with his 4.3/4.2 FIP/xFIP career mark. In 2012 his ERA was right where it should have been, at 4.1. Last season, his inflated .325 BABIP inflated his ERA to an unrealistic 5.7 mark while this season his low .263 BABIP deflated it to a just as unrealistic 3.0 number. We can debate the relevance of advanced stats all we want but there just isn’t any difference in Volquez this year from last season. He is still a fastball (55%), curveball (26%), and changeup (19%) pitcher. His fastball velocity is at 93.2 MPH, which is line with his career mark of 93.3. His SwStr% is 8.3% which is much lower than his 9.8% career mark, though as I mentioned earlier he’s sacrificing strike-outs for better control (though of course his control is NOT great regardless). There’s just nothing significantly different from his approach this year than in years past, and his 3.0 ERA has nothing to do with Volquez discovering a “magic pitching pill” at 31 years of age but everything to do with plain old luck. Well, Giants rank 6th offensively in the league and will field about 6 left-handed hitters in the lineup today. Volquez has an 11% BB-rate and 4.8 FIP against lefties this season, compared to 7% BB-rate and 3.7 FIP against right-handers. I like San Fran’s chances of taking advantage of a mediocre pitcher like Volquez.
As far as Bumgarner is concerned he’s facing a Pirates lineup that finished ranking #2 overall in the 2nd half of the year. But fortunately for him, Pirates aren’t as potent offensively against lefties. While they rank #1 against right-handers offensively, have a +111 wRC+ against them with .334 wOBA and 0.158 ISO (#2), Pirates rank only 19th offensively against lefties. Their wRC+ of 97 is 14% lower, their .313 wOBA is lower, as is their .114 ISO which only ranks 26th in the league. Bumgarner tends to give up the long-ball to right-handers at times and Pirates do have excellent power, but that risk is mitigated by them not hitting left-handers as well. Final potential advantage for San Fran is on the defensive end. Pittsburgh is one of the worst defensive teams in the league, ranking 27th on the year. If the game is close, one mistake could be the difference in this one and Pirates are more likely to make it. I’ll back the more dominant starter who is backed by a strong offense and a better defense.
Good Luck