Point Blank – June 23
On James Shields, and O-Swing% (you have to be able to at least fool some of the hitters some of the time)…Why hasn't Wei-Yin Chen been better than this…There will be a lot of contact in Anaheim tonight (hopefully most of it productive for the offenses)…
Just about the last topic you might expect to read here is a take on how bad James Shields has been – it does not take any kind of deep thought to grasp that this bottom line over a span of four starts rivals any level of inept pitching in the history of the sport -
IP 11.1
ER 31
H 32
BB 13
K 6
HR 7
Shields is certainly frustrated. The White Sox may be on the hook for $27 million, and are certainly frustrated. But you know who might be as frustrated as anyone? The 13 batters that drew walks, not getting a chance to swing the bat and produce numbers against the batting-practice offerings that have been tossed their way.
Yet there is something to be seen here, the opportunity to delve into one of the subtle, yet extremely important, aspects of the Shields decline. There is also the notion that because of how visible his struggles have been the oddsmakers are being forced to compensate in a major way, which could mean that if any reasons for optimism are found Shields might even be a play-on in the near future.
For now, those reasons for optimism are not there.
Item: How can something like this happen to a good pitcher?
This is not that difficult to explain – Shields entered this season with nine straight campaigns of over 200 innings pitched. That is a substantial workload, especially because the word “work” was a big part of it. Despite being called “Big Game James” as he developed a reputation for showing well under pressure, the innings that he threw did not come all that easily. Now at 2,188.2 frames of regular season action it is an ERA of 3.83 and FIP of 3.88, which tells us that he has basically been a grinder, just a little better than league average.
Shields has only had one season in which his K/9 topped 9.0, or his GB% topped 50.0. That meant having to go out and compete with a good, but not great, arsenal. And then time, plus all of those innings, began taking a toll. His average fastball was logged at 92.5 in 2014. That fell to 91.1 last year, and now the current 90.3. You also need to take that 90.3 with a grain of salt because the true count is likely worse – because he has been knocked out of games so early, fatigue has not been much of a factor in the 2016 radar tracking.
Naturally that makes a difference, and after the Shields HR/FB% ballooned to a career-high 17.6, despite having Petco Park as his home mound in 2015, it has gone a tick higher to 17.7 this time. That makes sense, as his stuff fades. Where there may be a surprise is that his BB/9 of 3.6 was also a career high last year, and now that has gone to 4.3, far from his 2.3 career rate. That may not seem to logically add up – a loss of velocity does not necessarily mean losing the strike zone. Hence why there is more to see here.
Item: On O-Swing%, and how Shields isn’t fooling many betters these days
O-Swing% is a valuable statistic, referring to the percentage of pitches outside of the strike zone a pitcher gets hitters to swing at. Naturally the higher the count the better the outcomes – bad pitches will often be missed when offered at, and contact that is made is likely to be weak. Unfortunately it is not a stat that we can follow blindly because it is not “official”, and is also not one that brings the integrity of producing an absolute verifiable measure. It comes from someone’s opinion, but from the tracking I have done there is enough there for a reasonable degree of trust.
This is where the lower velocity, and higher BB rates, of Shields connect. Hitters are getting more time to read the location of his pitches, and are not offering nearly as often at anything outside of the strike zone.
Shields O-Swing%
2014: 33.2
2015: 31.7
2016: 25.9*
How important is O-Swing%? Let’s combine the past two seasons to bring in a fair sample, and let the names on the top and bottom of the leaderboards tell the tale. There are 133 pitchers that have worked at least 150 innings across this span –
O-Swing% Top 10, 2015-16
Carlos Carrasco 38.2
Masahiro Tanaka 36.1
Hisashi Iwakuma 35.7
Max Scherzer 35.1
Kyle Gibson 34.9
Zack Grienke 34.8
Corey Kluber 34.6
Noah Syndergaard 34.5
Clayton Kershaw 34.3
Cole Hamels 34.3
And to the flip side…
O-Swing% Bottom 10, 2015-16
Mike Pelfrey 26.5
Tom Koehler 26.5
Jered Weaver 26.4
Travor Bauer 26.2
Williams Perez 25.5
Hector Santiago 25.2
Yovani Gallardo 25.2
Wily Peralta 25.1
Aaron Sanchez 24.1
David Phelps 22.2
You can note a rather significant difference in pedigree between the two groups, although Kyle Gibson in the first set will come as a surprise (he is such a strike zone nibbler that his pitches may be among the toughest to categorize, which is a weakness of the category). You can also see where the current 25.9 of Shields would put him on the totem pole, should this rate be his new standard. If we only chart this season there are 102 pitchers that have thrown more than 70 innings, and Shields checks in at #92.
Can Shields turn it around? I would not be an optimist. Those that want to choose that track can make the case that he is a seasoned pro, and as such has some guile that he can use to get hitters out. The counter is that his career has been built as much on guile as on overpowering stuff, and now that he is losing the ability to get hitters to offer at many pitches outside of the strike zone, he is reduced to throwing a lot of 90 mph fastballs over the plate to get outs. That is not a recipe for much success.
The White Sox may have a decision to make soon, the irony being that they were bringing Shields on board because they believed themselves to be a contender, while his awful performances run the risk of knocking them out of contention. And of course there is that humbling aspect of having to swallow $27 million. But this has not been one of those clusters of bad baseball luck doing Shields in, it genuinely has been bad pitching, a heater without enough heat to set up the other pitches, and the strike zone a little too easy for opposing hitters to read.
Item: What is wrong with Wei-Yin Chen?
Chen’s recent cycle has not been as bad as that of Shields, but over his last three starts it has been a 9.88 allowance, with 23 hits, including seven home runs, over just 13.2 IP. Yet baseball has rewarded him with a personal 1-0 W/L across that span, and the Marlins won two of the three games.
Here is what is truly bothersome – consider the settings. Three starts back he allowed four home runs against the Twins at Target Field. That is not easy to do. Two starts back it was four homers against the Padres in Petco. That is not easy to do. And while he did not allow a dinger vs. Colorado in his last outing that may have only been because he was yanked so early, the Rockies scoring six earned runs against him in just 2.1 frames. Given the degree of difficulty of those last three opponents and ballparks, he has truly been atrocious – that is 7.5 percent of all Minnesota homers in 39 home games, and 10.3 percent of the San Diego home count through 40, while the Rockies are #19 in road OPS.
For the full season it is a 5.22 ERA and 4.74 FIP for Chen, both career-worsts, and it has come in the opposite direction of where logic would have projected. Chen went from some tough pitcher’s parks, and tough offenses in the AL East, to more favorable pitcher’s parks, and bad offenses, in the NL East. To understand the DBF aspect, the average hitter he faced in 2015 had a .724 OPS; so far this season that has been reduced to .707, yet his allowances have increased rather dramatically. And this is also with the advantage a lefty changing leagues usually has in the early stages against batters that do not know him.
Is this a trip to the DL waiting to happen? I will get into play with a little #955 Cubs Team Total Over 4 if it shows, and there is a chance of that, with 4.5 Under -125 in the marketplace already, and Under money showing for the Full Game Total.
In the Sights…
I don’t expect shutdown stuff from either Tim Lincecum or Kendall Graveman tonight, and neither the Angels nor A’s bullpens bring anything special (Huston Street is really scruffling right now). So with 8’s out there now in the Thursday morning marketplace, some #966 Angels/A’s Over (10:05 Eastern) will end up in the pocket. I would consider 8.5 OK at even money or a + return.
This is one of those classic “quick second look” settings for offenses against starters that do not bring great stuff, which should mean some decent reads for the hitters. Lincecum was OK in winning at Oakland in his return to the Major’s, but just OK – his average fastball clocked at just 88.4 mph and he only recorded seven swinging strikes, with as many walks as strikeouts. ERA charts it at 1.50 off of a favorable contact distribution (.211 BABIP), but FIP would call that same game at 3.96, xFIP at 5.34 and SIERA at 5.59.
Meanwhile Graveman’s MLB career has added up to 8-15/4.34 as 200 innings approaches, and he may not have the pop to stick in a starting rotation. What he has done this season is get positive outcomes against the Angels twice, a 1.38 allowance over 13 innings, but against all other opponents it has been a 5.69 over 55.1 frames. Is there anything special about the way he would match up to this lineup? It does not appear so – his K/9 rates over those two games were actually below those against other teams, but the two outings produced BABIP counts of .222 and .100, and a 90.0 LOB%. In five of Graveman’s 13 starts this season he has not finished the 5th inning, so expect some regression in his outcomes vs. the Angels; I certainly do not expect Mike Trout’s 2-12 career line vs. him to hold up.
Chicago Cubs 200 Prop (through June 22): 23
As the Cubs take to the road again we have had three eliminations, and one contestant sitting on 23 that will also hit the dumpster soon.
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