Point Blank – June 14, 2017
On Pitcher vs. Team, and Liriano/Rays…Gerrit Cole really wasn’t any better last night (but will he believe that he was, which may matter going forward)
Now that the NBA has been tucked away into the proper drawer for safe keeping until October, the focuses that begin to shift for many in our endeavor – it can be All Baseball All the Time for some particularly dedicated folks, and also the window opening for the breezes of football prep to blow in for others. But it also marks the end of a chapter for Point Blank.
This is not the end of a book, the long-term journey of the concept likely still only in its early stages, but it will be a moment or two before the next step on the path takes place. The lessening of the daily sports schedule brings with it an opportunity to catch up on some fascinating research that I have been blessed to be a part of, and it is my belief that those pursuits will only help in the long-term pointspread battles anyway, allowing for a journey of the mind to some rarified air.
The final button on the jukebox for this chapter was an easy choice – let’s go to Bruce Springsteen and the wonderful assortment of talent that made up the Seeger Sessions Band, from Dublin about a decade ago. It is not a closing chorus for now, label it instead the last tune before intermission, something to listen to until we meet again somewhere, a little further on up the road...
You’ll have to excuse the subtitles, but I thought that particular performance was executed rather well. And the song touches upon aspects of what has been a dynamic relationship here – the readers and forum contributors have helped to establish and maintain a communication level that has been special, and something many industry folks scoffed at when the framework was laid out years ago. Yes, even in the loose ethical scree of the contemporary social media world people will conduct themselves at a high level, even across a slope as slippery as that of sports wagering. They just need to be offered the place.
Now let’s dig into the Wednesday diamonds, for one of the more delicate handicapping topics to approach, but a case study that should lay a proper foundation for those times when Pitcher vs. Team may genuinely matter.
Item: On Pitcher vs. Team Matchups, and the Rays vs. Francisco Liriano
One of the themes I probably should expound upon a bit more often, but the pace of the daily boards does not readily afford, is that what isn’t written here is often as important as what is. Every so often I should make a list of the things that don’t get written, and print them, so everyone could be reminded of why they aren’t discussed. Some of those themes are actually quite popular in other spots across the handicapping universe.
Something that you have rarely read here are Pitcher vs. Team statistics, and those are particularly common. When I spread out my Las Vegas Review-Journal MLB page across my desk each morning I can see them in that day’s Pitching Form (don’t knock the value of old school newsprint in the daily process; where else can you get all of the box scores laid out handily on one page). I ignore them because copious research over time, from both myself and some statisticians with easy access to looking such things up, found them of precious little predictive value.
You can start with the fact that most sources will only show the basics – the W/L and ERA of the pitcher vs. the team. Most of you will already know my first objection – those bases are only a starting point, not a destination. Unless you subject those same matchups to FIP, xFIP and SIERA, and then the components that make them up, like K%, BB%, GB%, HR/FB%, BABIP, SWS%, you aren’t getting a deep enough look to know whether the outcomes had merit, or might have been fluky. And of course that is also rendered even more tenuous by sample size; often times what looks like dominance by either team or pitcher turning out to be something that has stretched too far, and has become subject to regression.
Part II is also rather simple – in a day and age in which Pitcher vs. Batter is so easy to find, Pitcher vs. Team is a moot point anyway. It doesn’t take that much more time to look at the pitcher vs. the actual hitters that he will be facing in that game, which helps to sort through the statistical detritus of performance numbers vs. players that aren’t around.
No reason to go on much further with that, except for the notion as to whether there might indeed be certain matchups in which style does favor either a particular pitcher or team in a certain matchup. It certainly can in pitcher vs. hitter, but when lineups are spread out across the spectrum, how often could we realistically expect that to be the case?
A prime opportunity for study takes us to Toronto tonight, and the question as to whether or not the Rays have a plan that can again frustrate Liriano.
Getting the best of Liriano, of course, is not a secret – he throws pitches that are difficult to square up, but often struggles to find the strike zone with them. Liriano is laboring to a career-high 14.3 BB% this season, but as we begin the exploration let’s break that down first –
IP BB%
Rays 9 24.5
Others 29.1 10.1
OK, so the sample size vs. Tampa Bay may look small, but that was over three different starts, and 230 pitches. It happens to be 31.3 percent of all pitches he has thrown this season.
The irony is that while Liriano allowed 25 base-runners in those three games, including three home runs, he and the Blue Jays escaped by winning two of them. It has been that kind of season for the left-hander, Toronto winning six times in his nine outings despite his posting of career worsts across the board in ERA FIP, xFIP and SIERA.
Is there a case to be made that the Rays bring a scouting report that allows them to show the patience that others don’t? Some of the numbers are intriguing. One key metric in understanding a pitcher like Liriano is O-Swing%, the percentage of time a pitcher gets opposing hitters to swing at pitches outside of the strike zone, and it just so happens that of his nine outings, the three lowest were all against Tampa Bay. As for BB%, it is three of the top four.
Now you can see why I bring this into play as a potential matchup issue. This is a bit outside the vagaries that often shape pitching outcomes – there are no broken-bat bloops involved that fell in for hits, or line drives that were caught, as a part of the equation. This may be about one team bringing a particular approach against a pitcher that goes directly into his weakness.
Tampa Bay in general is a patient offensive team, rating #6 in BB%, so it isn’t as though the Rays have been doing something unnatural. This just may be a fit for them. But here is where the marketplace also makes it easier to put the notion into play – while I have reservations about this kind of thought process, the morning markets are allowing as high as +145 to go into pocket, so let’s make it #961 Tampa Bay (7:05 Eastern), the value holding at +130 or better.
This one works on general ratings, with Jake Odorizzi over Liriano a fit (yes, you will see a gap between ERA/FIP for Odorizzi, but with his BABIP now at .267 over 414.2 innings the last 2+ seasons, it may be time to incorporate that into his skill set; he is inducing more than the usual pitcher’s share of routine fly ball outs); the team vs. team aspects a fit (Tim Beckham should be back in the lineup tonight); and the Rays bullpen extremely well-set, with only Austin Pruitt having worked over the past two days.
Item: Gerrit Cole really didn’t throw the ball all that much better last night
As those that have been following along through the years know by now, sports performances can be as much mental as physical, and that is a particularly key aspect of charting MLB pitchers. As such Cole has been under the microscope here a few times this season, his physical health allowing him to throw harder than ever, but the baseball outcomes also the worst ever for his career.
A quick glance will show what may appear to have been a turning point vs. Colorado last might, Cole limiting the Rockies to one run and picking up a win. Let’s go straight to Andrew McCutchen, who had been having a disappointing season of his own before last night's break-out, for some baseball psychology - "He knows what he's capable of doing. More mental than physical, I believe. The physicality of it is there. His fastball is there. His pitches are there. It's just about being able to be consistent with that. The more he does that, that's the Gerrit Cole we know."
The question becomes whether a heightened confidence permeates Cole’s make-up the next time he takes the mound because there was a genuine issue with his Tuesday performance – he didn’t really throw the ball any better. Only 60 of his 100 pitches found the strike zone; he had as many walks as strikeouts; and his K% of 11.1 and SWS% of 6.0 were dangerously low. And despite throwing so many pitches out of the strike zone he couldn’t get the Rockies to chase, a 22.2 O-Swing% that was his second worst of the season. So when we put it all together a game that ERA charts at 1.29 is seen by xFIP as 5.05.
But Cole likely won’t see, or necessarily even give a damn, about xFIP. It may be all about the confidence boost, which is something to look closely for the next time he starts.
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