How Was The Game? (June 8, 2013)
Another stellar day.
Tigers 6, Indians 4
The Tigers sent Rick Porcello (3-3, 63 IP, 4.86 ERA, 3.67 FIP, 1.0 WAR) to the hill in the middle game of the series with the Indians today and things went exactly according to plan. Porcello continued to impress after allowing hits to the first two batters of the game, he allowed just 3 more baserunners before he left the game after 6 innings, 3 hits, 2 runs (1 earned), 2 BB, and 7 K. With another great start under his belt Porcello continues to compare himself nicely to the previous versions of himself and the rest of the league, as he now ranks 8th in xFIP with 2.97, which is better than any qualifying pitcher from 2012.
The offense also performed well, delivering 4 runs in the 2nd, mostly on a Prince Fielder double, and 2 in the 3rd, while keeping pressure on the Indians pitchers all game long. Ryan Raburn also had fun with the Tigers bullpen by hitting a 2 run HR to make it a 2 run game in the 7th. The win gives the Tigers the series, a 34-26 record, and a 4.5 game lead in the AL Central heading into Sunday’s finale looking to sweep behind Jose Alvarez (5-4, 74.1 IP, 2.42 ERA, 2.50 FIP at AAA Toledo) who will make his MLB debut in place of Anibal Sanchez (6-5, 78 IP, 2.65 ERA, 1.79 FIP, 3.4 WAR), who hopes to miss just one start with shoulder stiffness.
The Moment: Fielder clears the bases in the 2nd.
How Was The Game? (June 7, 2013)
Full of good signs.
Tigers 7, Indians 5
Up 2.5 in the Central and looking to burn the candle at both ends, the Tigers welcomed the Indians to Comerica Park hoping to pad their lead. They did so with a solid outing from Justin Verlander (8-4, 80 IP, 3.71 ERA, 2.57 FIP, 2.8 WAR) who went 7 innings, only allowing 3 runs that all came in the same inning that featured two infield hits and a botched flyball. The stat lines haven’t looked VERLANDERISH, but he does look to be past the three or four start run of iffy command and bad results. Both Hunter and Martinez both had 3 hit games and the only Tigers not to register a hit were Cabrera and Fielder. Martinez’s 3 hits featured one of each variety of which he is capable – a single, double, and homerun – indicating that his luck is starting to turn. Jose Valverde did his best to spoil it, but he was only able to turn a four run lead into a 2 run victory after two 9th inning homers and a single. The win moves the Tigers to 33-26 and gives them a shot to win the set with Cleveland tomorrow afternoon behind breakout pitcher Rick Porcello (2-3, 57 IP, 5.21 ERA, 3.88 FIP, 0.8 WAR). Of note, below is a list of pitchers with lower xFIPs than Porcello (min. 50 IP):
- Sanchez, 2.41
- Hernandez, 2.50
- Darvish, 2.54
- Wainwright, 2.54
- Scherzer, 2.80
- Cobb, 2.91
- Harvey, 2.92
- Porcello, 3.03
The Moment: Verlander attempts to avoid the Handshake of Doom by trying to enter the dugout via the auxiliary entrance.
More on VMart’s Bad Luck
Early this week, I wrote about Victor Martinez’s tough luck on hard hit balls this season and showed that his Hard Hit Average is all out of whack with his on field results. I’d like to offer a little more data to illustrate the point as Martinez made some post game comments today regarding the hard hit problem:
I took a look at Martinez’s wRC+ this season relative to league average, his 2011 season, and his career average entering the day and broke it down by groundballs, flyballs, and line drives. I think you’ll find it interesting.
Notice how Martinez is a little below where we would expect him to be historically on line drives, but not so far off that we would think anything more than some aging at work. But look at the other numbers. My goodness, look at them. On groundballs, he has a 1 wRC+ which is about 20% lower than we’d expect. On flyballs it’s even worse. He’s at -3 despite a general expectation he’d be north of 100. I’m not saying Martinez isn’t declining or having a down year, I’m providing evidence that he’s been unlucky. It might not be everything, but it’s something.
I showed you earlier this week that Martinez is hitting the ball hard, and now I’m showing you how exactly that bad luck is playing out in his results by batted ball type. The great thing here is that the odds are in his favor. There’s no way this keeps up, and it might already be turning around. Don’t look now, but the hits might just be starting to fall.
How Was The Game? (June 6, 2013)
A cleaner affair.
Tigers 5, Rays 2
After struggling on the last trip, the Tigers looked poised for a good homestand after a big win against the Rays on Tuesday, but yesterday’s loss dampened those hopes for some. Max Scherzer (8-0, 77 IP, 3.24 ERA, 2.36 FIP, 3.0 WAR) was undeterred, however, and mowed down the Rays hitters across 7 innings, allowing 4 hits and 1 run while getting 9 K and 2 BB to make the angles on these graphs even steeper:
But also of note is this graph, which shows that Max Scherzer did not miss the strikezone inside once during this start. Not once:
The bats stayed quiet early, but awoke in the later innings, scoring in the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th innings led by big days from the 3-6 hitters, especially Victor Martinez, who drove in 3 runs on a single and a bomb. Benoit and Valverde meandered through the 8th and 9th innings, allowing a run, and gave the Tigers their first series victory since they beat the Twins on the last homestand. The Indians come to town for a weekend series and the Tigers will look to add some separation in the standings with Justin Verlander (7-4, 73 IP, 3.70 ERA, 2.60 FIP, 2.4 WAR) on the bump for game one.
The Moment: Don Kelly makes a diving catch in the 4th (see below)
Stat of the Week: Expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP)
Generally, I’ve been a little light on “weekly” updates to this feature, but I generally write at least one statistically informative post a week, even if it doesn’t actually follow the mold I’ve laid out. Today, I’ll try to write that wrong with an introduction to the very useful Expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP).
You may recall my introduction to Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) some months ago and my frequent use of the metric on the site. You can read my introduction to FIP or Fangraphs’ primer to catch up, but I’ll outline the basic concept because it carries over.
We use FIP because ERA is not a reflection of a pitcher’s individual performance because he cannot control what his defense does once the ball is put in play. Two pitchers who are carbon copies of each other will perform differently if you put them in front of the Dbacks defense (currently the league’s best) and the Angels defense (one of the league’s worst so far) despite throwing identical pitches to identical hitters. ERA is a reflection of the team as a whole, not just the pitcher.
In steps FIP or a class of numbers coming from this idea, to measure a pitcher’s performance based only on what we know he can control. FIP takes strikeouts, walks, and homeruns and uses historic run values to calculate a number on the same scale as ERA so that you can see which pitchers are succeeding in the areas of the game they can control. Generally speaking, defense evens out over a long enough period and ERA, FIP, and our new friend xFIP will converge toward each other.
The FIP formula looks like this:
FIP = ((13*HR)+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant
So what exactly is xFIP? xFIP, as you can read about on Fangraphs, takes this one more step. xFIP is the same as FIP except it normalizes HR/FB rate to give you a number that better predicts future performance.
It’s actually pretty simple, just stay with me. Generally speaking, we’ve found that the percentage of a pitcher’s flyballs that are hit for homeruns will converge toward about 10% and that large variations from that number are not sustainable. If you allow more flyballs, you’ll allow more homeruns, and that will cost you in FIP and xFIP, but if you’re allowing half of your flyballs to go for homeruns, it’s likely that won’t happen for very long.
So xFIP looks like this:
xFIP = ((13*(Flyballs * League-average HR/FB rate))+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant
As you can see, it’s the same formula, but it takes your flyball rate and multiplies that by the league average HR/FB rate to get a more predictive version of your HR rate going forward. xFIP is one of the best indicators of future performance we have and it is very useful in evaluating which pitchers are getting lucky and which pitcher’s are actually performing in line with their skills.
If we scan the Tigers 2013 leaderboard right now (digits truncated), you can get a sense of how this works. As expected, all of the Tigers have better FIP than their ERA because they play in front of a poor defense, but all of their xFIP are slightly higher than their FIP (except for Porcello) because they are allowing a lower than average HR/FB rate. Porcello, on the other hand, has very unlucky 21% HR/FB rate, so his xFIP is better than his FIP. Again, xFIP correlates better with future performance than almost any other ERA estimator.
Personally, I like to look at FIP to see how a pitcher is doing and use xFIP to see how fluke-y his homerun rate is. They’re both good metrics and they are both better indicators of individual performance than ERA.
Want to learn about a statistic? Request one for the next edition in the comments section or on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44. If you’re looking to catch up on sabermetrics, check out New English D’s posts on FIP, WAR, wOBA, wRC+, and ISO.
How Was The Game? (June 5, 2013)
A gem, wasted.
Rays 3, Tigers 0
When Doug Fister (5-3, 77 IP, 3.27 ERA, 2.62 FIP, 2.5 WAR) takes the hill, you’re usually treated to a fast moving, efficient performance and today was an exceptional lesson in said qualities. Fister cruised through the first 7 innings in just 72 pitches causing the present author to remark:
and
Fister would finish the game with a marvelous 8.1 innings, 7 hits, 3 runs, 1 walks, and 4 strikeouts after surrendering all three runs on three hits, a sac fly, and a wild pitch in the 9th. That performance on most days will bring you an easy victory, but Mr. Fister had to sweat as his counterpart was also quite good. Cobb kept the Tigers at bay over 7.2 and got help from his bullpen to blank the Tigers. Fister succeeded with his usually excellent command and excellent separation among his four pitches, the latter is illustrated here:
With the loss, the Tigers fall to 31-26 and will try to take the series with the Rays tomorrow afternoon with Max Scherzer (7-0, 76.1 IP, 3.42 ERA, 2.45 FIP, 2.6 WAR) on the hill.
The Moment: Doug Fister doing anything.
How Was The Game? (June 4, 2013)
Just what the doctor ordered.
Tigers 10, Rays 1
After a road trip to forget, the Tigers returned to Comerica Park and enjoyed some home-cooking at the expense of the Rays’ interim ace Matt Moore. Anibal Sanchez (6-5, 78 IP, 2.65 ERA, 1.78 FIP, 3.4 WAR) took care of business on the mound over 7 innings of 1 run, 9 K baseball and got out of the way for the offense to do their thing. And do their thing they did. They got 4 in the 2nd from Tuiasosopo, Infante, and Fielder RBI hits and 2 in the 3rd from a Garcia hit and Infante walk. For good measure, the tacked on runs in the 5th, 6th, and 8th to put this one out of reach and hopefully started a new winning streak. With the win, they improve to 31-25 and will look to take the series tomorrow behind Doug Fister (5-2, 68.2 IP, 3.28 ERA, 2.64 FIP, 2.2 WAR).
The Moment: Prince singles in a pair in the 2nd.
The Morning Edition (June 4, 2013)
From Last Night:
- Molina and Beltran homer to back Lynn against the Snakes
- Medlen shines as Burnett stumbles
- Arroyo goes 8 scoreless to beat the Rox
- Kendrick hits a 3B and goes the distance to beat the Fish
What I’m Watching Today:
- Zimmermann faces the Mets in DC (7p Eastern)
- Moore and Sanchez in Detroit (7p Eastern)
- Skaggs and Wacha make prospect hounds drool in STL (8p Eastern)
- Peavy and Felix out west (10p Eastern)
The Big Question:
- What should the All-Star Game be?
Someone on Twitter asked Keith Law if Matt Carpenter should be an All-Star, which Law disagreed with because
https://twitter.com/keithlaw/status/341747971655872512
I’m curious what other people think, but I like when the All-Star game features a mix of star players and lesser known guys having good opening months. I understand his argument is that MLB wants to showcase the stars to expand the popularity of the sport, but I think national media events should be a time for the sport to turn its unsung players into stars. I don’t like when ESPN and Fox only talk about Jeter and Sabathia and Big Papi. National forums should be a chance to put guys like Matt Carpenter (2.5 WAR) and Josh Donaldson (2.6 WAR) on display. “Hey look, here are some guys you might not get a chance to see a lot who are playing great!” I like that aspect of it. The game will have Miguel Cabrera and Buster Posey, but I think it should also have the unknowns because it should be a game for die hard fans as well as casual fans who often use the word “boring” to describe baseball.
Victor Martinez Shouldn’t Play Vegas
I’m sure most Tigers fans are aware that Victor Martinez’s number this year aren’t very good. He’s had a few productive games, but on the whole they don’t look great. He’s hitting .230/.280/.319 good for 59 wRC+ in 225 PA. I don’t have to tell you that isn’t enough from a full time DH.
But there is more to the story than that. I know this is going to sound like an excuse, but Victor Martinez has been terribly unlucky. I’m serious, I have data to prove it. This isn’t just an eyeball test, it’s a real thing. I’ll show you.
First of all, the walk rate is almost identical to his strong ’11 season and he’s swinging at fewer pitches outside the strikezone so far this season (26.8% versus 30.2%). So it’s not like he’s chasing bad pitches or anything. There are two explanations. First, he’s getting unlucky. Second, he’s not hitting the ball with as much authority as he used to.
I’m going to argue this is mostly about luck, but I’ll give some credence to the type of contact he is making. He is hitting fewer line drives this year in favor of more flyballs, which is generally bad for your production, but it’s not dramatic enough that you would expect someone to lose .100 off their batting average. His 2013 ratios are very similar to his 2007 ratios and in that season he hit .301/.374/.505.
So yes, the trajectory of the ball is slightly off his 2011 numbers, but he’s been successful with the 2013 numbers before. He’s not walking less. He’s not chasing bad pitches. This is a story about bad luck.
A number of people have commented, myself included, that Victor is hitting a lot of balls hard that are turning into outs. That’s true. ESPN Stats and Info tracks hard hit balls (balls can be soft, medium, or hard) and ESPN Stats and Info Researcher and former podcast standout Mark Simon often posts the statistic on Twitter. Here is his most recent update (June 3):
As you can see, Martinez is 6th in MLB with 24.4% of his PA ending in a hard his ball. The average MLBer hits 17% hard hit balls. That’s 7% better than league average, but if you look at his batting average, it doesn’t reflect that. You have to drop pretty far down the list to find someone with a lower average than Martinez (Ruggiano at 22). In other words, it’s very rare to have someone hit the ball hard this often without getting better results. How rare? I asked Simon and this is what he said:
The picture he posted in accordance with that tweet indicates that all but one of Martinez’s hard hit balls at home have turned into outs:
So what you can see here is that your eyes aren’t deceiving you. Victor Martinez is hitting the ball hard and has nothing to show for it. He’s been unlucky in a very uncommon way. We should expect this luck to even out over the course of the season and his hard hit balls will start to fall for hits. Everyone above him on that list is crushing the ball and Martinez has been at the top of this list all season long.
You may look at his .230 batting average and say he’s having a bad year. That’s only partially right. The results have been bad, but based on everything I’m looking at here, the process has been good. And good process will yield good results, even if it hasn’t over the first third of the season.
That said, I still wouldn’t advise Victor Martinez spend any time in Vegas, just in case he’s pissed off the God’s of probability.
Editor’s Note: A follow up piece on the same subject can be found here.
How Was The Game? (June 2, 2013)
Another good outing for Porcello, but the bats let him down.
Orioles 4, Tigers 2
The Tigers entered today’s rubber match trying to win the series from the Orioles despite losing a game they absolutely should have won on Friday night. Rick Porcello (2-3, 57 IP, 5.21 ERA, 3.88 FIP, 0.8 WAR) did his part with 6+ innings strong innings in which he allowed 3 runs (all in the 7th inning) and struck out 7 while walking 1. Porcello dominated the Orioles for 6 innings and gave up a homer and a couple quick hits to start the 7th before he was pulled, but the whole of his performance was very strong against one of the league’s better offenses. His progression into a very good major league starter continued as he used all his pitchers effectively and made these graphs look even better after this start:
Coke allowed two inherited runners to score in the inning, but holding the Orioles to 4 runs should usually be enough (Downs allowed a run in the 8th). It wasn’t however on this day. Fielder hit a solo homer in the 4th and the Tigers were on pace for a big inning in the 7th before it fell apart. With two on, a run in, and no out, Leyland called for a bunt with Avila at the plate and Martinez as the lead runner. Needless to say, it went poorly and the Tigers ended up with a runner on second and two outs and would end the inning without scoring again. They were up against top prospect Kevin Gausman, who was relatively strong, but they needed to provide more than 2 runs for Porcello. The Tigers end the weekend 1-2 in Baltimore despite the fact that they should have won all three games. They’ll take Monday off and will get back at it Tuesday against the Rays behind Anibal Sanchez (5-5, 71 IP, 2.79 ERA, 1.87 FIP, 3.0 WAR).
The Moment: Hunter makes a leaping catch to rob Hardy in the 2nd.
New English D 