Jeff Francis Re-Analysis

Previously, I broke down Francis and why he was having struggles. I found that he was searching for his release point throughout his starts, resulting in a loss of control, and may be a result of fatigue or an injury. Then last night, after I cut him in my league last week, he throws a gem against the Dodgers. What was different, why did he decide to do it now rather than before?

I compared his cumulative pitches compared to his last start, (graphs from Dan Brooks at Brooksbaseball.net and Josh Kalk at Baseball.bornbybits.com until I get my own database fully functional)


His start yesterday:


It seems that his release point is fairly consistent except that his release point for his curveball is an inch or two higher (which is most likely because of where the ball is at 50 feet not his true release point). This is a good sign, one showing that he knows where his body is in space. This is important when looking for injuries. If he starts to do this consistently over the next few starts, we can rule out an injury. What's interesting is that his location and his movement, isn't particularly pleasing to look at. Many of his pitches ended up in the zone, ones that should normally be hammered for hits all over the park. His movement on his change vs fastball overlap, so basically his change comes in as a batting practice fastball. Again, this should have been hammered but weren't.

Overall his charts look like this:


Comparing the two it seems consistent with what he did in his last start. The amount that his change and his fastball/sinker overlap isn't indicative of future success. Also you can see fairly distinct areas of release point. Ideally you'd want all of them to completely overlap, but in reality you want them to overlap a little more than what he is.

Looking at his good start versus bad start release point, location, and his movement (both against LAD):


With this you can really see the difference. The bad start was at Colorado and his movement on his curveball in particular was non-existent horizontally, but it was better for his fastball and change. I think the data might be very slightly off in this case, but the general idea is still valid.

so how lucky/unlucky was he. let's take a quick comparison of BABIP.

Good: .210
Bad: .316

While these have the wonderful caveat of small sample size, it just goes to show you that he was a little lucky last night. You cannot rely on Francis to produce until he does it repeatedly. I'm still not 100% convinced he's not injured in some respect and will not know until he does it over a couple starts in a row. Until then, in very deep leagues, keep him on your bench and in shallow leagues you can still consider cutting him.