Small break

Unfortunately just when I was getting into the swing of things and bringing you insightful (hopefully) posts each night, I have to go away for a long weekend to my best friends wedding where I'll be the best man.

Because of this, I'll have a new post up on Monday night about whatever has come up over the weekend.

Buccholz explanation

Well, a couple of posts ago I said something wasn't right with Buchholz. Today we found out that he tore/broke the middle fingernail during the 2nd inning of his last start. Clay claims it only effected his fastball, but I wasn't so sure and I wanted to see if this really was the case. (all graphs courtesy of Brooksbaseball.net and baseball.bornbybits.com)

First release point in the overall starts vs 1st two innings vs. the last 3.



You can clearly see that his release point has been effected in these later innings for whatever reason. It's wider more oval shaped than a tight circle we'd like to see. It could be that he's trying to get more on top of the ball rather than behind it so less pressure is placed on that nail and nail bed. As a result he has to fight his body's muscle memory about where to release the ball.

Next the break of the pitches in 3 graphs. (overall, 1st two innings, last 3 innings)



Bingo. We hit the jackpot in finding it. If you look at the overall chart of all his starts it's a nice grouping of ovals/circles with a more steep slope than the other two. The same can be said of the 1st two innings versus the last several innings. There were no real tight groupings as his movement was all over the place on all of his pitches meaning he had very little idea where the pitch was going to end up when it left his hand. It also meant that he couldn't grip the ball as hard to control the spin when it comes out of his hand.

SUMMARY: For once we're able to confirm what the pitcher is telling us with a number of great details (inning, pitch, precise injury location). With that we can see is that it clearly effected him and his delivery/release point. The last thing anyone wants in the Red Sox organization or baseball fans in general is to see him possibly ruin his career with an injury resulting from altered mechanics due to his finger.
He'll only going to miss the minimum DL time as these are fairly easy to predict. So keep him on your bench like I am and wait for a few starts for him to get to full steam.

He's owned in 83% of CBS leagues and 89.4% of ESPN leagues.

Offensive Waiver Wire find

So this morning we're going to look a hitter who is likely going to be on the wire.

Mark Kotsay has been hot lately hitting home runs and driving in runs. After a rash of injuries to my outfield in the last couple of days, I have to look at help from the wire. Kotsay has started the year well:

G   AB    R    H   2B 3B  HR  RBI  SB CS  BB  SO   BA   OBP   SLG *OPS+  TB   SH  SF IBB HBP GDP
35  129   18   39   7  2   3   18   2  1  12  12  .302  .362  .457  117   59   1   0   1   0   8

With this is a BABIP of .317 which means that so far this isn't a fluke. He's earning basically every base hit he has. He will be facing PHI, Oak, and NYM pitching over the next several days so he has a decent chance to hit against some average to slightly above average pitching. Once it starts to heat up across the nation, his hits will fly a lot more and he has a very good chance to hit 15-20HR on the year and give you 10SB.

Kotsay is a streaky hitter and you should ride the streak as long as you can as he could be a very valueable 3rd/4th OF.

He is owned in only 17% of CBS leagues and 26.6% of ESPN leagues.

What is wrong with Jeff Francis?

My fantasy pitching this week and a half has been horrendous. Im talking 15 GS with a WHIP of 1.92 and and ERA north of 7 horrendous. Leading the parade has been Jeff Francis. I picked him up in the middle rounds, expecting a solid #3 starter on my team. Instead, he's been taking out back and beaten like a red-headed step child almost every time he goes to the mound.

W   L   GS  IP  H  ER HR  BB   SO  BFP ERA *lgERA *ERA+ WHIP

0   4   8  47.3 58 33 9   19   31 216 6.27  4.55   73   1.627

You would think that I would have learned my lesson after the first couple times out but this was the guy who went 17-9 with an ERA+ of 114 last year. So what the hell is so different? First his release points, courtesy of Josh Kalk at baseball.bornbybits.com.



As a Francis owner this does not make me happy at all. It looks like he's been searching for his release point the whole season. Could this be due to injury? I like to look at velocity on his fastballs to see if there might be something going on.

2007 Pitch Averages

Type	Movement in x (in.)	Movement in z (in.)	Initial Speed (MPH)	Number Thrown	Percent
Fastball	7.99	8.26	89.01	695	57.49
Curve	-4	-2.15	73.19	169	13.98
Change	4.91	5.23	81.17	345	28.54

2008 Pitch Averages

Type	Movement in x (in.)	Movement in z (in.)	Initial Speed (MPH)	Number Thrown	Percent
Fastball	8.62	8.01	88.04	415	61.03
Curve	-4.34	-2.09	71.88	78	11.47
Slider	3.54	6.29	82.6	44	6.47
Change	6.65	4.89	80.52	141	20.74
Splitter	6.95	6.5	83.3	1	0.15
Cutter	1.56	9.03	84.13	1	0.15

Looking at his fastball MPH he's only lost 1MPH so that's not significant enough to definitively say he's injured or healthy. Notice though that he's added 3 pitches to his repertoire, at least according to Gameday. It looks like he's thrown 44 sliders that he didn't throw last year according to Gameday but I don't think he throws one.

I decided to look at pitches that resulted in hits next to see if it was dumb luck or if he is just pitching horribly.

type	Speed (MPH)	Break x (inches)	Break z (inches)	1B	2b	3b	HR
FB	88.74	8.55	8.52	31	6	1	7
CB	74.49	-4.74	-4.44	5	3	0	0
CH	81.3	5.2	5.94	16	3	0	1

Almost all of his Home Runs Allowed have been on his fastball as you can see in the chart and the table above. I also noticed that the difference between his change-up and his fastball is down to 7MPH. Is his change-up or fastball moving as it did last year? First the pitch location on hits allowed this year:

It appears that all of his HRA are ones that were up in the zone and from the previous tables we know that's his fastball. Also the vast majority of hits given up are on the right hand (the horizontal positive side) of the zone.

Overall movement this year:

Next the movement from last year:


Much much different. He has less control of his pitches. Less touch and feel on them too. Normally the pitches should be grouped in pretty distinct ovals. Francis on the other hand doesn't have any real ovals to work with. And this last chart (which Will Carroll from Baseball Prospectus) pointed out to me is key. Basically his change-up and his fastball move the same, so the only difference is the slight (less than 7MPH) speed difference. No wonder hitters are doing will against him.

Summary: Something is vastly different with Francis from last year to this year. He's searching for his release point and has lost a little velocity even if it is a very small amount. Batters appear to seeing his fastball better and the results have been a horror show most of the time. Until he shows that he can consistently get people out with his fastball by locating it, he will continue to struggle. My gut feeling says that he is either dealing with the results of the extended year he had last year with the World Series orhe is dealing with an injury/fatigue that we don't know about or even that he may not even fully know yet.

At this point, if you have a very deep league you could stash him on the end of your bench but I would also look at possible replacements.

Buchholz troubles on the road

Clay here is starting to worry me and probably many of his other fantasy owners as well. As a Red Sox fan myself, I have the feeling of a pit in my stomach multiplied by two when this happens. It's nationally known he's having trouble on the road but this is starting to go into Ervin Santana 2007 waters:

W L ERA G GS CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR HBP BB SO
Home 2 0 1.04 3 3 0 0 0 17.1 14 2 2 0 0 9 15
Away 0 2 7.40 4 4 1 0 0 20.2 27 18 17 3 0 6 24

This doesn't even include tonights start which was just atrocious.

I was curious to see if there was any differences in his pitch F/X data. I mean there has to be. So I got each start and charted the pitch location, the release point, and the break on each start. All of the charts are courtesy of Dan Brooks and his web based tool at BrooksBaseball.net. Each group of charts is a split. The first group of 3 will be home pitch location followed by 5 charts of his games for away pitch location.




When you zoom in on them you can see that his location isn't mind breakingly far off. But looking further and detailing it in, you can see that on many games he had no control of his curveball. His curveball was always in the hitting zone for many of these starts. If his curveball is not biting into the dirt, he will get hit. That curve is his bread and butter pitch and even tonight you could clearly tell he was trying to get the feel of it.

Release point next:



His release point difficulties are even more pronounced. You probably don't even have to click on the image and zoom it to see that his home release points are all nice and central, released at the same height from the ground. His away release points clusters are at many different levels.

Last group of charts, let's look at his home and away pitch break:




Looking at these and evaluating them are a little harder to do. His general trends though are a little steeper away than at home. His horizontal break averages from -7 to a +9 at home. While away it is generally -7 to +7. I'm not sure exactly what this means but to a major league hitter it may mean the difference between a 300 foot fly ball and a 350 foot home run.

Now onto the numbers to see if we can help explain. I love BABIP as a statistic because it regresses to a nice intuitive number that we can instinctively understand. It has also been studied many times over and everyone came to the same conclusion. A normal range is between .270 and .310. Anything over a 3% difference or .03 has been shown to effect a pitchers ERA.

Clay's BABIP at home is a nice .298 almost perfectly in the middle of the range.
Clay's BABIP on the road (not counting tonight) is at .381.

This should come down and regress to normal but the caveat is that the .290 applies if he does not give the hitter an advantage. If he is tipping his pitches by how he hold the ball or by how he releases the ball, the hitter will have a better advantage. Being a right handed pitcher the further he drops down to the side to throw the ball, the left handed hitters will see the whole ball all the way into the zone rather than just one half of the ball if he was coming from overhand.

Summary: I think that Clay is going through his growing pains in the majors right now. Teams are starting to get a book on him. Those teams that faced him twice have done much better against him the second time around. Lately though, even teams who haven't faced him before have hit him well. He doesn't have command of his out pitch, that devastating curveball of his. Once he learns to command that, his season will turn around.

Fatigue may have something to do with it as well. In the games that he has had 5 days of rest he has pitched fairly well and both of those instances occurred at home. Every other start has been occuring with 4 days rest with the lone remaining home game vs TEX. Fatigue doesn't have to be visible, often I consider it a "silent-killer" among pitchers. By the time they realize their arm or legs are fatigued they have usually already have done some minor damage to the tissues.

Fantasy Summary: If you have a keeper league, I would continue to keep him on your bench and wait for him to turn it around. For non-keeper leagues, there may be someone who is more reliable especially in the short term. Clay can turn it around any day or it could be several starts before he gets that feeling back.

Max Scherzer breakdown

Sorry for the delay but since yesterday was Mother's Day, I figured people would understand. As promised here is the breakdown of Max.

Scherzer has been one of those pitchers who sort of came out of nowhere but to those who really study the minor leagues, knew this kid would be good. He sports a 98+MPH fastball, a fairly good slider, and a change up that he doesn't necessarily throw often but can be devastating. So to those who have been following minor league pitching, this kid has quite an arsenal.

But what do we do. Do we stash him on our bench for the year in keeper leagues? Do we cut him once he gets sent back down? Do we cut him now? Other than the pitch F/X data to see if he is healthy (which he is according to my views), I look at 3 main statistics.

The first thing that I look at is the quick and dirty K/BB ratio. This ratio isn't always the best but it provides a useful quick and dirty test as to good pitchers with excellent command. A ratio of 3 or higher is deemed excellent. His k/bb ratio (aka command) is 6.00 (18k/3bb). Unbelievable.

Next I look at BABIP. His BABIP is .382, a very very high number that should come down to a normal .290. It is said that if BABIP is different by 3% either way it will effect his ERA in that way. Max's difference is 9.2%. So I know his ERA is effected by this BABIP and will come down. Also by using a "normal" BABIP, he gives up 2 less hits which brings down his WHIP to a very nice 1.01 a difference of 0.104.

Lastly I look at QuickERA which I explained earlier. QuickERA stabilizes much faster due to it's reliance on ratios and not hard numbers. Max's QuickERA is 2.70 a difference of 0.437.

So I look at his and figure out that he has been quite unlucky despite the fact that he has excellent command. His unbelievable command is something that can't really be taught. Pitchers of this ability mainly have that feel of pitching. According to Baseball-reference.com only 41 pitchers in the history of the game has ended the year with a k/bb above 6:

Minimum of 3.1 PA/G, 1.0 IP/G, and 0.1 decision/G for single-season leaderboards generally needed for rate statistics.

1.	Bret Saberhagen (30)	11.000	1994	R
2.	Jim Whitney (26)	10.000	1884	R
3.	Jim Whitney (25)	9.860	1883	R
4.	Curt Schilling (35)	9.580	2002	R
5.	George Bradley (27)	9.000	1880	R
6.	Pedro Martinez (28)	8.880	2000	R
7.	Greg Maddux (31)	8.850	1997	R
8.	Henry Boyle (23)	8.800	1884	R
9.	Pedro Martinez (27)	8.460	1999	R
10.	Ben Sheets (25)	8.250	2004	R
11.	James Burke? ()	8.230	1884
12.	Charlie Sweeney (21)	8.020	1884	R
13.	Tommy Bond (28)	7.940	1884	R
14.	Carlos Silva (26)	7.890	2005	R
15.	Greg Maddux (29)	7.870	1995	R
16.	Curt Schilling (34)	7.510	2001	R
17.	George Bradley (31)	7.300	1884	R
18.	Fergie Jenkins+ (28)	7.110	1971	R
19.	Cy Young+ (38)	7.000	1905	R
20.	Jack Lynch (27)	6.950	1884	R
Rank	Player (age that year)	SO to Walk	Year	Throws
	Bobby Mathews (30)	6.950	1882	R
22.	Cy Young+ (37)	6.900	1904	R
23.	Guy Hecker (28)	6.880	1884	R
24.	Tommy Bond (20)	6.770	1876	R
25.	Hugh Daily (36)	6.710	1884	R
26.	John Murphy? ()	6.640	1884
	John Ward+ (19)	6.640	1879	R
28.	Guy Hecker (26)	6.600	1882	R
29.	Randy Johnson* (40)	6.590	2004	L
30.	Bobby Mathews (31)	6.550	1883	R
31.	Curt Schilling (39)	6.540	2006	R
32.	Tommy Bond (23)	6.460	1879	R
33.	Greg Maddux (35)	6.410	2001	R
34.	Walter Johnson+ (25)	6.390	1913	R
35.	Roy Halladay (26)	6.380	2003	R
36.	Peek-A-Boo Veach? (22)	6.200	1884
37.	Juan Marichal+ (28)	6.170	1966	R
	Christy Mathewson+ (27)	6.170	1908	R
39.	Dennis Eckersley+ (30)	6.160	1985	R
40.	Greg Maddux (30)	6.140	1996	R
Rank	Player (age that year)	SO to Walk	Year	Throws
41.	Curt Schilling (36)	6.060	2003	R
42.	Pedro Martinez (30)	5.980	2002	R

So while I'm not saying that he's going to end the year equal to at least Curt Schilling or Pedro, I am saying that the majority of these pitchers who were able to do this after 1900 are likely HOF members. HOF players aren't taught for the most part, they're just born to play the game.

(I know maybe a little exaggeration, but skills such as his don't come along often enough. While he likely won't end up with a command of 6 this year, having him start this way is exciting.)

Long story short, I was able to pick him up on my league and I will be holding on to him, likely as my keeper. His command is the thing that I like the most along with stuff. When I look at his pitch F/X, his release point is repeatable and his pitching mechanics appear fine to me.

There is talk though that he may be converted to a reliever similar to Jonathan Papelbon. Depending on your league, you may want to trade Max his value is probably at it's highest.