Friday, June 13, 2008

Jon Lester PFX Breakdown

Jon Lester has been on a roll lately. Ever since early to mid-May, everything has been working for him. Look at his home game log courtesy of Baseball Musings, day-to-day logs. Now look at what he has done since 5/4 at home. (his 5th start on was on 5/4/2008). That is a truly amazing 4 game stretch.

So let's look at the PFX data.

First, his release point data across many a couple different formats

To begin with, you see that the curveball appears to come from slightly higher than all of the other pitches. This happens a lot due to the curveball coming out of the hand at a slightly higher angle than the other pitches. See my previous PFX post about Lincecum for a more detailed report. His fastball tends to drift a little bit along with his 2 seamer. Funny thing is that his slider is the most centralized among them all. My 2nd chart is a zoom of the first chart, since so many of them overlap from far away. You can see that his fastball is released a little lower than all of his other pitches. Why is this? Could he be pacing himself with his pitches for his later innings?

You can see that there is some credence to this. It appears that his his pitches tail off slightly until around the 5th inning and then his velocity increases until the end, especially on his fastball. If this was an issue if him needing to warm up, his velocity wouldn't be that good but then would begin to rebound after the 2nd to 3rd inning, not the 5th.

Now let's look at the release point by start.

Looking at his release point by start his first 4 starts were the most towards the left of the chart and also near the top. They also weren't as clustered as the the last four starts. His release point is now more consistent in a nice baseball shape, not allowing anyone to get a good look at them. You can see that a little bit better on the macro scale by the chart on the right. See how the first several starts are really on the left and and the top of his release point zone. Especially note how the 5th and the 8th starts are so compact (the 5th start was the no-hitter).

If you look at his break and speed, you can see 4 distinct pitches.

His movement on those are slightly all over the place, but just like with the release point the last several starts are more focused and centralized within those clusters. As I say time and time again, release the ball in the same spot and knowing where the ball will go is extremely important in pitching. Now when you look at the vertical break per speed chart, some interesting things come up.

First, notice how there are a couple groups of results at certain speeds and movement. The resultant strikes (bright green) and the in play out (red) are grouped together. These are those pitches in which he knows where the ball is going. This is the true control. He knows exactly where the ball will end up.

With the 3rd chart in that series, focus on how much like the release points, his first 4 starts result in movement that is slower and also less movement.


With these two you can see that for the most part, the results were what they were supposed to do. Pitches down the middle, no matter what they are, are usually going to result in a base hit.

Going along with the result theme, let's look at what pitches resulted in which event.


You can see that the majority of each category are fastballs which is a good thing if you have a good fastball. He also mixes in his curve and changeup well getting many of his strikeouts on it.

The last chart that I want to focus on is his pitch selection breakdown by start:

Start

Total

1

%

2

%

3

%

4

%

5

%

6

%

7

%

8

%

Type

CH

0

0%

2

2%

11

14%

3

3%

7

6%

5

4%

6

6%

4

4%

38

5%

CU

13

14%

17

17%

8

10%

11

12%

16

14%

15

12%

20

20%

26

26%

126

16%

FA

74

79%

69

70%

46

60%

59

63%

71

64%

86

70%

69

68%

57

57%

531

67%

FC

7

7%

9

9%

8

10%

16

17%

12

11%

15

12%

5

5%

12

12%

84

11%

SL

0

0%

1

1%

4

5%

4

4%

5

5%

2

2%

2

2%

1

1%

19

2%

Total

94

98

77

93

111

123

102

100

798

100%


Nothing here really stands out to me. His pitch breakdown by percentage is basically consistent throughout. No large difference in approach jumps out at me.

Summary: I think that this is another piece to be filed under the evidence for release point and control being essential for a pitcher to succeed. It is important to note that release point is really only the end result of the pitchers mechanics from his toes to his fingertips. Any slight difference changes the release point and thus changes the movement, the pitch location, and the end result of getting an out or giving up a home run.

Lester looks to be completely healthy now showing no effects whatsoever from his battle with cancer. He is also showing that he has the stuff to be an above average major league pitcher.

Buy Low/Sell High June 13th(Konerko/Garza)

Buy Low: Paul Konerko

Key Stats:

Pitcher:

BABIP

K/BB

PTO%

QuickERA

ERA Dif

P/IP

Hitter:

BABIP

P/PA

BB/SO

GB/FB

HR/FB

2008

0.202

3.80

2.27

1.673

16.33%

2007

0.234

3.93

1.86

1.166

20.53%

2006

0.288

3.90

2.68

0.947

20.59%

Paul hasn’t had much luck recently. His BABIP isn’t in line with even his bad year last year. He’s seeing a lot of pitches and has improved his BB/SO ratio from last year. One big thing that I see is that he’s hitting a lot more GB than usual AND less HR/FB than usual. These two stats typicall regress to career averages, so I expect a correct fairly soon with this. Overall Paul is one of those players that will make or break your season.

Konerko, Paul 1B CHW for Griffey, Ken RF CIN

Konerko, Paul 1B CHW for Olsen, Scott SP FLA

Konerko, Paul 1B CHW for Myers, Brett SP PHI

Sell High: Matt Garza

Key Stats: 

Pitcher:

BABIP

K/BB

PTO%

QuickERA

ERA Dif

P/IP

Hitter:

BABIP

P/PA

BB/SO

GB/FB

HR/FB

2008

0.268

1.360

24.7%

5.476

-1.096

16.63

2007

0.351

2.09

26.34%

4.379292841

-0.689

17.52

2006

0.346

1.65

25.34%

5.15629648

0.604

17.84

Matt gets a decent amount of publicity due to his strikeout numbers and his well publicized trade with Delmon Young. The problem is that he’s simply just not ready to be consistent enough for your fanasy team. HIS BABIP is a little low and look at those horrible other stats. A K/BB, PTO%, and qERA of that level simply won’t get it done. Elite pitchers have P/IP around 14-15 (that’ll put you around 7-8IP in a game). Getting rid of him from your team will allow the ERA angels to rejoice.

Garza, Matt SP TB for Stewart, Ian 3B COL

Garza, Matt SP TB for Crede, Joe 3B CHW

Buck, Travis OF OAK and Garza, Matt SP TB and Hurley, Eric SP TEX for Markakis, Nick RF BAL

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Buy Low/Sell High June 12th (Harang, Damon)

Slightly different format with these. Each players' stats value is really dependent on each individual fantasy league, so with this, we'll focus on which direction the players will go from here. Hope you enjoy and if you have any recommendations or general suggestions, please let me know.


Buy Low: Aaron Harang

Key Stats:

Pitcher:

BABIP

K/BB

PTO%

QuickERA

ERA Dif

P/IP

Hitter:

BABIP

P/PA

BB/SO

GB/FB

HR/FB


2008

0.332

4.100

29.5%

3.847

0.463

16.06

2007

0.292

4.19

31.51%

3.375348

0.355

15.49

2006

0.326

3.86

30.34%

3.56021

0.200

15.96

Aaron for the most part has had a little bad luck this year. You can see though by these stats that he will likely turn it around. First off, his BABIP is elevated and everything else looks good too. The increase in P/IP is likely due to the increased BABIP (more hits that fall in means more pitches that you have to throw that inning) as is the PTO% (same reason). His k/bb is in line with last years though and his qERA shows that he has been unlucky to the tune of about a half a run on his ERA. Many people are down on his because of his record, but that just means you have a good buying opportunity.

Harang, Aaron SP CIN for Colon, Bartolo SP BOS

Harang, Aaron SP CIN for Pence, Hunter CF HOU

Harang, Aaron SP CIN for Gordon, Alex 3B KC

Sell High: Johnny Damon

Key Stats: 

Pitcher:

BABIP

K/BB

PTO%

QuickERA

ERA Dif

P/IP

Hitter:

BABIP

P/PA

BB/SO

GB/FB

HR/FB


2008

0.330

3.98

2.53

1.940

12.00%


2007

0.276

4.31

1.98

2.171

11.43%


2006

0.289

4.10

1.40

1.603

17.65%


Johnny has gotten a lot of press this past week about his 6/6 game with 4 RBIs because 1) he’s a Yankee 2) one of those hits was a walk off. Here’s what I see in my analysis. He hasn’t had a HR in a week. The only RBIs in the past week came in that one game. He’s cooled off considerably already as well.

When you evaluate all of these statistics as a group, you see that more hits have fallen in play than should have. But he is seeing the least amount of pitches per plate appearance in a while while walking more and hitting more FB than usual. So more hits fall, less P/PA, higher BB/SO, higher FB means that pretty much everything in the zone he is swinging at. So while normally you like seeing more BB/SO, I don’t think so in this case. You want him to put the ball in play and hit line drives. He’s too old to put the ball on the ground and leg out a base hit but you don’t want him to put the ball in the air either.

Because of this little predicament, sell him for these:

Damon, Johnny CF NYY for Wilson, C.J. RP TEX

Damon, Johnny CF NYY for Dunn, Adam LF CIN

Damon, Johnny CF NYY for Sheets, Ben SP MIL