Ted Lilly fantasy analysis
As part of my new format, I will look at what Ted Lilly can do for your fantasy team and why he seems to have turned it around.
Yesterday he had an amazing game. Here's his line:
Date Opp W L IP HA ER BB K
| 05/09 | ARI | 1 | 0 | 7.0 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 10 |
A pretty amazing line. In the past I have been sucked into this line to pick him up only for him to falter and kill my ERA and WHIP. Right now his season stat line looks like this:
| SEASON | TEAM | G | GS | CG | SHO | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | W | L | ERA |
When you look at his game log it's like a tale of two Ted's. The first month, I could walk up to the plate and get a hit off of him. The last 3-4 starts though he has been amazing. So let's look at his pitch F/X data to see if there is anything definitive in there to explain the turnaround. The graphs will go in order by date (5/9, 5/3, 4/17, 4/12). Each row represents one date. All the graphs are courtesy of Dan Brooks and his web based tool until I get my own database fully functional.
First the last two good starts.
Now two of his previous starts which did not go so well.
Looking at these I see two things. First his command has improved. While it is not necessarily a vast improvement, this is a game of inches or less and thus any slight improvement can produce vastly different results. If you look at his release point you will see a much tighter and higher release point than before. By releasing it higher and more concentrated between his different pitches, the hitters won't be able to see what he is throwing and he should have more movement on his pitches as well. Finally, the last graph charts the break of the pitches. In his good starts, his break in also more centralized and has more break as well on all of his pitches. Looking at the earlier starts, he didn't have control of the break of the pitch and therefore couldn't tell where the pitch was going to go when he released it. Combine that with a more open release point allowing batters to see the ball better and you end up with poor results. One final thing you can determine is that he is not injured as he has become more centralized with all of his charts.
Now let's look to see if he has been lucky or unlucky. Looking at his QuickERA and BABIP (I explained both in earlier posts) I think he can improve even more.
His season ERA currently stands at 5.24 even after his great start yesterday. His quickERA is 4.42 though. Almost a full run better. His BABIP though is now 0.271. This is on the low end of the normal range. This tells me that he has been both lucky in terms of BABIP and unlucky with his ERA. It's quite likely that the BABIP will stay that low but if it does his only has 4 more hits which would raise his overall WHIP to 1.37.
Ted has been an increadibly streaky player in the past and I expect him to do more of the same. He can easil rip off 4-5 more great starts and then amazingly and out of no where begin to have disastrous results.
I recommend him for larger mixed leagues and all NL-only leagues with the caveat that at the first sign of trouble, bench him. He is currently owned in about 50% of ESPN leagues and 84% of CBS leagues.
Tomorrow we will break down Mad Max Scherzer to see if he is worth a bench spot even if he gets sent back down.
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