Video: Jason Kipnis likes leading off
May 12, 2015Breaking down the Browns draft and the Patriots penalty – WFNY Podcast – 2015-05-12
May 12, 2015The 2015 Cleveland Indians season has been frustrating to follow thus far. The season began with lofty expectations propped up by the team becoming the national darlings of the now analytic-friendly media. The Indians even managed to win their opening series against the Houston Astros who have unexpectedly been one of the best teams in baseball.
Since that time, the Indians have yet to win another series or even two games in a row as their defense, offensive production, and bullpen have taken turns taking the blame. However, the starting pitching (outside of the rotating atrocities being marketed as potential fifth starters) has largely gone without their golden reputations being sullied despite some rather disturbing standard numbers, which indicates that many have either not noticed or are excusing them. The intent herein is to determine the appropriate course of action with regards to the starting pitching of the Cleveland Indians1.
Standard Metrics
There are far more useful metrics to utilize and those will be discussed below, but it is still instructive to start with the statistics that are displayed during MLB telecasts as they do give a high-level view of what appears to have been happening.
The Cleveland Indians have sent out TJ House, Zach McAllister, and Bruce Chen2 effectively as the fifth starter and those three pitchers have each had an earned run average in the double-digits, which is absurdly awful. Trevor Bauer, Carlos Carrasco, and Danny Salazar have been far more productive in their starts and have managed to combine for a 10-4 record on an Indians team that is 11-19. Yes, pitcher wins are greatly flawed, but this is demonstrable that these pitchers are not to blame for the current horrific overall record3.
Indians Trivia: Who is the only 2015 Cleveland Indian to record a win without starting the game he won?
The only starting pitcher remaining is the defending 2014 AL Cy Young Award winning Corey Kluber, who has struggled in all of the standard metrics (the Indians are actually 0-7 in his starts). After recently struggling early in his most recent start against the Kansas City Royals, the national media even started to hone in on what appears to be dents in Kluber’s pitching armor.
Scored Run Metrics
The main difference between ERA and FIP is that ERA can tell you what actually happened in the games, while FIP can tell you what would have happened if life were fair (i.e. if all ballparks, defenses, and luck were equal). As such, when utilized properly, FIP can be more deterministic about what to expect moving forward as outside factors even out over time. As a standalone though, it is not a good prediction tool as some of these outside factors may not even out over time. For instance, players on the Colorado Rockies must still factor in playing half of their home games at Coor’s Field, and players on the Cleveland Indians must still factor in playing in front of what has been an historically awful defense.
The defense has been taking the brunt of the criticism in the early portion of the season and is the easily found culprit when noticing the gigantic MLB-worst discrepancy between the ERA and FIP of the starting pitchers. The Indians defense has actually climbed to a ranking of 28 in DRS4 , but they remain firmly entrenched with the worst defensive rating5. So, much of the criticism is justly deserved. However, all of the Indians starters except Trevor Bauer are giving up more home runs than expected on fly balls, which can be seen when comparing the FIP to xFIP for each. Therefore, part of the blame for the ballooned staff ERA still resides on the pitchers though noticeably less than the defense and luck factors between ERA and FIP.
Rate Metrics
Any outcome in which a pitcher has complete control is considered a true outcome. As such, there are three true outcomes for a pitcher in the form of a strike out, walk, or home run6. It was shown above that the Indians starters have allowed more home runs than expected on fly balls, however this chart brings forth that the starters have only allowed a MLB average number of home runs per nine innings7.
The 2015 Cleveland Indians starters have excelled at striking out opposing batters. The team not only leads MLB in strike outs per nine innings, but the Indians lead by more than a full strike out with the San Diego Padres second place rate at 8.85 K/9. That league leading strike out rate has offset a mediocre walk rate to the point where the team still has a ranking of seven when looking at the overall strike out to walk ratio. Therefore, there is nothing in the three true outcomes that points to the pitching being at fault for the elevated ERA.
Batted Ball Metrics
The other rate statistics to watch carefully are BABIP (batting average on balls in play) and LOB% (left on base percentage). It has been demonstrated that pitchers do not have much control on what happens to a baseball when it is put in play, but they do have at least some control when it comes to the type of ball that is put in play. For example, Jake Westbrook was a ground ball pitcher, while Josh Tomlin was a fly ball pitcher. Also, line drives and other hard hit balls are more difficult to field, and those hits lead to a higher BABIP. Here is an area where many of the Indians starters can improve upon.
Only Trevor Bauer is currently doing better than the MLB average on LD%8 and Hard%9. Not coincidentally, Trevor Bauer also has a league average BABIP. Danny Salazar has a team leading BABIP of .279 and LOB% of 80%. The LOB% can be partially explained with his extraordinarily high strike out rate, but it appears that he has been either the beneficiary of good fortune or the Indians ground ball defense is much worse than the fly ball defense (or both) as neither Danny’s LD% or Hard% are much better than Carlos Carrasco or Corey Kluber. Carrasco and Kluber, on the other hand, have been hit hard compared to the MLB average and those hits have led to hits at a high rate, which partially explains a poor LOB%. And, Zach Chenhouse has been terrible here too, though the batted ball metrics demonstrate that perhaps Zach McAllister was the least terrible option (in an extremely small sample size).
Conclusions
Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco are great representations to how a pitcher is not fully culpable to the overall team results. These pitchers have had incredibly similar years statistically, but drastically different years from a team result standpoint. The Indians have lost all seven games when Corey Kluber has started, while they have won four out of six Carlos Carrasco starts. Both pitchers have demonstrated better peripheral numbers than their standard numbers bear, so there is some legitimate hope that their ERAs will regress in a positive direction for the team.
Danny Salazar has a bit of an unsustainable rate at striking out opposing batters, but he has also limited his walks thus far, which is encouraging. I do expect some regression in his numbers even if he can continue on the strike out rampage as his hard hit rates do not lend to the low BABIP that he has enjoyed.
Trevor Bauer has fallen back on his high strike out, high walk rate ways. However, the overall damage has been minimized in Bauer starts as he has limited hard hit contact10 that has led to a league average BABIP. As such, Trevor Bauer’s overall statistics are likely about as normalized to what we should expect to continue compared to the rest of the pitchers.
Zach Chenhouse (Zach McAllister, TJ House, and Bruce Chen) have been severely limiting the chances of the Cleveland Indians winning every time they take the mound. The Indians are 0-6 in their six starts with each of them taking the loss every time despite never lasting more than four innings pitched, which adds to the futility by taxing the bullpen. Given the hole that has already been dug in the standings to this point in the season, the Indians cannot afford to give away wins and must find a way to fix this issue as soon as possible.
The other area where the team needs to improve upon is the defense. The Indians absolutely need to find ways to close the MLB-worst gap between the starter ERA and FIP. The Indians cannot change much when it comes to fortune, but they certainly can look to improving the wretched defense.
Overall, the starters are not without fault for their poor numbers as their HARD% demonstrates, but, outside of the horrific fifth starter, the starting pitching has been doing their job. There is room for improvement, but not nearly as much as from the defense. So, for now, it is safe to brush aside those that think something is wrong with Corey Kluber and the rest of the starters11 , and continue to hope to find ways to improve the defense.
Indians Trivia Answer: Marc Rzepczynski (and yes, the question was intentionally worded to make you think about Zach McAllister, kudos to those who shook it off)
- i.e. Should we excuse the poor numbers as it not being their fault or are they to blame as well? [↩]
- To be known as Zach Chenhouse [↩]
- Even accounting for the final three starts that did not register an official win or loss, their 2015 season record is 11-6, which would be the third best winning percentage in MLB [↩]
- Defensive Runs Saved : Chicago White Sox and Philadelphia Phillies are now worse [↩]
- -19.1 rating for the Indians with the Oakland Athletics ranked 29 with a -15.1 [↩]
- Counting hit batsmen as walks and discounting strike outs where the catcher drops the ball and the batter reaches first base [↩]
- Wait for the FB%, we are going to get there. [↩]
- Percentage of batted balls turned into line drives [↩]
- Percentage of batted balls hit hard [↩]
- Or, he has enjoyed good luck in “limited” hard contact depending on how you feel about pitchers limiting hard contact on their own. [↩]
- especially if based purely on their ERA [↩]
12 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-twUCEfzrDk
I skipped to the last sentence in the conclusions paragraph. I’m not sold on Kluber at all I don’t know if it’s because he misses his Yanimal or not. Bauer is inconsistent. Carrasco not bad but not picking up where he left off. Salazar is the lone bright spot for me.
Gonna be a loooooooooooooooooooooong baseball season.
So how do you change the defense, Mr. Bode? Get Yan back, of course. You could call up Lindor. There’s no other place for the Chiz. And you’ve got 4 poor right fielders.
Mark Antonetti would respond, “They just have to play better!”
Don’t blame Lonnie.
Chisenhall has been a good defensive player this year. He has already started more double plays this year (10) than he did all of last year (7).
Lonnie Chisenhall is the 4th best 3B by DRS this season
Lonnie Chisenhall is the 7th best 3B by UZR/150 this season
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=3b&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=y&type=1&season=2015&month=0&season1=2015&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=10,d
He doesn’t have the crazy range of Machado, but he makes plays inside his range better than any 3B in MLB this year.
Ok, sorry, had to defend Lonnie first because he put in the work and isn’t a problem.
To fix:
1. Yan comes back healthy
2. Lindor up in June
3. Jose Ramirez to 2B (it has hurt that he has only been average at SS)
4. Kipnis to RF
5. –Trade Murphy/Raburn for a 5th starter
6. Promote Holt
7. Holt & Bourn take turns in CF (no more Brantley in CF)
Not the ideal fix because while it would be an average to above average defense, it definitely would be a light-hitting lineup. Murphy/Raburn have held the offense together at times. Not worried about Swish/Moss sharing DH because Kipnis would likely still play some 2B and there would be plenty of ABs to rotate in RF/DH/2B between the guys there.
And, Kipnis has actually been pretty good at 2B as well, so only make that move if he is better in RF than what we have (I have to imagine he is).
When you hit like the Indians have been hitting so far this season, you better be able to play defense. Frankly, I’m surprised this team doesn’t have a worse record than 11-19.
The “eye test” shows this team can’t hit, pitch, or field. That about sums up their season so far, IMHO.
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Only half credit for not showing the phase response data. Tsk tsk.
🙂 Always forget the phase response data in lieu of the gain margin.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Bode_Pole-Zero_Phase_Plot.PNG
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