Dempster

[CubColtPacer]

I thought he had a good chance of being terrible, I was very glad to be proven wrong.

 

And yes, he could be terrible the rest of the season, but that would still likely mean he was average over the course of the season unless he truly blows up.

 

He's also been a bit lucky about who he faces. He missed the Phillies and the Rockies. He's faced 3 teams (Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Cincy) who are much better against left-handers than right-handers a total of 6 times, and he's also faced the Padres and Nationals. Cincy is the only team that should give Dempster trouble out of that group of 5 teams, and unsurprisingly they have in his 2 starts against him.

 

The only really good offense so far this year against right-handers he's faced is Arizona, and even they are much better against left-handers.

 

The teams we need Dempster to avoid facing are teams like the Braves, Marlins, Cardinals, Diamondbacks, Phillies, Reds, and Rockies. The Braves and Marlins especially are prime candidates for the Cubs to throw all their left-handers against.

[gerby23]

I have a hundred bucks on him winning 15 games. I went with that simply b/c I never bought the Dempster as closer idea. My buddy is already looking for ways to re-neg.

[BleedCubbieBlue81]

i'll rain on teh parade and remind everyone there are 4 1/2 months to go

 

So are we not supposed to not talk about any of the team's success because we are only in mid-May?

 

I would say that a 5-1 record, sub 2.50 ERA and top 20 ranking in Ks is worthy of a little Demp recognition.

 

Great point. If we can't give Dempster some recognition because it's mid-May, then we shouldn't be complaining about Marquis because it's only mid-May. It works both ways.

Marquis has a track record of falling apart after the all-star break. The best part of his season is usually the first half. So if history repeats itself and this is the best part of his season... God help us all.

 

I didn't think Dempster would be terrible in the rotation (he had a decent year or two when he was a starter before), but even I'll admit I didn't expect him to be this good. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop though.

[Wilson A2000]

Dempster could turn out to be the #2 starter that the Cubs need to go far in the playoffs and reach the WS. Their lack of starting pitching was the only thing that held me back from thinking they could go all the way. But if Dempster can be 15-10 with a 3.75 ERA the Cubs could really go places. I like Dempster's innings to hits ratio like Pat and Ron mentioned today. 58:39 or something like that.

[TruffleShuffle]

Dempster could turn out to be the #2 starter that the Cubs need to go far in the playoffs and reach the WS. Their lack of starting pitching was the only thing that held me back from thinking they could go all the way. But if Dempster can be 15-10 with a 3.75 ERA the Cubs could really go places. I like Dempster's innings to hits ratio like Pat and Ron mentioned today. 58:39 or something like that.

 

yeah that part is nice, but he's been lucky on balls in play and his LD% is likely to increase since it's well lower than any recent year in his career. the biggest thing for him is cutting down on the walks.

[rocket]

jason marquis had a 2.22 era through may 14th last season...let's not get too excited yet.

[CubbieBum]

Well in the prediction thread I had to redo his because I predicted very few innings pitched for him because I was only counting the ones before I though he would be traded ... think it was like 70 innings or so aka being traded right about now.

[TruffleShuffle]

let's also remember that dempster hasn't been a full-time starter in five years, and relying on him to pitch well in september and october would be a very dicey proposition.

[Soul]

let's also remember that dempster hasn't been a full-time starter in five years, and relying on him to pitch well in september and october would be a very dicey proposition.

 

You go predict some storms or something. You're ruining my vibe. :wink:

[gerby23]

let's also remember that dempster hasn't been a full-time starter in five years, and relying on him to pitch well in september and october would be a very dicey proposition.

 

For this reason, I am almost hoping for a non-arm muscle strain of some sort so that he can be fresh late in the season. Cuz I know that Lou won't think to rest him

Edited May 16, 2008 by gerby23

[Careless]

I definitely thought it would be a disaster. Now I really haven't been able to watch him pitch all that much this season. What is he doing differently that he's having so much success? Is it mechanics? Control? New pitches? Comfort level?

 

The defense behind him, more than anything else. He's only allowed something like 33 hits in 57.1 IP.

 

Yeah, his K rate, BB rate, and HR rate (and HR/FB) are all pretty comparable to his prior Cubs experience. Its just that coming into todays game he has a 203 BABIP, resulting in a 173 average against. Granted he has only allowed a 14.6 LD%, but thats not really a skill and will regerss to the mean. Regardless of what his ERA says, his underlying statistics show that he was and is a league average pitcher.

 

There's still some interesting digressions from his previous Cubs career that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

 

1) There is a noticeable difference in his pitch selection. He's throwing more fastballs at the expense of sliders.

 

2) All three of his pitches are coming in at a consistent 2 MPH below when he was a closer, possibly indicating a change in the way he's pitching.

 

3) Not only is his LD% lower, his FB% is as well, with the difference all going to his GB%. If he was just getting LD-lucky, I wouldn't imagine the difference would be that pronounced.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=517&position=P

 

He's nowhere near as good as his ERA, and I don't know if any of this will be meaningful long-term, but it's curious to say the least.

 

RE #1 I'm guessing this has to do with him having to "conserve" his slider. When you are facing batters multiple times as a starter vs once as a reliever, you have to not show all of your pitches the first time around. I'm guessing this is just correlational with moving to the starting role, rather than a causation for his success. If anything, you would assume that a pitcher who does a worse job at randomizing his pitch selection will get hit harder.

 

RE #2 I'm guessing the reduction in speed can be attributed to the fact that he was only pitching one inning at a time before and could go all out and is now pitching multiple innings and needs to conserve himself and/or get tired later into games resulting in a slower average than when he was closing.

 

RE #3 Yes, his GB% has increased, and hes eclipsed the point where GB% becomes moreso due to skill than luck (ie r^2 exceed 0.5) of 150 batters faced. Thats great an all, but on the flip side that further exposes the luck in his BABIP. Fly balls get converted into outs more than any other type of batted ball, and even though he has a really low BABIP, he has a low FB%, meaning that his BABIP should actually be higher than our standard LD%+.120 estimation (because those non-line drives are mostly ground balls (infact 2:1 in comparison with FB), which are turned into hits much more often than FBs).

Ok, he's not going to finish the season being top 3 in cy young voting. I don't think anyone thinks he will. I, and I know I wasn't alone in this, was worrying about the guy giving up 85 runs in 150 innings for the season. He'll get worse, but that much worse?

[nilodnayr]

Dempster could turn out to be the #2 starter that the Cubs need to go far in the playoffs and reach the WS. Their lack of starting pitching was the only thing that held me back from thinking they could go all the way. But if Dempster can be 15-10 with a 3.75 ERA the Cubs could really go places. I like Dempster's innings to hits ratio like Pat and Ron mentioned today. 58:39 or something like that.

 

yeah that part is nice, but he's been lucky on balls in play and his LD% is likely to increase since it's well lower than any recent year in his career. the biggest thing for him is cutting down on the walks.

 

which hes really not doing

[Hairyducked Idiot]

There are all kinds of possible reasons for why things are different, but the fact is that even at the peripheral level, Dempster is a different pitcher this season, and that difference if correlating with a strong increase in GB rates, and that increase in GB rates is correlating with improved performance.

 

He's not going to be putting up a sub-3.00 ERA all season, but the change in pitch patterns, velocity and GB rates indicate clearly this is not the same Dempster as we've seen in a relief role.

 

Whether this new Dempster is good or not, it is too early to tell.

[nilodnayr]

There are all kinds of possible reasons for why things are different, but the fact is that even at the peripheral level, Dempster is a different pitcher this season, and that difference if correlating with a strong increase in GB rates, and that increase in GB rates is correlating with improved performance.

 

He's not going to be putting up a sub-3.00 ERA all season, but the change in pitch patterns, velocity and GB rates indicate clearly this is not the same Dempster as we've seen in a relief role.

 

Whether this new Dempster is good or not, it is too early to tell.

so demp is good because hes induced a handful more GBs not because he has a ridicuous opp average and BABIP

[Sammy Sofa]

Dempster's performance should in no way keep the Cubs from doing what they can to make a significant upgrade to the starting rotation. Personaly, I think if you want to have a real postseason shot, you need 2 reliable, dominant pitchers that you can hinge those final series on if need be...and right now, the Cubs only have one. Even if Lilly keeps doing well and Dempster does well all year and even Hill comes back strong, I'd have no problem with the Cubs trading some of their better/best prospects to get a sure thing starter at the deadline.

[BleedCubbieBlue81]

Dempster's performance should in no way keep the Cubs from doing what they can to make a significant upgrade to the starting rotation. Personaly, I think if you want to have a real postseason shot, you need 2 reliable, dominant pitchers that you can hinge those final series on if need be...and right now, the Cubs only have one. Even if Lilly keeps doing well and Dempster does well all year and even Hill comes back strong, I'd have no problem with the Cubs trading some of their better/best prospects to get a sure thing starter at the deadline.

The thing is, I don't see too many sure things being available at the deadline this year. There's a few names floating around, but right now, there's no one I'd bet the farm on.

[Outshined_One]

He's been quite a pleasant surprise. I don't think he can keep this up, but at the same time, I didn't think he'd do all that well in the first place. :lol:

[Hairyducked Idiot]

so demp is good because hes induced a handful more GBs not because he has a ridicuous opp average and BABIP

 

That's clearly not what I said, and glib to the point of being useless. And let's not be vague with terms like "good" or whatnot, which just leads down the road of pointless semantics.

 

There are three issues at hand: Who was Ryan Dempster coming into this season, how good has he been thus far, and what can we project from him in the rest of the season?

 

Coming into the season, Ryan Dempster was a very consistently average relief pitcher. Sure his ERA bounced around a lot because of the sample, but his peripheral-extrapolated ERAs from 2005-07 were 4.04, 4.19, 4.08, pretty average for a reliever. He averaged about 8 K/9, 4.3 BB/9 and about .7 HR/9.

 

What should we have expected from him coming into the season? He's been a consistent 4.1ish ERA guy as a reliever. Going from relief pitching to starting on average adds about 3/4ths of a run to your ERA. That meshes with the statistical projection systems, so ZIPS put him at 4.98 and PECOTA at 4.89. That's three distinct methods coming up with nearly identical projections, so I'm comfortable going with that. That puts him at a little below average, as the NL ERA for starters last season was 4.64.

 

So we know who he was before and who we expected him to be. Now we need to know who he has been so far and whether that should change our projections?

 

Raw results: 57.1 IP, 2.35 ERA.

 

We can dismiss the 2.35 ERA out of hand. He hasn't pitched that well. First of all, he's given up an uncommonly high total of UER, which are just as much his fault as any runs but taken off his ledger because of archaic scoring rules. So now we're at 57.1 IP, 3.45 RA. That's very good, but not quite in the elite territory of his ERA. This reflects his Support-Neutral W-L of 3.6-2.6 in 9 starts, and a team SNW% of .567 (BP hasn't updated these stats for today yet, but I did some quick calculations that should get me pretty close to the new numbers).

 

So why has a pitcher we expected to post a 4.9ish ERA and be below average pitching like an above-average pitcher?

 

First, and most obviously, he's been lucky. Using stats coming into today because Fangraphs hasn't updated, he's walking about the same as always, he's King a less, he's giving up HRs at a lower rate. Defense-indendent, he's been mostly the same pitcher, especially given that today's performance should bring his K-rate back up to normal. That's a good thing, considering the transition to starting should have cost him more and still might as the season goes on. If he can keep up his peripherals from his last three seasons as a reliever, he's a 4.1ish ERA pitcher, which is fine for a starter. His FIP coming into today was 3.87.

 

But why the 3.45 RA instead of the 4.1ish ERA or the 3.87? You guys already know the answer: BABIP. He was allowing a .203 BABIP coming into today, which is simply unsustainable. How much upward should we adjust it?

 

If we adjust it up to his career average of .309, he gives up 15 more hits, which probably means about 8 more runs. Add 8 runs to his total, and he's got a 4.71 RA, still a little better than what our projections put forth but not much.

 

That said, I don't think a .309 BABIP would reflect how he's pitched either. He's not giving up many line drives and he's inducing a lot of ground balls. The type of BIP matters when calculating expected BABIP. Dempster's LD/GB/FB ratio (again, all stats coming into today) this season is 14.6% 56.9% 28.5%, compared with 20.4% 47.5% 32.1% career. He's giving up essentially the same FB, but he's forced 5.8% fewer LDs and 9.4% more ground balls. That's eight fewer LDs and 13 more GBs. Using the standard BABIP rule-of-thumb of LD%+.120 would give him a .266 BABIP, meaning he's allowed just 7.5 fewer hits than expected. Call it 4 extra runs to be safe. Add four runs to his actual performance this season and we come out with a 4.08 RA. I think that's even being a little harsh, because his 2+ GB/FB ratio should improve his BABIP even more.

 

So now we know the Dempster we have. We have a Dempster who was projected to be in the 4.9 ERA range because of the transition to starting, but has instead pitched to his previous years' peripheral level plus an improved ground ball rate and thus has a defense and luck independent run avearge of about 4.1, slightly better than previous seasons.

 

I think it's fair to say that his performance this season, adjusted for luck, has been legitimately better than projections because he hasn't lost any peripherals from his time as a reliever.

 

So does this change our projections for him from here on out? That depends on two things: Is his newfound groundball tendency legit and can his arm hold up to starting for an entire season after relieving for so long?

 

On the GB issue, I think there's at least some chance he can continue to induce GBs at a rate higher than expected, though perhaps not at the rate he has managed so far. As mentioned earlier in the thread, his pitching pattern and stuff has changed. He's relying on his slider much less in favor of his FB, and he's throwing all his pitches about 2 MPH slower. Fewer sliders means fewer hanging sliders, and the slightly slower fastball could mean improved movement. Both of those would lead to an improved GB rate.

 

On whether his arm can hold up, we'll see. I'm skeptical.

 

What does all this mean in summary? It's up to the Cubs management staff now (as much as that makes me cringe). If Dempster can keep it up for the rest of the year, great. But he needs to be monitored carefully.

 

This good start means that his end-of-the-year totals will almost certainly be better than expected for almost the entire season, at worst around league-average for a starter. But if his GB-rate starts to slide, or if he starts to wear out and lose his peripherals, they need to be aware that he could collapse into a much below average pitcher and need to be replaced even while his season-to-date stats still look decent. He's been worth probably around a full win over expectations to this point, but that's no reason to just let him give it away in July and August if he starts to suck.

 

I hope this all made sense.

[third eye]

It did. Thanks for the well thought out, objective post.

[soapy]

let's also remember that dempster hasn't been a full-time starter in five years, and relying on him to pitch well in september and october would be a very dicey proposition.

 

this is probably my biggest concern at this point. it will be interesting to see if how he's holding up in August, September and possibly October.

 

i don't have time to look up his numbers right now, but it seems like he's cut down drastically on the walks since the last time he was a starter. like i said though, that may just be my (incorrect) impression since i haven't pulled up the numbers.

 

EDIT: and if i'd read the entire thread before posting i would have seen that his bb's are in fact not down.

[CuseCubFan69]

I don't think he's going to keep this up and I hope when he is struggling, other starters pick it up or the hitters/pen step up to cover him. I'm thrilled with how well he's throwing and I hope he continues to get ahead of the hitters in the count.

[nilodnayr]

I definitely thought it would be a disaster. Now I really haven't been able to watch him pitch all that much this season. What is he doing differently that he's having so much success? Is it mechanics? Control? New pitches? Comfort level?

 

The defense behind him, more than anything else. He's only allowed something like 33 hits in 57.1 IP.

 

Yeah, his K rate, BB rate, and HR rate (and HR/FB) are all pretty comparable to his prior Cubs experience. Its just that coming into todays game he has a 203 BABIP, resulting in a 173 average against. Granted he has only allowed a 14.6 LD%, but thats not really a skill and will regerss to the mean. Regardless of what his ERA says, his underlying statistics show that he was and is a league average pitcher.

 

There's still some interesting digressions from his previous Cubs career that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

 

1) There is a noticeable difference in his pitch selection. He's throwing more fastballs at the expense of sliders.

 

2) All three of his pitches are coming in at a consistent 2 MPH below when he was a closer, possibly indicating a change in the way he's pitching.

 

3) Not only is his LD% lower, his FB% is as well, with the difference all going to his GB%. If he was just getting LD-lucky, I wouldn't imagine the difference would be that pronounced.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=517&position=P

 

He's nowhere near as good as his ERA, and I don't know if any of this will be meaningful long-term, but it's curious to say the least.

 

RE #1 I'm guessing this has to do with him having to "conserve" his slider. When you are facing batters multiple times as a starter vs once as a reliever, you have to not show all of your pitches the first time around. I'm guessing this is just correlational with moving to the starting role, rather than a causation for his success. If anything, you would assume that a pitcher who does a worse job at randomizing his pitch selection will get hit harder.

 

RE #2 I'm guessing the reduction in speed can be attributed to the fact that he was only pitching one inning at a time before and could go all out and is now pitching multiple innings and needs to conserve himself and/or get tired later into games resulting in a slower average than when he was closing.

 

RE #3 Yes, his GB% has increased, and hes eclipsed the point where GB% becomes moreso due to skill than luck (ie r^2 exceed 0.5) of 150 batters faced. Thats great an all, but on the flip side that further exposes the luck in his BABIP. Fly balls get converted into outs more than any other type of batted ball, and even though he has a really low BABIP, he has a low FB%, meaning that his BABIP should actually be higher than our standard LD%+.120 estimation (because those non-line drives are mostly ground balls (infact 2:1 in comparison with FB), which are turned into hits much more often than FBs).

 

Well Kyle you must have missed my original response to your comment on Demps peripherals and recreated the wheel is a more indepth manner. One booboo you made in your long post is that you said his increased GB/FB rates are helping his BABIP. Thats not true. FBs are turned into outs more often than GB, so an increase in GBs and a decrease in FB means that a pitchers BABIP should be worse. In Demps case, this isn't happening. When you are talking about a pitcher that has had a change in GB/FB the LD%+.120 estimation for eBABIP simply won't do. I aggregated and weighted Demps ball in play types to come up with what hes done as a reliever for the cubs... LD%=19.9%, GB%=51.3%, FB%=28.8%. There are about a bagillion different more indepth eBABIP calc, but I just pulled the first one I found that was simple. .763*LD+.265*GB+.131*FB. Using this, Demps eBABIP over his previous tenure as a cub was .325, his actual (again weighted) was .301. So lets be generous and say that maybe that formual doesnt work well for Demp or he has some ability to do better than his eBABIP, or whatever (point is I'm being generous here). Lets use that same formula on his batted ball type this year...it yields an eBABIP of .314. My generosity comes in where I adjust that by taking out .024 to say, well luck independet, Demp should have a .290 BABIP this year. When infact he has a .220.

 

My point in all this rambling and my previous post is to consider that Dempster "has fundamentally changed as a pitcher" and that has caused him this success as a miniscule reason (if any) for his success in comparison to his luck. As Kyle more appropriately stated in his last post, if Dempster has fundamentally changed at all, its been ever so slight in comparison to the affect luck has had in the difference between his expected results and actual results.

Edited May 16, 2008 by nilodnayr

[RynoRules]

I certainly don't think you can keep this up, but good for you Ryan. Its easy to root for guys like you.

[jersey cubs fan]

I certainly don't think you can keep this up, but good for you Ryan. Its easy to root for guys like you.

 

Except for the Canadian accent.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

let's also remember that dempster hasn't been a full-time starter in five years, and relying on him to pitch well in september and october would be a very dicey proposition.

he's a fine-tuned professional athlete, fatigue should not be an issue