Don't Freak Out About The Rotation Just Yet

[Aaron_Kennelly]

Here's 6,000 words about our rotation:

 

http://www.northsidebaseball.com/articles/cubs-articles/50-don-t-freak-out-about-the-cubs-rotation-just-yet

[Sammy Sofa]

[Aaron_Kennelly]

FREAK OUT ABOUT THE ROTATION

 

*Duke writes an article suggesting that Javier Baez might not strike out as much*

Baez is striking out 30% of the time.

 

*Duke writes an article suggesting that Kyle Schwarber is about to lay waste to all pitchers in his path*

Schwarber is slashing .154/.254/.231 since then.

 

*Duke writes an article suggesting that better days are ahead for the starting rotation*

The rotation's ERA since then is 11.05.

 

This is not a drill! They are all going to die.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

In the Javy article, I also argued that Ben Zobrist was doing well with the only peripheral stats that actually matter in Spring Training.

 

So, while Ben Zobrist is only hitting .200 this spring, his peripherals look fine. His BB- and K-rates are strong. His ISO looks fine.

 

"He's simply being BABIP'd! That won't continue into the regular season!"

 

 

A .237 BABIP has left him with a .218 average.

 

Also in that article... "Addison Russell is definitely going to hit for a ton of power!"

 

This might be good news for Addison Russell, whose power surge in Spring Training is coming off the heels of a swing adjustment and power surge in the second half of last season.

 

 

A .144 ISO, lower than he was even as a rookie.

 

I also wrote this sentence last year:

 

The Cubs could face a ninth-inning tie in Game 7. And they will feel more secure knowing that Aroldis Chapman is lingering in their bullpen and not their opponent's.

 

[Ding Dong Johnson]

I'm going to be super pissed at you when I have nothing but football to watch in October

[UMFan83]

Please write an article about how Trump is doing great as a president and will definitely last all 4 years.

[Cubswin11]

Just like Lester pulled us out of the abyss in Game 5 of the WS he too will pull the rotation out of its funk tonight

[SouthSideRyan]

So CT has been masquerading as Duke Silver all this time?

[UMFan83]

So CT has been masquerading as Duke Silver all this time?

 

+1 Heart for the very old school reference

[Aaron_Kennelly]

About the velocity leap from Lester his last time out... all of his pitches were back down last night.

[Sammy Sofa]

It was the epitome of a "quality start" on a technicality; he was straight butt against a terrible team. The fear remains.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

It's not like we are going to have to replace all five guys. I think these versions of Arrieta and Lester can reasonably fill in as #4 and #5 starters. We just need to add a 1, a 2, and a 3.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

If we win the division at 85-77, can we just do a Bullpen Game for every game of the playoffs?

[Sammy Sofa]

It's not like we are going to have to replace all five guys. I think these versions of Arrieta and Lester can reasonably fill in as #4 and #5 starters. We just need to add a 1, a 2, and a 3.

 

[David]

[tweet]

[/tweet]

[jersey cubs fan]

Arthur briefly mentions evidence of non-Cubs pitchers losing velocity when they come to Wrigley, but doesn’t share any of the data or specifics. So I decided to look into it, and I was pretty shocked by what I found.

 

When comparing the fastball velocities (both four-seamers and two-seamers/sinkers) of the Cubs’ five starting pitchers, the data suggests something might simply be off with Wrigley Field’s pitch tracker:

 

Seems to me that would have been a good place to compare velocities of non-Cubs pitchers at Wrigley and away from Wrigley.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

Arthur briefly mentions evidence of non-Cubs pitchers losing velocity when they come to Wrigley, but doesn’t share any of the data or specifics. So I decided to look into it, and I was pretty shocked by what I found.

 

When comparing the fastball velocities (both four-seamers and two-seamers/sinkers) of the Cubs’ five starting pitchers, the data suggests something might simply be off with Wrigley Field’s pitch tracker:

 

Seems to me that would have been a good place to compare velocities of non-Cubs pitchers at Wrigley and away from Wrigley.

 

Yeah, that's the data that matters. This data really doesn't mean anything. Let's assume our pitchers were ramping up the velocity as time went on. (I don't actually think this was by design. As gilby said the other day in some thread, there's just no way Arrieta is going to be like, "Sure, skip, I'll serve up 88 mph meatballs for the first month of the season in a contract year.) But let's say it was a byproduct of them easing into things this spring and coming off a long year. And they'll be fine eventually; they just need to get built back up. Well the velo has been up in the most recent starts. So that fits. Except... those starts were on the road. So of course home/road numbers aren't going to tell us horsefeathers for our own guys who are going through this.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

Also if the Wrigley guns are slow 1 mph. Then, assuming 50/50 home and road starts, we'd expect their averages to be down about .5 mph on the whole. They are down 2 mph or more in some cases.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

This is unscientific, but spot checking a couple recent Wrigley starters on their Fangraphs Pitch f/x velocity charts, Hellickson and Nelson had similar velocities to other starts, and Velasquez had a season high on Monday.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

So... they are missing the data from his first inning -- and I remember a lot of 93 and some 94 in the first -- but Brooks Baseball has Arrieta's velocity down about 1 mph across the board from where he was the last two starts, which, yes, were on the road. Eickoff's velo was about 1 mph down across the board from every other start he's had this year, too.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

So I found this.

 

 

These velo readings are fucked. Absolutely fucked. Wrigley's reading are just bad. If we ignore the Wrigley readings, it looks like Jon and Jake are about 1 mph lower than last year. Kyle is about 1.5 lower. Lackey's about .5 or so lower. Now, league-wide, I believe most guys are up about .5 mph, too. Jake started off really low and built up some. Same with Lackey. But that horsefeathers with Kyle throwing 84 was probably [expletive], I'd imagine. He's been around 86.5 before and after on the road. And Jake and Jon building up velo and then dropping back down the last two nights doesn't make much sense.

 

And there is a lot more error in other parks, too. So who knows what the hell is going on?

 

I'd say our guys have lost velocity, but probably only around an mph or so. Nothing too terrifying. Especially when you consider them being eased in and heavy workloads last year... maybe they are still working up to max because of the light workload in the spring? Regardless, these Statcast readings are [expletive] and we can't compare these to PITCHf/x from previous years.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

MLB really fucked this up bad. I've been following along on Tom Tango's blog as he is introducing new things and bouncing things off of people. And people are pissed. The sabermetricians, the Brooks Baseball guys, etc., have been losing their horsefeathers on Tango all year. They aren't releasing everything to the public, and haven't even been mentioning when they change things. And Tango hasn't been very receptive to suggestions and warnings from others. His blog has been a hornet's nest full of angry mathematicians.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

This is a pretty good read: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/what-is-up-with-the-cubs-rotation/

 

Especially worthwhile are the charts comparing 2016 xwOBA and xBA(calculated w/ Statcast data) with the actuals and how that compares with 2017. Hendricks and Lester have been getting similarly strong defense as last year, while Lackey has seen a decent dip and Arrieta has seen the defense behind him crater. Small samples, but it gives some hope that Arrieta and Lackey have better days in front of them.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

This is a pretty good read: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/what-is-up-with-the-cubs-rotation/

 

Especially worthwhile are the charts comparing 2016 xwOBA and xBA(calculated w/ Statcast data) with the actuals and how that compares with 2017. Hendricks and Lester have been getting similarly strong defense as last year, while Lackey has seen a decent dip and Arrieta has seen the defense behind him crater. Small samples, but it gives some hope that Arrieta and Lackey have better days in front of them.

 

Good stuff. I'm not even so sure that the defense is completely to blame. I think they are to blame some, for sure. They just haven't been as sharp defensively. And that's not something I expect to continue. There are a lot of really good defenders on this team. And I suspect they'll get their horsefeathers together.

 

But, if you look at the expected stats at https://www.xstats.org/ that Andrew Perpetua keeps, his expected stats are also based off of batted ball direction, which Baseball Savant's aren't. Savant's method only looks at launch angle and exit velocity. Pepetua's calculations have Lester's and Arrieta's xBA and xwOBA higher than Savant's, though not as high as their actual numbers. So I think another problem is that balls are just finding holes -- or finding where there usually are holes.

 

Add them both together, porous defense and finding holes, and then realize it's a small sample size and weird stuff can happen.

[Aaron_Kennelly]

An interesting note is that Kyle Hendricks' xStats from last year are nearly identical to his actual numbers, when we were assured in Cy Young discussion that he was actually just lucky and not an actual ace.