Is Something Wrong With Jeremy Guthrie

Jeremy Guthrie pitched poorly in the World Baseball Classic; he pitched poorly in Spring Training; and he's not off to a particularly good start this season. I was expecting some regression based on his low BABIP the last couple of years, but nothing to this degree. So what's going on?

ERA
2007: 3.70
2008: 3.63
2009: 5.16

Well that's clearly not good, but it's only been 22.2 innings so far this year and ERA isn't a very good stat anyway.

FIP
2007: 4.41
2008: 4.53
2009: 5.93

Well that's clearly not good, but it's only been 22.2 innings so far this year.

K/9
2007: 6.3
2008: 5.7
2009: 4.8

As trends go, that is a really bad one. It's hard to really succeed in the majors with a 5.7 K/9. It's almost impossible to do it with a 4.8 K/9, unless you've got a lot of other things working in your favor.

BB/9
2007: 2.4
2008: 2.7
2009: 4.0

And one of those things has to be good control. Jeremy has shown above-average control since he came to the Orioles, but he did have some issues with it before that (and it's one of the reasons Cleveland let him go).

HR/9
2007: 1.18
2008: 1.13
2009: 1.59

At this rate, he'll give up 35 HR if he pitches 200 innings this year. That is just unacceptable, but I don't think it'll keep up.

BABIP
2007: .277
2008: .267
2009: .316

Small sample size, but some regression was to be expected. Doesn't help that the defense has actually not played well thus far.

GB/FB
2007: 1.11
2008: 1.15
2009: 0.70

Guthrie's never really been a groundball pitcher, but he's giving up way more flyballs this year. That's why the home runs are up - his HR/FB has actually fallen from 11.2% to 10.5% to 10%, but he's giving up so many more balls in the air that some of them are finding their way over the fense. This is something that should get back to near his career averages sooner than later. And the home run rate should fall some along with it.

FB %, velocity, and movement:
2007: 67.8% (93.4 mph), -6.1 X, 10.4 Z
2008: 64.1% (93.2 mph), -5.0 X, 9.9 Z
2009: 55.9% (92.5 mph), -4.4 X, 10.0 Z

The X is the horizontal movement, and the Z is the vertical movement. Jeremy is using his fastball a lot less in 2009, and it has less run in on right-handed batters and has lost some velocity. Not a huge cause for concern yet, but the pitch has gone from having slightly below average movement to being relatively straight. Maybe Bergesen can teach him the two-seamer.

SL %, velocity, and movement:
2007: 22.4% (83.7 mph), 3.0 X, 1.2 Z
2008: 18.1% (84.3 mph), 3.3 X, 1.3 Z
2009: 19.0% (84.1 mph), 3.7 X, 1.2 Z

He's throwing the slider about as much as he did last year and it has some more bite to it, running away from right-handed batters. You'd think it would be a pretty good strike-out pitch for him.

CB %, velocity, and movement:
2007: 4.5% (74.9 mph), 5.9 X, -3.3 Z
2008: 6.3% (73.9 mph), 6.1 X, -4.8 Z
2009: 6.2% (74.9 mph), 4.8 X, -4.6 Z

His curveball has actually lost some movement, after getting sharper last year. Very small sample size though, so take all that with a grain of salt.

CH %, velocity, and movement:
2007: 5.3% (82.8 mph), -6.2 X, 7.2 Z
2008: 11.4% (84.9 mph), -5.2 X, 6.5 Z
2009: 18.6% (84.6 mph), -4.5 X, 6.6 Z

When I looked back at his 2008 season, I noted that Jeremy had used his change-up more, and that he had some success with it. Well he's going to it even more in '09, though I don't know how batters are fairing against it. It has seen a similar loss in movement to his fastball, and is likewise a relatively straight pitch.

O-Swing%, O-Contact%, Zone%
2007: 23.3%, 65.6%, 53.7%
2008: 26.6%, 65.9%, 50.9%
2009: 22.2%, 70.0%, 56.3%

Batters are swinging at pitches out of the zone less against Jeremy in 2009, though when they do they're making more contact. That's not good, but we're not looking at all that many pitches at this point. The percent of pitches in the zone is interesting; he's throwing more strikes, and yet his walk rate is way up. Batters are swinging at the same percentage of pitches in the zone as last year (65.5% in both) and actually making contact at a lower rate (88.6% vs. 89.8%). It seems that the extra walks are a bit flukey.

The ERA doesn't look good thus far, but it's early and I think things will turn around. The issues driving that high ERA (and FIP) are his walks and his home runs, and both of those things really shouldn't continue at near their current rates. I'm mildly concerned about the fastball movement and velocity, but he started out last year with a lower velocity for his first couple of starts before picking things up and he's already started doing that this year (his average FB vel. went up in each game). Maybe he could have used a little more work during the spring, and a FIP around 4.50 again going forward is pretty likely. Jeremy's not a #1 starter, but he's our #1 starter. Read more ...

Community Projections: Jeremy Guthrie

Congratulations to Jeremy Guthrie on making the USA roster for the World Baseball Classic. The WBC is a good idea in theory - and I really do like the idea of it - but there are a lot of issues in practice. Injury risks, and stars not playing, and messing up Spring Training, and so on. Hopefully there won't be any negative repercussions for the O's #1 starter (maybe their only legitimate big league starter).

Jeremy Guthrie was a failed prospect (former #1 draft pick) when he was picked up off the scrap heap from Cleveland. After starting 2007 in the pen, he quickly transitioned to the rotation and has been the team's best starter ever since.

I looked at Guthrie in the middle of last season; mainly at how he puts up ERAs so much lower than what they should be given his peripherals.

2007: 3.70 ERA but 4.41 Fielding Independent ERA and 5.10 tRA (98 tRA+)
2008: 3.63 ERA but 4.53 FIP and 4.84 tRA (101 tRA+)

He's done it two years in a row and I have no idea why. Here's some more info. (thanks FanGraphs):

Year	K/9	BB/9	K/BB	HR/9	AVG	BABIP	LOB%	LD%	GB%	FB%	HR/FB %
2007	6.31	2.41	2.62	1.18	.250	.277	75.1	19.3	42.5	38.2	11.2
2008	5.66	2.74	2.07	1.13	.247	.267	76.7	18.2	43.8	38	10.5

That drop in strike-out rate is the most troubling thing.

Here's a cool graphic of Guthrie's stuff (stolen from Harry Pavlidis at Cubsfx.com):

It's for data through June for 2008. FanGraphs has the average speed of his pitches being about 0.5-1 mph less for each. Guts throws hard and has pretty good stuff. Let's look at the pitch outcomes with Josh Kalk's Pitch/FX tool:

Pitch	Balls	Strike Called	Strike Swinging	Foul	In Play Out	1B	2B	3B	HR
Fastball	849	411	124	469	327	82	18	4	18
Curveball	78	42	19	31	34	12	2	0	0
Slider	237	101	66	140	96	23	6	0	9
Change	144	65	70	91	60	23	4	0	0

When he hangs the slider it gets hit pretty hard. He didn't give up as many hits on hanging curveballs - most of the hits off of curves where out of the zone (usually low). Guthrie started throwing a few more curveballs and a lot more change-ups in 2008 at the expense of some sliders and fastballs. His change-up might have been his best pitch, showing a near 10 mph difference from his fastball with very similar movement (a little more sink) and a similar release point. He got swinging strikes on 15% of the change-ups he threw, compared to 10% for sliders, 9% for curveballs, and 5% for fastballs. That batters didn't hit it for much power is also a plus. Considering the velocity, I expected his heater to be more effective.

Looking at starting pitchers from last year (86 of them on FanGraphs), Guthrie has the 13th fastest fastball at 93.2 mph (in-between Zach Greinke and Matt Garza). The 12 guys ahead of him averaged 8.3 K/9 with only Edwin Jackson under 7.3 K/9 (he was at 5.3). The 12 guys after Guthrie averaged 6.84 K/9 with only two guys below Guts' 5.66 (Daniel Cabrera at 4.75 and Mike Pelfrey at 4.93).

Velocity does have some relationship to strike-out rate (even more FanGraphs goodness):


Guthrie is the dot that's at (93.2, 5.66). It looks like he's one of the very few pitchers who throws hard and doesn't K many guys.

The big elephant in the room is his BABIP. With values of .277 and .267, Guthrie has been "lucky" the last couple years (it should be closer to .300). Some pitchers have been able to maintain BABIP below .300, but not 30 points below. This is were there may be some small link with the pitch selection. Guys that threw more change-ups (say, in the top 35 of % of pitches being changes - Guthrie's 35th) had slightly lower BABIP (.294 instead of .300). That's shaky at best, but given his otherwise unimpressive assortment of skills (though he is an excellent athlete and a good fielder) I don't know what else explains the rate at which he gets outs on balls in play. Maybe he's just been lucky two years in a row. I don't really expect it to continue, but I'm hedging a little by predicting a slightly better ERA (converted from tRA) than one would expect given his peripherals.

My projection is 180 IP with a 4.37 ERA, but the current projection for the community WAR project is 180 IP with a 4.17 ERA. He should still be an average to slightly above-average starter, and the official stopper of the Orioles' staff. Read more ...

The Mysterious Success Of St. Guts

In celebration of his first win in almost a month, I decided to look at Jeremy Guthrie's season.

[Before I look at Guthrie, I went to address something Buck Martinez said several times in the game - that Guthrie was a poor record because he always pitches against the other team's #1 starters. He has opposed: AJ Burnett (Won), Tim Wakefield, Andy Pettitte, Matt Garza, John Lannan, Josh Beckett (Won), Joe Blanton, Jared Weaver, Jose Contreras, Felix Hernandez (Twice), Gavin Floyd (Won), and James Shields (Twice). By my count, that's two of the other team's #1 starters (Blanton and Beckett, who he beat). It is an impressive list of pitchers, I guess, but he's not going up against Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale every game. Once the season starts, it is largely random who a given pitcher will face.]

Guts was thought to have been lucky last year on balls in play, and was expected to regress this year. That hasn't really happened so far. The stats actually do not include the game today, which was very good.

2008 ERA: 3.58
2007 ERA: 3.70
After today, it actually went down to 3.40. Looks good so far.

2008 K/9: 5.75
2007 K/9: 6.31
His K's have gone from very lightly below average to below average (but not yet well below average). This is generally a bad sign.

2008 BB/9: 2.60
2007 BB/9: 2.41
His walks have gone up, but are still quite good. The league walk-rate has gone up as well, so it's not as bad as it appears. Still, it's not a good sign.

2008 HR/9: 1.19
2007 HR/9: 1.18
Same home run rate, but the league average has actually fallen, so this can be seen as regression. It is not a good rate, and not a good sign.

2008 FIP: 4.41
2007 FIP: 4.42
His ERA is above his fielding independent ERA by about what it was last year. Not a good sign that that's the case.

2008 BABIP: .270
2007 BABIP: .277
He's getting just as lucky on balls in play. It looks even worse when you consider his batted ball data (in both years it's about the same 20% line-drive rate, 41-42% groundballs, 38% flyballs). That BABIP should be about 50 points higher. Not a good sign.

There is only one real difference that I've found, and it's his pitch usage. He's throwing less fastballs (68% to 62%) and more change-ups (5% to 12 %). It's kind of strange that all of his peripherals and his results would stay pretty much the same, all things considering.

As 2007 wore on, some people said that Guthrie's luck was going to run out and his ERA would go up. Same thing over the off-season (projected ERA's were around 4.50). I wonder how long he would have to keep this up before I (and others) stop waiting for him to regress? It hasn't been long enough yet, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts. Maybe it's some sort of karmic justice in return for his lack of run support. Read more ...

Brian Bannister: SABR Pitcher

I have to say that I honestly did want the O's to trade for Brian Bannister when he was with the Mets (as far back as 2005, when he was still in the minors). He had good control (2.3 BB/9) and could strike some people out (8.3 K/9) while not giving up too many HR (0.6 HR/9). From what I had heard, his "stuff" wasn't that great, but he seemed to be able to pitch. He spent a little bit of time in the majors in 2006 with New York and was able to post a 102 ERA+ even with too many walks (5.2 BB/9) and few strike-outs (4.5 K/9) by still limiting home runs pretty well (0.9 HR/9) and not giving up too many hits (8.1 H/9). His BABIP was a low 0.242, which was a bit concerning.

After being acquired in a trade by Kansas City for reliever Ambiorix Burgos, Bannister posted a 121 ERA+ in his rookie season. He got the walks down (2.4 BB/9) but the strike-outs dropped further (4.2 K/9) while the home runs and hits stayed about the same (0.82 HR/9 and 8.5 H/9). His BABIP was 0.262 (lowest in the league), which implies that he was once again lucky, but is Bannister due for a big regression?

There are really two issues with his performance: the low strike-out rate and the low hit rate.

The low strike-out rate is explained by Bannister himself - “I know how to strike people out. I just save that for when I need it. I’m purposely NOT trying to strike people out when there’s nobody on base. I want them to hit it.” I have one issue with this at first glance, and it's that a lot of "contact and control" pitchers say this same thing, but that doesn't necessarily make them more effective. I decided to see if his starts actually back up his claim by looking at when his strike-outs occurred. Since 77 was too many to look at individually, I decided to break them down by situation. I went through all of his game logs for 2007 and kept track of how many men were on base and the number of outs before each strike-out (except for one - I missed one somewhere and I'm not going through it again). With no men on he recorded 18-13-10 (0, 1, and 2 outs). With a runner on first it was 4-5-13; runner on second: 2-0-4; runner on third: 0; runners on first and second: 0-0-3; runners on first and third: 0-1-1; runners on second and third: 0; and with the bases loaded: 0-1-1. Though I didn't keep track of how many of each situation there was overall, that about 82% of his strike-outs came in the lowest pressure situations (none on, or a runner on first) whereas there were very few when it would have been most useful.

[Edit: After I did this I found a place that actually has the splits in different game situations, which I used for the next part.]

I didn't like the idea of basing my conclusion (even though I stated that it wasn't a sure thing) on just his own data without any points of reference, so I decided to check the strike-outs of another rookie right-hander who has pretty good control, a not so great K rate, and gave up less hits than he should have - Jeremy Guthrie. I looked at their strike-outs per plate appearance in different game situations. Then I divided that rate by their overall rate so that we're comparing apples to apples (even if it's Granny Smith to Fuji, or whatever). With runners in scoring position (second and/or third) Guthrie K'ed at 95% of his usual rate, while Bannister was at 80%. With RISP and 2 outs it was 115% - 128%; men on at all: 102 - 123; late and close (Late & Close are PA in the 7th or later with the batting team tied, ahead by one, or the tying run at least on deck.): 86 - 52; tie game: 100 - 52; one run difference: 107 - 120; two run difference: 88 - 112; three run difference: 100 - 138; four run difference: 122 - 207; more than four runs: 61 - 129; and with no men on base: 98 - 100.

What does this all mean? Well, while Guthrie's adjusted K/PA stayed about the same when the score differential was less than four - dropping only for >4, but that was in a small number of PA (he just couldn't catch a break, score-wise - more on this later) Bannister's adjusted K/PA was lowest when the game was tied, and highest when the score differential was large. He did strike guys out better when there were runners on the bases, (but not in scoring position - except with two outs). Guthrie was pretty consistent all of the time, but it seems that Bannister actually may try to strike guys out more in certain situations; those that don't appear to depend on the score. This seems a bit odd, as with a larger lead a pitcher should "go after" hitters more in an effort to reduce pitch count, as a solo home run won't make too much difference. Since Bannister's "stuff" isn't that great, if he goes after hitters more that should result in more balls in play - not more strike-outs. I don't buy into the statement that Bannister could substantially increase his strike-out rate if he wanted to. It may go up some, but I doubt to becomes even league average. Some guys with good control have good strike-out rates in the minors, but that doesn't translate to the majors because hitters are more patient and their "stuff" is quite as good, relatively speaking. Could he K six per nine? Sure. He doesn't have to to be effective, but it wouldn't hurt.

In part of his interview with MLBTradeRumors, Bannister said that the low BABIP isn't all luck because "so far... in my career I have been able to get a Major League hitter to put the ball in play in a 1-2 or 0-2 count 155 times, and in a 2-0 or 2-1 count 78 times. That’s twice as often in my favor, & I’ll take those odds." This claim was researched by Mike Fast and he found that for 2007, Bannister actually pitched in favorable counts (0-2, 1-2, 2-2) 63% of the time, while the league average is 66%. He does pitch less often in bad counts (3-0, 3-1, 2-1), which outweighed the other counts by a little bit, but not enough to explain how he gave up less runs than he should have. Not only did he not pitch in good counts more often, he didn't induce batters to put the play in play when he had those counts more often. He went on to look at how batters handled each of Bannister's pitches and what happened to those balls that should have been hits. It seems Brian was able to get right-handed batters to ground his fastball to the shortstop (excellent defender Tony Pena Jr.) more than normal (so the BABIP in that situation was lower than expected) and that he may have been a bit lucky with the curveball as some line drives turned into fly balls. I would have to say that while Bannister can be an effective major league pitcher, I have a hard time seeing that happening if he repeats his performance from 2007. Either the K/9 has to go up or the BB/9 has to go down (though there isn't too much room for that) because the hits and a few home runs should show up that weren't there before.

I certainly hope that he is successful, because it is extremely pleasant to hear that an actual player looks over the advanced stats in this manner. At the very least, he should make one hell of a pitching coach one day. Read more ...