Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Fun With Numbers Pt. 3

In a previous posting, Fun With Numbers Pt. 2, I did some of my own math to evaluate how the Royals pitching staff was doing through the first 15 games of the 2010 season. My original plan was to revisit these numbers every 15 games, well game 30 came and went and I was busy on the road, so I've crunched the numbers again after 45 games.

This time around I gave all the pitchers a letter grade also. These grades are based on 4 "stats" that I was concerned with at the time of Pt. 2, they are: Percentage of Strikes Thrown, Pitches per Walk, Pitches per Out, and Pitches per Batter Faced.

The pitchers are ranked against one another, with the pitcher having the best numbers for a stat given 100%, and the others a percentage of the best in that stat. After all those numbers are compiled, they are then given a letter grade based on your average High School lettering system. I'll admit, these numbers favor some pitchers who haven't thrown as much as others, but hopefully that will correct itself as the year goes on. If the bullpen solidifies itself that should help also, if not, I'll have to recalculate these based on stat/9 Innings Pitched (probably should do that anyway). So, now that you know how I came up with these numbers, please take a look at the grades, and let me know what you think.

Starters - Games 1-45


Starters - Grades for Games 1-45


Relievers - Games 1-45


Relievers - Grades for Games 1-45


Is it any surprise that some of these guys are no longer on the roster? These numbers may not be the best evaluation of pitchers, but I kinda like 'em, and they almost back up my gut feeling on these guys. Before I did this today, I was thinking Luke Hochevar would be the #2 starter on the list, but he ended up #3, just a bit behind Bannister.

4 comments:

  1. Observationally I noticed the same thing about Soria throwing a lot of pitches per PA. Although I am/was totally in favor of trying him at at SP, this is one significant data point against that. Unless it is just because of his approach, given that he only has to go 1-2 innings.

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  2. Yeah, I'm not sure what his deal is this year, he certainly seems to be struggling to get people out so far this year. I'm going to go back and check his numbers for last year and see how they compare to what he is doing so far. I was surprised to see that Farnsworth had better numbers in Pitchers per Out and Pitchers per Batter Faced. I didn't expect that at all.

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  3. I'd guess it's the curveball. Not throwing it for strikes this year. Interesting to see if the data would bear this out.

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  4. I thought maybe the data would be on Fangraphs but I guess not. They have just about everything else, but I guess they don't have % of strikes by pitch type. I'm sure we could parse this out in the XML though.

    Either way his curve is -3 RAA per 100 pitches this year, compared to +5, +2, +6 the last three years. I had seen that earlier in the year and I guess it's still about the same.

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