Thursday, May 27, 2010

Furthering a Discussion - Joakim Soria 2008-2010

I posted up some pitching numbers the other day, and Dave (of GooseJoak fame) and I started having a little discussion on how Joakim Soria was doing. In honor of Joakim getting his 100th Career Save yesterday (6th youngest in MLB history), and the fact that I told Dave I would, I grabbed his pitching stats from 2008 and 2009 and compared them to the numbers I've got so far for 2010. These calculations are the same ones used in my previous Fun with Numbers posts, so while they may not be the absolute most useful, I find them interesting.

Joakim Soria - 2008-2010


The only thing that really jumped out at me was his P/Out, that is up over 1 P/Out since his fantastic 2008 season, and half a pitch over last year. His P/BB is almost 2 better over 2008, and 1 better than '09, the %STR numbers are down a couple percent, but I hope as the year goes on that will come back up to around 66%. Joakim doesn't look to be having a bad year from these stats, and maybe it is just my perception... but Joakim seems to be laboring a bit at times this year. Hopefully the numbers prove out and my perception is just wrong.

Discuss.

Disclaimer: The raw data for 2008-2009 for these calculations was gathered from www.baseball-reference.com

3 comments:

  1. Awesome analysis! I'm completely on board with you. Regardless of the ERA and WHIP I definitely get the sense he has labored, and as you show, your data bears that out. Without pitch-by-pitch str% it's hard to say for sure, but I've gotta believe that he may be having trouble commanding specific pitches. As you say, his P/BB has actually improved. So he has command when he needs it. But the P/BF definitely suggest that in between 0-0 and the end result, he's not as dominant as he has been in the past.

    Great work and thanks for posting this!

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  2. He looked good yesterday so maybe that was a start to the numbers correcting themselves.

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  3. He sure did look good yesterday. 8 pitches, 5 strikes, 3 outs. That's a little more like what I'm used to seeing from Joakim.

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