Friday, August 19, 2011

Targetng Rookie PItchers for Future Success

Last week I was asked who was a better keep for "the next couple of years": Alexi Ogando or Danny Duffy.


This is really an impossible question to answer. The metrics right now tell me that Ogando is better. On the other hand, Duffy's pedigree makes me think that he has a higher ceiling. I'd probably go with Ogando, if only because Duffy is struggling now and could very well continue to struggle in 2012.

The question got me thinking about what we should look for when we're trying to figure out which young pitchers to target going forward.

Top 10 2007-2011 WAR Pitchers with 2006/2007 Debuts
Pitcher
K/9
BB/9
HR/9
ERA
FIP
xFIP
WAR
6.00
2.9
1.02
3.63
4.35
4.42
3.1
9.23
4.0
0.74
4.00
3.63
3.81
3.2
7.68
2.4
1.10
2.56
3.90
4.36
2.6
9.86
3.3
1.29
4.08
3.98
3.73
2.6
7.46
4.1
1.10
4.28
4.74
4.49
1.1
6.64
4.8
0.77
4.76
4.56
5.10
1.3
8.45
4.1
0.85
4.15
3.96
4.59
3.5
7.51
2.7
1.30
4.84
4.39
3.99
1.9
5.90
5.8
0.70
3.80
4.88
5.43
0.6
7.62
3.9
0.80
3.10
3.99
4.23
2.5

These are the 10 pitchers who debuted in 2006 or 2007 who have the highest aggregate fWAR since 2007. As you would expect, it is an impressive list of pitchers. But is there a discernable pattern here?

One hundred and three pitchers tossed 240 innings or more from 2006-2007. Using the metrics above, how many pitchers on that table were in the Top 20 percent?

K/9: Seven
BB/9: Zero
HR/9: Four
ERA: Three
FIP: One
xFIP: Two

Once again, the corollary with strikeouts/future success is significant. Keeping the ball in the yard is fairly important, too, but walks aren't important at all.

Well, that's not true. Nearly all these pitchers got better at keeping batters off of the bases via the free pass.

It's interesting to see that FIP and xFIP don't have a stronger corollary to future success with these pitchers. You would suspect the opposite: that a rookie would have a higher ERA than xFIP. But in a majority of cases on the chart above, the opposite is true.


1 comment:

T.J. said...

I think on BBHQ Radio they mentioned, and this makes perfect sense and is borne out by your study, that a pitcher can't "learn" to strike out more guys, but he CAN learn to walk fewer.