How 'bout that Carl Pavano

Don’t tell Yankee fans, but Carl Pavano is very quietly having an excellent year. He currently is tied for 5th in the majors in pitcher wins, owns a 3.48 ERA, and has a FIP and xFIP under 4 to compliment the earned-run average. His 5.15 K/9 rate isn’t flashy, but his ability to keep batters off base via the walk has helped him immensely: his 1.20 walks per 9 rate is ridiculous and is third in the majors behind Roy Halladay’s and Cliff Lee’s. Similarly, he excels at getting first-pitch strikes. His rate of .685 is again third in the majors, this time behind the rates of Lee and Carlos Silva.

Probably the biggest asset Pavano has given his Twins this year is durability. Durability is something I find very interesting. Depending on how you define it, a “durable” pitcher can be one who can throw a lot of pitches (remember those high pitch-count games Livan Hernandez threw?), or one that can throw a lot of innings through pitch economy. The best pitchers, ideally, would be have the ability to do both when needed. In terms of innings per start, Pavano ranks fifth in the majors behind Lee, Halladay, Felix Hernandez, and Adam Wainwright with an average of 7.09 innings, which means that on average, he works into the 8th inning. This is obviously spectacular, and puts little strain on his bullpen. As for pitches, Pavano only averages 98 (the leader, Dan Haren, averages 110), which means that his ability to get ahead on hitters and prevent the base-on-balls is really helping him provide valuable innings.

Data is from Fangraphs.

Remaining starting pitchers without a no-decision

Clay Buchholz won his 9th game of the year yesterday in a game against the Diamondbacks. Buchholz also has 4 losses, making him one of the few pitchers this year without a no-decision. Here is the full list, minimum 10 starts:

Ubaldo Jimenez (13 starts) 12 wins 1 loss

Clay Buchholz (13 starts) 9 wins 4 losses

Carl Pavano (13 starts) 7 wins 6 losses

Jamie Moyer (12 starts) 6 wins 6 losses

Charlie Morton (10 starts) 1 win 9 losses

Data is from Fangraphs.

Fun with plate discipline

A few days ago, I read an interesting article over on River Ave. Blues that measured the plate discipline of Yankees' hitters by their out-of-zone swing to in-zone swing ratios. In the article, Joe Pawlikowski noted that the point of the metric is to filter out the type of hitter that doesn't swing at all (there's a good post about this, too, using Brett Gardner as an example). Ideally, you want a player that doesn't swing at pitches out of the zone and swings at pitches in the zone, though players can obviously be successful as "bad ball" hitters (just ask Pablo Sandoval). Using Pawlikowski's metric as a model, I wanted to figure out for myself who had the best plate discipline in the majors last year. I used Z-Swing/O-Swing to make a higher number more favorable, and this was a raw ratio. In 2009, the average Z-O ratio was 2.63 (65.9% Z-Swing to 25.1% O-Swing). To make the overall number more presentable, I divided each player's Z-O ratio by the league average and then multiplied by 100 (the same scale as ERA+, OPS+, wRC+, etc.). Here's the top 5 for hitters, with a minimum of 500 plate appearances - and I must say that I was a bit surprised:

	O-Swing	Z-Swing	Ratio	Plate Discipline Score
Chipper Jones	.154	.727	4.72	180
Marco Scutaro	.123	.555	4.51	172
Lyle Overbay	.152	.627	4.13	157
Luis Castillo	.122	.490	4.02	153
J.D Drew	.153	.612	4.00	152

No disrespect to any of the players on this list, but honestly, I expected to see Albert Pujols and/or Joe Mauer at the top. Pujols' PDS was 111, and Mauer's was 103. Let's look at the trailers in this category.

	O-Swing	Z-Swing	Ratio	Plate Discipline Score
Chris Young	.365	.525	1.44	55
Erik Aybar	.363	.620	1.71	65
Bengie Molina	.439	.770	1.75	67
Alfonso Soriano	.370	.722	1.95	74
Kendry Morales	.323	.638	1.98	75

For what it's worth, the aforementioned Pablo Sandoval ranked 7th lowest on this list, with a PDS of 76.

I figured that a similar concept could be applied to pitchers in order to see which hurlers "fooled" opposing hitters most frequently. Here, a lower ratio is favorable for pitchers (though a higher PDS is still favorable). I plugged the formula into the 2009 statistics (qualified pitchers with 150+ innings), and came up with a pitching leaderboard:

	O-Swing	Z-Swing	Ratio	Plate Discipline Score
Carl Pavano	.316	.647	2.05	128
Roy Halladay	.314	.662	2.11	125
Chad Billingsley	.302	.643	2.13	123
John Lackey	.289	.621	2.15	122
Dan Haren	.288	.628	2.18	120

Really? Carl Pavano? I can't say I would've guessed. Now I am obligated to show the bottom five:

	O-Swing	Z-Swing	Ratio	Plate Discipline Score
Brad Penny	.195	.698	3.58	73
Jeff Suppan	.206	.677	3.29	80
J.A. Happ	.208	.677	3.25	84
Kenshin Kawakami	.215	.674	3.13	86
Aaron Cook	.222	.690	3.11	87

All I have to say is WOW, Brad Penny really wasn't fooling anybody last year.

A few closing thoughts: this is hardly a showing of a player's overall strength --- like I said earlier, there are certain hitters who can have success hitting pitches out of the zone, and there are certainly many pitchers who make a career out of in zone misses (a changeup artist like Cole Hamels, or a flame-thrower like Justin Verlander, as two examples). There are plenty of other ways I would like to deconstruct the data on this subject, but that will have to be for another post.

All data is from Fangraphs.