Aaron Loup Has a Problem
On Wednesday, Aaron Loup threw this up-and-in fastball.
That pitch hit Freddie Freeman in the wrong spot, breaking his wrist in the process, and put the Braves best player on the shelf for the next couple of months. Freeman, for his part, did his best to give Loup the benefit of the doubt.
“He was just trying to get me out,” Freeman said. “The best possible way to get me out is to throw inside. I’d be the first one to tell you that. He was just trying to do his job, and one got away.”
It was nice of Freeman to state that he didn’t think Loup was throwing at him, especially since things could have easily escalated, as Freeman was the seventh batter hit in the Jays-Braves series. While Julio Teheran did predictably hit Jose Bautista, the second batter of Thursday’s match-up between the two teams, we didn’t get the big fight that everyone was expecting. Perhaps Freeman’s statement helped keep things from spiraling out of control.
Or perhaps Freeman just knows about Aaron Loup. Maybe Freeman doesn’t think Loup was trying to hit him because this is just what Aaron Loup does.
Since getting to the big leagues in 2012, Loup has hit 26 of the 1,007 batters he’s faced. But more impressively (for lack of a batter word), he’s hit 19 of the 406 left-handed batters he’s faced. To put that in context, here’s total HBP vs left-handed batters and the percentage of batters that have been hit by all pitchers with at least 10 HBPs vs LHBs since 2012.
If you’re wondering about those two marks on the far right, that’s A.J. Burnett and Charlie Morton, and now you know why the Pirates have had a reputation for pitching too far inside. But while Burnett and Morton have hit a lot of lefties over the last five years, they don’t hit the highest percentage of LHBs that they face. That would be Loup, and not by a little bit.
4.6% of the left-handed batters Loup has faced in his career have taken first base the hard way. Among the guys with at least 10 HBPs against lefties since 2002, he’s a full percentage point ahead of the next highest mark (Ross Detwiler, 3.6%). Of the 76 pitchers with 10+ HBPs against lefties since 2012, the average HBP% is 1.3%. Loup is four standard deviations from the mean of the group already pre-selected to have hit at least 10 left-handed batters in the last five years.
And while Freeman can talk about how Loup was just doing his job, the interesting thing is that there doesn’t appear to be an easy explanation for Loup’s ridiculous hit-by-pitch rate. He’s not a guy with great stuff he just can’t harness; a lot of his big league success comes from throwing strikes, in fact. His basic skillset is avoid walks and get groundballs. He’s the opposite of the Wild Thing archetype; he commands average stuff pretty well, and that’s why he’s a big leaguer.
Of course, Freeman noted that Loup was just pitching inside and one got away, so if Loup lived on the inside part of the plate against LHBs, perhaps that would explain the high HBP rates. Except, well, he doesn’t.
For comparison, here’s the league average since 2012 against LHBs.
Relative to the norm, Loup actually works more down-and-away from lefties than most pitchers. His percentage of inside pitches aren’t that distinguishable from the league average, and certainly aren’t anywhere near where they’d explain why his HBP rate is four times the norm.
And if you look at his actual location of HBPs vs lefties, it’s not like he’s just gotten hosed by having guys hang over the plate and take pitches that are close to being strikes.
Freeman’s HBP was actually one of the closest to the zone of the 19 lefties that Loup has nailed, and that’s because the pitch was actually supposed to be low and away.
Look at that target. Luke Maile asked for a pitch below the knees on the outside corner; Freeman actually got a pitch at his body, well inside. If he hadn’t committed to his stride into the swing, he could have gotten out of the way, which is probably why he said he doesn’t believe Loup was throwing at him; this isn’t where you put a ball if you’re trying to nail someone.
But since Loup drops down nearly to side-arm and is falling towards left-handed batters with his delivery, when he mistimes his release point, the ball ends up going right at the lefty in the batter’s box, regardless of where he was trying to aim. For reference, here’s his HBP of Nick Markakis on Monday.
Same thing; he’s not trying to hit Markakis, but he just misses his release point and the ball flies right at the left-handed hitter his body is aiming at. Loup’s delivery means that if he doesn’t successfully throw all the way across his body, the opposing hitter pays for it.
From Loup and the Blue Jays perspective, the occasional HBP is worth the reward; Loup has been a very good left-on-reliever in his career, allowing just a .264 wOBA to same-handed hitters. His delivery makes it difficult for lefties to pick up the ball, and since he’s not throwing top-shelf stuff, he probably needs that deception to have a big league career. And if one of every 20 lefties he faces has to wear one when a ball gets away, well, so be it.
So neither Loup nor the Jays really have much incentive to change anything. It’s their opponents that suffer the damage caused by Loup’s delivery, both in terms of lack of hits when he throws strikes and broken wrists when he doesn’t. In economics terms, Aaron Loup’s success comes with an externality, and short of charging the mound more regularly, there isn’t a lot that opposing batters can do to get him to stop hitting them so often.
If there’s a line at which a pitcher becomes dangerous to the sport, I doubt few would argue that Loup has crossed it. On average, he hits about three or four left-handed batters per year. Since he’s something of a LOOGY, he just doesn’t pitch enough to endanger enough hitters for there to be a push for someone to do something about it. But Loup’s existence does bring about an interesting question; at what point would a pitcher be considered too dangerous to opposing hitters to be allowed to continue pitching? If Loup were a starter with this HBP%, would that be tolerated, or would the Jays end up in so many fights that the situation became untenable?
That’s more of a hypothetical question, though, because starters don’t throw with Loup’s delivery, otherwise opposing managers would just stack the line-up with RHBs and score a million runs a game. Perhaps that’s the game’s way of self-policing.
But Loup’s delivery already cost the Braves their best player for most of the rest of the 2017 season. I don’t know that there’s anything that can really be done about it, short of Jose Bautista getting hit more often than he would like, but it would be good for the game if Aaron Loup could do a better job of getting a handle on his release point. If I was a left-handed hitter, I probably wouldn’t be all that excited about this guy being a Major League pitcher.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
“Relative to the norm, Loup actually works more down-and-away from lefties than most pitchers.”
This would mean that hitters would likely try to cheat a bit and dive in there early to get to the down and way pitch, no?
Addressed in the article along with the pitch location chart. That chart doesn’t look like plate-crowders paying the price.
d’oh. correct you are.
Do we know what an average HBP spread looks like? Maybe for the average LHP that works inside more often, half of those HBPs don’t happen. There are 5 of them that aren’t even inside the batter’s box at all. An additional 5 instances are barely inside it. Perhaps 50% of his HBP wouldn’t occur if a batter was preparing for inside pitches as opposed to diving over the plate like Freeman was.
I’d like to see that. I assumed from that graphic that the boxes were the batter’s boxes, but it’s a little hard to tell.
I don’t think those squares are supposed to represent the actual batter’s box. They’re there to orient the viewer as to point of view (pitcher vs. catcher).
In what universe was Freeman “diving out over the plate”. The ball was way inside. It was just less way inside than the typical Loup pitch that hits lefties. I love that somehow this is Freddie Freeman’s fault, not the fault of the guy who’s prone to missing his pitch locations by two feet.
If you’re going to be an apologist, pick a better player than Aaron Loup.
I don’t know about “diving” but Freeman absolutely started his swing. If he’s taking all the way or if he recognized the pitch earlier and bailed out (or even just stood still) this would have easily missed him.
It’s not Freeman’s fault (of course). But this was also avoidable … unlike many HBP situations.
This is such a weird take. That ball was several inches off the plate up and in, and it was coming at 95 mph. He’s a lefty with a tough arm slot pitching against another lefty. It’s hard to pick that pitch up. Maybe Freeman thought it was a slider. Maybe he started and the pitch ran up and in a lot more than he was expecting. The pitch was well off the plate. Loup is well off the plate inside to lefties much more than other pitchers. What are we talking about here? Loup missed his location by three feet! It’s on Loup.
Nobody is being forced to stand in against Aaron Loup.
The better question is, at what point do millionaire athletes decide their millions of dollars is not worth the fractional risk of being hbp.
If I was a left-handed hitter, I would be extremely excited to be a millionaire athlete, and stop whining.
Oh look. We found the wiseass.
Fangraphs is becoming severely autistic.
P.S. I would love to acquire the appropriate mixture of drugs so that I can get to the mental state where I would believe that any millionaire athlete would give two shits about Loup’s delivery.
Every downvote is an affirmation of how right I am.
I can’t argue with that!
Prepare to be very, very uh…”right”.
You know what, if someone told me they’d give me a million dollars if they could break my wrist, I don’t think I’d take it. In fact, I know I wouldn’t.
I’d take that money in a new york minute.
How much money are you making a year?!?!?!
Roughly the median household income for my zip code. It would take me many years to earn a million. Maybe I just have a low pain tolerance. I understand that Freeman makes a lot of money and is aware of the risks involved. If I was good enough to make the majors I’d take that risk. Stepping in the bucket was maybe the least of the impediments to my major league ambitions. Not that I got past little league. My comment was kind of a non-sequitur, but the whole concept of how much money Freeman makes as some kind of argument struck me. Anyway, as far as I know Freeman didn’t whine about it at all.
If you look at his year-by-year rates he’s hit over 7% of LHB the past 3 years after hitting 0%, 5.3%, and 3% his first 3 years. Maybe he’s getting worse or being encouraged.
But it occurred to me that looking at the HBP rate and deviation from norm might overstate things due to the small numbers involved. For example, the difference between 4.6% and Detweiler’s 3.6% is 4 fewer HBP by Loup over a career that spans 6 years, albeit over 240IP.
Like Capps delivery maybe MLB should keep an eye on it but at this point banning or suspending him or whatever the last line implies seems a bit extreme. At least it doesn’t look like he’s headhunting…except for maybe that one pitch.
The vast majority of HBP don’t result in any injury at all, so the risk to opposing players is really very minimal.
I’d also guess that same-sided HBP aren’t as dangerous as opposite-sided – it’s easier to turn your back or pull in your hands when the ball isn’t headed in towards you.
Loup has given up 18 non-intentional walks to left-handed batters, and 19 HBPs. To Dave’s point on Loup’s HBP problem not being attributable to being generally wild, that ratio of HBP to walks is probably much more than 4 standard deviations away from the mean.
If there’s a line at which a pitcher becomes dangerous to the sport, I doubt few would argue that Loup has crossed it.
Either I’m misunderstanding it, or this sentence doesn’t come across the way you wanted it to.
Yeah, it’s weird. Like in context it seems like he wants to say that most people would argue Loup is dangerous, but logically, and what I think he actually meant is that most people would argue the opposite.
It’s just the placement of the sentence (near the end of an article where he just pointed out how, relatively, dangerous Loup is) that makes it seems like he’d be saying the former.
It’s a double negative.
Of course it is. Do you understand what the double negative comes out to?
The root problem is that it’s a bad sentence because it can be plausibly read as either of the following:
If there’s a line at which a pitcher becomes dangerous to the sport, I doubt few would argue against the proposition that Loup has crossed it.
If there’s a line at which a pitcher becomes dangerous to the sport, I doubt few would put forth the argument that Loup has crossed it.
… and those meanings are opposites. The double negative complicates the issue because the unnecessary complexity forces the reader to do extra work and thus contemplate both plausible readings.
GrammarGraphs!
My proposal to curb this danger is giving a free base anytime a pitch is too far inside, even if the player gets out of the way (I’d also stop giving first base for pitches that are barely off the plate inside that hit batters, I’m sure Max Scherzer would agree with that). This would be best done with robot umpires. This would decrease intentionally throwing at players (because there would be a decent chance you don’t even hit the guy and he still gets first base) and it would make pitchers like Loup less valuable and perhaps out of a job. Also, pitches above the shoulders should be an auto-ejection, regardless of intent.
I’ve always thought it’s odd rule design that there’s no penalty for throwing behind the batter. Beyond just the one ball on the count.
The perverse incentive of adding that rule, though, is that it means if you’re going to throw near a guy, now you might as well do your damnedest to nail him good, because that’s the same for you as if you miss.
I bet with how close Rizzo crowds the plate, he would be HBP almost every PA vs Loup.
“[A]t what point would a pitcher be considered too dangerous to opposing hitters to be allowed to continue pitching?” With Loup, as noted, it won’t be raw totals. But suppose he injures another top LHH – Votto say? Or two? I could see action of some sort then.
This is what I was thinking about when I posted the question that may have prompted this column.
I’m not aware of MLB ever taking action against a pitcher whose HBP caused injuries, as long as no intent was suspected. Ed Farmer wasn’t disciplined after breaking bones of Frank White and Al Cowens in one game. Carl Mays wasn’t disciplined for the pitch that killed Ray Chapman. So it’s hard to imagine action simply based on an extreme HBP rate.
But COULD it be appropriate to intervene in some way against Loup, or against a hypothetical pitcher with an even higher HBP rate, BEFORE he caused multiple injuries?
If we posit that another one or two injuries caused by Loup in the near future might prompt league action, does it make sense to wait until after those injuries? — or the injuries that may result from retaliation?
I don’t know, but it’s worth talking about.
Yeah maybe they should take a page from the movie Minority Report and pre-emptively ban him from baseball! Or not…
So I guess you’d let drunk drivers keep racking up speeding tickets until they actually run over a few people?
Drunk driving is illegal. Non-intentional HBPs are not.