Derek Lowe & Contact
When someone discusses Derek Lowe’s pitching strategy, the term “pitching to contact” arises more often than not. It sounds good. Lowe uses his sinking fastball to generate groundballs in which his defense converts into outs. Lowe avoids walks and strikeouts while letting his defense do all the work. Most announcers would praise this approach and if you are ignorant to the common principles of pitcher BABIP, then it makes sense to preach it.
For the first time in a long time, Lowe’s pitching is finding a lot of contact. Despite being one of those vapid groundballers, Lowe’s contact rates over the last three years have resembled league average ratios. 82.1% in 2006 compared to 81% league average; 79.6% versus 80.8% in 2007; and 80.2% against 80.8% in 2008. So, Lowe’s 86.6% rate comes as a little bit of a surprise, especially since league average has maintained mostly static at 80.6%. Without surprise Lowe’s increase in contact rate marks the highest in the league amongst qualified starters.
I took each of the 78 starting pitchers contact rates with 100+ innings in this and the prior season then ran the year-to-year correlation, in which I got 0.5398. That means there’s some skill to missing bats, which is intuitive.
For whatever reason Lowe’s contact rate was its lowest in April, but its highest in June. Even the low watermark is higher than Lowe’s previous rates. Our pitch run values show his slider as the biggest difference. A perennial good pitch, last year it was a great pitch, and this year it’s a really poor pitch. The pitch is moving slower with more horizontal and less vertical movement, which could be a conscious decision made by Lowe. There seem to be three answers to the lack of utility: 1) the change has hurt his command – leaving him incapable of properly locating the pitch, but that seems like something Lowe would’ve adjusted to by now – or 2) the pitch has lost deception.
Lowe isn’t pitching to contact; he’s just been unable to avoid it.
A question – don’t different contact types have different expected BAbips? If so, shouldn’t pitchers who generate different types of contact have different means their BAbips fluctuate around, or are the differences small enough that they don’t matter?
There seem to be three answers to the lack of utility: 1) the change has hurt his command – leaving him incapable of properly locating the pitch, but that seems like something Lowe would’ve adjusted to by now – or 2) the pitch has lost deception.
Is there a third? Wondering, not trying to play gotcha.
Also, is the higher humidity in Atlanta something that would affect this? 86% seems to suggest that both the home and road splits are high, but I wonder if more moisture reduces movement.
Javier Vasquez probably doesn’t think so ;). Also a 6% rise is HUGE, it’s unlikely that park affects would be able to explain that.
I don’t think there are 2 pitchers on this earth who are more polar opposites than Vazquez and Lowe. Not much to comp there!
Javy’s line would look a lot worse I think in a different park. Turner has been suppressing HRs like a champ this year.
Javy’s HR/FB is 11.2%, right in line with league average and his career average.
11.2% yes, but aided by Turner I would think.
?
Before his last two home starts (2 HRs allowed each start), his HR/9 was 0.61 (anybody have the HR/FB home-away splits?). On the road he is at 0.81 HR/9. I would think his home park is aiding his overall HR/FB?
Based on the ESPN park factors (HR rate) for Turner. If anybody gives them credence.
That is a very small sample on which to make that judgement. His HR/FB is exactly league average, which by definition, means he’s not getting helped by his ballpark. (He might, but you can’t tell from the numbers)
His FIP increase has been accompanied by what I assume is a roughly commensurate increase in tRA. I assume tRA considers a grounball a favorable result (at least relative to other forms of contact excluding IFF)?
RJ, if you had even the slightest familiarity with our humanity and the laws of physics you could have saved yourself the “correlation”. And never mind, once again, that correlation is not causation. Our humanity and physics supplies the causation here.
Next, from the one comment:
“but I wonder if more moisture reduces movement.”
The more humid the air the less dense the air and so the less air there is to act on the seams of the baseball. In addition to reading the MBA types with no real clue as to the physics, ie., those who do the BP thing, you would do well to read pieces like this instead:
http://www.phschool.com/science/science_news/articles/pitching_science.html
Oh, and RJ, note the quote from Adair. Correlation tells us nothing of the art and doesn’t even begin to describe the physics.