Dice-BB?
Yesterday, Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched seven scoreless innings to help Boston beat Toronto. He only gave up two hits and two walks while striking out six, pushing his record to a gaudy 18-2 and lowering his ERA to 2.80. 18-2 with a 2.80 ERA in most years gets you right near the top of the Cy Young voting. However, no one’s talking about Dice-K as a potential Cy Young winner, and it’s not just because of Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay’s brilliance – it’s because Matsuzaka is having one of the strangest seasons ever.
His 2.80 ERA is 61 percent better than league average – that’s obviously outstanding. But, this isn’t a normal type of dominance, where he blows hitters away and looks like an ace every time he takes the hill. This is… something else.
Dice-K has a staggering 5.17 BB/9 – among qualified pitchers, it’s the worst of any starter in baseball. If you walk five guys per game, you generally don’t stay in the rotation long enough to rack up big innings totals. If we lower the IP qualification to 50 innings, we get the following pitchers who have displayed worse command than Dice-K this year:
Kason Gabbard: 4.82 ERA
Miguel Batista: 6.70 ERA
Tom Gorzelanny: 6.66 ERA
Radhames Liz: 6.69 ERA
Tom Glavine: 5.54 ERA
Fausto Carmona: 5.19 ERA
Batista, Gorzelanny, and Liz are basically the three worst pitchers in baseball this year, while Gabbard, Glavine, and Carmona all ended up on the DL with arm problems. So, Matsuzaka’s peers in strike throwing include the worst of the worst and some guys who were pitching hurt.
He’s 18-2 with a 2.80 ERA. With the worst walk rate in baseball of any pitcher in baseball who was able to keep his job. His FIP is a pretty ordinary 4.01, which is about the best you could possibly hope for given the worst walk rate in the league. He misses enough bats to offset some of the control problems (8.21 K/9) and has also had great success keeping the ball in the park (0.63 HR/9), though his 5.9% HR/FB rate suggests that’s not all skill. He’s also benefited greatly from a .271 BABIP, which has directly led to him stranding more baserunners than anyone in the AL.
Essentially, Matsuzaka has been the master of getting himself into, and then out of, a lot of jams. This is the kind of season that comes around every 50 years or so – for instance, Herb Score had a somewhat similar performance in 1956 – he went 20-9 with a 2.53 ERA on ratios of 4.66 BB/9, 9.49 K/9, and 0.65 HR/9. Score wasn’t exactly a command artist either, but his strikeout rate was ridiculous for the era – the next best guy in the AL had a 7.73 K/9, and the next best guy after that was 6.47. So, while Score dominated despite having control problems, he also was far better at missing bats relative to his peers than Matsuzaka has been.
Really, for a pitcher to experience this much surface-level success while pitching as badly as Matsuzaka has is nearly unprecedented. There’s little doubt that his 2008 season will go down as one of the most unique in history, and it’s unlikely to be repeated any time soon.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Obvious bias from Dave! Cliff Lee’s name doesn’t hyperlink evenk though Roy’s and Dice-BB’s do! I call foul!
Just kidding.
His LOB% is ludicrous, something in the realm of 83%+ last I checked, and that might have gone up after today’s game, I’m not sure.
A .271 BABIP doesn’t seem extraordinary, though. Nothing like what Duke had pre-ASB (Duchscherer, not Zach Duke, who is terrible), even though it’s certainly sort of lucky.
It’s worth noting that he hasn’t been quite as useful as his ERA would suggest because he rarely goes deep into games, which seems obvious when he’s walking and K’ing so many guys, which is certainly going to ramp up his pitch count very quickly. Still, he’s been way better than you’d expect when you look at his walk rate.
Hey, at least his walk rate is better than Dontrelle’s. Here’s some food for thought: Cliff Lee has walked 31 batters this year. Dontrelle Willis has walked 32 batters this year, in just about 200 less innings. That’s….I don’t know what it is. Stupefying, really.