Francisco Liriano’s Shaky Start
By the time he completed his third start in 2010, Francisco Liriano was already getting national headlines. He had thrown 21 innings, striking out 17, and allowing just three runs. After a disappointing return to the mound in 2009, it appeared that the Liriano we had seen in 2007, or at least some facsimile thereof, was on his way back. This year Liriano is making national headlines, and again he has people comparing him to a previous incarnation. Only this time it has been negative headlines, and the connection has been to his 2009 self. Plenty has gone wrong in the early going for the 2010 FIP and xFIP leader, and no, it probably doesn’t have much to do with pitching to contact.
The most noticeable change has been his dip in velocity. Last year he averaged 93.5 mph on his two-seam fastball, which he uses far more frequently than his four-seamer. This year it’s down to 91.6. We’re still in April, and we know that April velocities tend to run a bit lower. But last April Liriano was averaging 93.3 mph. The velocity becomes a bigger concern when we compare it to 2009, when it averaged 90 mph. While velocity probably plays into Liriano’s struggles, it doesn’t paint the whole picture. Plenty more is going on here.
Take the following with a grain of salt, because comparing year-to-year PitchFX movement numbers can get a bit dicey, but the early numbers suggest that he’s not getting as much arm-side run, nor is the ball dipping as far as it did last year. That is, he got 9.3 inches of horizontal movement and 5.4 inches of vertical break last year, against 8.5 inches of horizontal and 6.0 inches of vertical this year. If his two-seamer, on which he generates all those ground balls, isn’t moving with the same degree of break this year, it would go a long way in explaining his poor start.
The slider, Liriano’s main strikeout weapon, also plays a factor here. Thankfully for him, that pitch appears to have everything working for it. Last April it averaged 84.1 mph, while it’s at 84.8 so far this season. It is also generating a good deal of swings and misses, 21 percent, compared to 25 percent last April. Again, I wouldn’t get too caught up; if it is indeed the only pitch he has working, it’s not a wonder that batters are swinging and missing slightly less often. The biggest change is quite unsurprising: he’s leaning on it more. That is, he’s thrown it 30.6 percent of the time this year, which is more often than any other pitch he throws. last year he only threw it slightly less often in April, but he also used his two-seamer far more frequently.
Putting this together, it seems that Liriano’s two-seamer just isn’t there, and that he’s trying to mix in the four-seamer and slider more often. Yet, as with the two-seamer, the four-seamer has lost some velocity. That leaves him with just two pitches, the slider and the changeup, that are working in any way. While any pitcher would love to have a slider with a 21 percent whiff rate and a changeup with a 23.2% whiff rate, it’s tough to sustain those numbers when your fastball isn’t working, which appears to be the case with Liriano.
Hitters have seemingly caught on to Liriano’s diminished stuff. They’re swinging less overall, but they’re actually swinging more often on pitches in the zone, while almost completely laying off pitches out of the zone. Liriano has generated swings on just 18.4% of pitches out of the zone, which is well below the league average of 27.9%. Last year he was well above the league average on O-Swing%. The hitters are still swinging and missing — his SwStr% hasn’t dipped that precipitously — but the data suggests that they’re just not chasing those bad pitches, which leads to more walks, obviously, and Liriano has issued nine free passes so far- more than double the rate at which he walked batters last year.
While it might be en vogue to point at Ron Gardenhire and staff for their pitch-to-contact preaching, that doesn’t appear to be what’s hurting Liriano right now. In fact, the one pitch he uses to induce contact, the two-seamer, is the pitch that isn’t working for him. He’s lost velocity on it, and the early data suggests that it isn’t moving with the same run and depth he showed last year. Hitters have seemingly caught on, laying off far more pitches out of the zone, while taking hacks at stuff he leaves in the zone. The result: fewer strikeouts, more walks, and more chances to hit the ball hard. As is the case with most baseball fans who enjoy young, exciting pitchers, I want to see Liriano recover his old form. But when the problem involves both speed and movement on a sinking fastball, I’m not quite confident it will happen.
Joe also writes about the Yankees at River Ave. Blues.
At what point does Liriano get cut in a 12tm 6×6 (HLD, OBP) mixed league? I forgot to put him in my lineup last time – thank goodness. He’s killing my ratios.
Fortunately I only own Liriano in H2H. I’m benching him in his next start.
I drafted him to be my ace. I will probably bench him for his next start too. He’s been so awful that even his (few) strikeouts are useless.
Liriano didn’t pitch as badly as the numbers would suggest in yesterday’s start.
Here’s Jesse from Twinkietown reviewing it:
http://www.twinkietown.com/2011/4/14/2110576/one-last-look-back-francisco-lirianos-frustrating-fourth-frame
Are his outside the zone pitches more obviously out of the zone? That is, can hitters tell the out of the zone pitches are going to be out of the zone easier than before?
You can get a rough idea if you go to Liriano’s player page here, click on the pitch f/x tab and look at the heat maps…. it’s a bit tough to tell given the limited # of pitches.
One thing that may be visible (or just noise?) is that he seemed to work his fastball inside to RH well last year. Thus far it looks just like random scatter this year
I was waiting for this article to hit the panic button. Button officially hit. Maybe it will take another excellent start for an article but is Ricky Romero doing anything differently to get such excellent results early on?
Romero was a beast for the first part of last year as well. Question is can he sustain it this year.
I can’t speak to the PitchFX data, but Liriano looked good yesterday. He was missing bats at a solid rate and generated a ton of groundballs. Hard to throw a ton of blame at him for the 6-run 4th when there were 6 groundball hits, a bloop single, and a solitary line drive single.
The biggest problem for Liriano going forward looks to be the Twins infield defense.
Maybe the reason they got those hits off of him is because of his loss of velocity? Dunno, just my guess. He seemed to be throwing meatballs to me.
Agreed. The Twins IF D is atrocious. I watched yesterday and between Valencia and Cuddyer their were numerous balls that even average defenders get to. Not a lot of hard hits against Liriano yesterday. I’m holding and actually pursuing him in a couple of leagues. I’ll gamble his velo will tick back up in the next week or so.
I think I die a little every time Cuddy plays 2b
Great article on a topic I definitely wanted to know more about. But I do still have a few questions:
What caused his fastball to suddenly lose velocity? He doesn’t seem to be hurt and he’s still young. And why has only his fastball lost velocity and not his other pitches?
Nice analysis. I hadn’t watched a ton of Liriano until I landed him in my fantasy league this year. Watching him yesterday, I was really perplexed (angered is probably more accurate) by his lack of velocity. Sure, he wasn’t hit “hard”, but Royals’ hitters were just sitting back and making good contact at too frequent a rate. If Liriano is at his best, hitters are panicking rather than taking this approach.
The real key now is for me not to panic and drop this guy. I’ll keep him on the bench for a couple more weeks and go from there.
I don’t think Liriano gave up any hits that went past an outfielder in yesterday’s 6-run inning. I think there’s no reason to panic. Small sample size.
Yup, it’s not like he’s getting lit up here, he’s getting beaten by well-placed ground balls most of the time. I mean come on, Cuddyer at 2B? He would probably post a negative dWAR as a full-time DH.
Hope you’re right…I never know what to make of early season diminished velocity. You could really notice it yesterday – no matter how good his other pitchers were, the fastball just wasn’t setting the table properly.
I don’t think comparing early season velocities between this year and last year is a good idea. Last year he pitched in the Dominican League, pitched outstandingly in it, and came into spring in great shape. This year he came in in bad shape, and was publicly berated by Gardenhire and trade rumors were floated around (possibly to motivate him?).
Watch the velocity over a few more starts and ignore the ERA. I’d watch his FIP/xFIP a lot more closely than his ERA. Valencia/Tolbert (at SS)/Cuddyer for a groundball pitcher??? Seriously? And now talk of Hughes moving to SS, when he couldn’t handle 3B in the minors? The Twins’ D is going to get uglier. Might be worst in league. Only above average defender is Mauer and possibly Morneau until Nishi gets back.
You forget about an infield that has Jhonny Peralta, Will Rhymes, and Miguel Cabrera, so maybe the Twins aren’t the worst. Every one of the top 3 teams in the AL Central has some defensive issues right now.
I see your infield + Magglio and raise you Cuddyer and Delmon Young.
Liriano’s success requires that fastball velocity. His command and control of the pitch is so godawful that the only way he can avoid walking everyone is by lobbing it right down the middle, and rely on its speed and movement to keep it from being mashed. The pitch is a massive negative in 2008-9, and even in his two good years the pitch was run-neutral at best. Basically, until his fastball goes back to averaging over 93, you shouldn’t expect much from him.
So far this year his LOB% is 47%
I snuck out of work and saw that Twins game in person. Lot of things going on with Liriano, all subject to interpertation. He didn’t throw his offspeed for strikes, so they sat on his diminished fastball. He didn’t lose his composure, but he didn’t throw inside to a single batter that I could tell. The Twins made somewhat of a comeback and he came out and walked the first batter the following inning so he was pulled. The local media is making alot out of the team wanting him to pitch to contact, but that’s a mis-match for his make-up and certainly a bad idea given the level of defense that they’re putting behind him. Say all you want about balls not being hit hard, but he’s supposed to be missing some bats here and there if he’s what he’s supposed to be. I say he’s not, and FWIW I didn’t see any intensity or emotion, good or bad, like I used to with him. He looks some combination of injured, out of shape and/or disinterested. Maybe that missing 2 mph comes back and we’re talking about a solid #2 guy again.
It is in fact easy to point to Gardy and complan about pitching to contact but in this case it’s Liriano’s own fault. When spring training started I remember at least one article about Liriano not doing his off season shoulder exercises and several more citing it. Then he got injured during spring training and didn’t catch up strength wise. So it would make sense that his velocity has been down especially on his fastball where it’s most noticeable. If he can get stronger and up that velocity I think we’ll see more of last year’s Liriano, unfortunately until then the conequences for him and the Twins are all too obvious
As a Twins fan who watches all of his starts, the thing that doesn’t show up in the data is that Liriano doesn’t always seem to have his head in the game. Before setting up to pitch he’s busy glancing into the stands or off to the side, and you can tell he’s going to: a. throw a ball, b. throw a hittable pitch, or c. begin to unravel. It’s maddening and last year he was more focused on the catcher and the pitch it seemed This year, his mound presence reminds me of his 2009 season. May be nothing, but it sure plays like a pretty hefty tell. If I were playing poker with the man, I’d go all in.
I’m about at panic mode. The rest of my staff is fantastic and he’s ruining it basically. With Hellickson on waivers, do I drop Liriano?
Lol at thinking about dropping him you pansies. Is this your first year playing fantasy ball?
“Plenty has gone wrong in the early going for the 2010 FIP and xFIP leader”
You mean AL* 2010 fip and xfip leader, NL players lead the league in both of those categories last year (you just know someone had to blast you for that right, lol), Liriano was close enough though and point taken.
I avoided Liriano this year, chased him last year because he went in to the season being drafted after the 20th round. To me he’s one of those players like hamilton; extreme upside, but you can’t value him at that upside because its too much of a risk. He’s a hard person to trade because of his injury risks as well. In every year he’s had some point where he complains about some type of tightness or inflammation or “dead arm” in reference to his pitching arm.
Maybe its just me, but last year, I followed Liriano as I could, and when he did have his mistakes, they always seemed to pile up in one inning. He’d cruise through most innings, than get caught in one bad inning and get knocked around a bit even if it was by a barrage of singles.
Really, he always was a hard player for me to watch pitch. He often gives up two singles in an inning and then uses Ks and grounders to get out of it. Very hard to watch though as a Twins fans because not many pitchers can get out of the jams he gets into.
It’s April 27th and I’m leading my 5×5 12-team roto league by a wide margin, despite having Liriano on my roster for every start.
The velocity and bad defense indicates you’re probably looking at some more bad numbers from Francisco this year. But I still can’t bring myself to cut him.