The Astros Have a Lance McCullers Problem
With a 17 game lead in the AL West, the Astros are almost certainly going to the postseason. But as they figure out what to do before tomorrow’s trade deadline, and weigh the costs of potential upgrades, it is becoming pretty clear that they should have some concerns about Lance McCullers.
Their #2 starter was lights out to begin the year, but on June 12th, the Astros put him on the DL with a back problem. It sounded like the kind of semi-fictional injury that teams have used to give starters a break with the new 10-day disabled list, and not something that the team should be all that worried about, despite McCullers’ long history of arm problems. But after another lousy outing today, it’s worth noting that McCullers has looked nothing like his early-season self since returning from the DL.
| Dates | IP | H | BB | HBP | K | ERA- | FIP- | xFIP- |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Through June 12th | 77 | 58 | 23 | 5 | 89 | 61 | 67 | 62 |
| Since June 24th | 29 | 42 | 13 | 5 | 29 | 175 | 69 | 90 |
Because he hasn’t surrendered a home run in any of his six starts since returning from the DL, his FIP still looks fine, but everything else is a mess. His 9% walk rate doesn’t look awful, but once you add in the five HBPs, he’s putting 13% of the batters he faced on base without forcing them to swing the bat. More worryingly, his strikeout rate over that stretch is just 20%, below the league average, and that includes him racking up 14 strikeouts in his first two starts off the DL; he has struck out just 17 of 100 batters in his last four starts.
Coming into today, batters were hitting .387/.472/.492 off McCullers in July.
Today, the Tigers hit .363/.500/.409 against him.
Some of his recent struggles are just BABIP related, but McCullers’ command has basically disappeared over the last month, and when he’s behind in the count, he can’t get guys to chase his curveball out of the zone. Obviously, he could find his command again before October, and you don’t want to overreact to a few bad starts in a row, especially with a playoff spot all but guaranteed. But given McCullers’ long list of health issues and his struggles since returning from the disabled list, the Astros should probably be a bit more motivated to add a starter before tomorrow’s deadline.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Another fragile metrosexual Astros pitcher. When was the last time a Houston pitcher logged 200 plus innings in a year? Earlier this year, I recall McCullers ridiculing a blogger for suggesting that he belonged in the bullpen. Guess this blogger was right! The Houston bullpen is horrible and it has to be overhauled if a WS ring is desired. A SP and TWO relievers are needed by trading deadline. You can rest assured this will not happen.
Do you approach other hobbies with such rage? Seems exhausting. Perhaps you suffer from low testosterone. That’s my pro tip for you: see an endocrinologist.
McCullers is that you?!?!?! Perhaps you should approach your pitching outings with a bit more rage. Maybe you have a thyroid problem and not an arm problem.
Low T!
Dallas Keuchel led the leauge in innings pitched with 232 in 2015. That was the same year he won the Cy Young Award. Collin McHugh also threw more than 200 innings that year. So, the answer to your first question would be two years ago.
Well this is perfect then, McCullers will be their big bullpen add and then they only need to trade for a real manly-man SP!
Man, IAS, this is not the site for you. There are lots of places where people call players and other people names. But here most people act like adults. When you’re ready to be a grownup, come back.
Also, in addition to ditching the insults and ignorance, you really want to avoid using the passive voice, which you have done twice here.
McCullers is one of the guys who benefits greatly from fip, and fangraphs version of war, but when you look at the actual result it is much, much less.
Not to mention his low innings count. This guy truly belongs in the pen. I’m not saying he doesn’t have good stuff, he’s just not durable. Some thin skinned fans (see above) just don’t get it. Just past mid-way through the season and the pen is already severly taxed, so much so that even Devenski is beginning to struggle.
Fangraphs 2.8 war. Bref 1.3. Baseball reference war is based on what actually happened. I wish fangraphs could have two wars. I love their version of war, but it should be retitled EWAR. Expected wins above replacement, since it is literally only based on expected outcome, not what actually happened.
This is getting downvoted, but I think you make a good point. I wouldn’t mind seeing a WAR statistic that was a hybrid of both things.
We have that here already, it’s called the Combined WAR Leaderboard
bWAR is overfitted. I’m not sure how useful that would be to average it or do some other weighted combination with another formula if it’s already overfitted.
On the other hand If you had a third ERA estimator (SIERA, maybe?) you might be able to extract some kind of latent variable out of it, and that would be useful.
I believe Jeff has averaged out ERA-, FIP- and xFIP- together for a form of evaluation.
I can’t believe we’re still having this discussion in 2017. Why would you want the stat that (a) doesn’t predict future outcomes as well, and (b) doesn’t screen out the contributions of other players well? I get that from a historical perspective pitching bWAR is interesting but it’s not as accurate at measuring the pitcher’s actual contribution.
I want a stat that predicts future outcomes, clearly. But when people use it to determine who they vote for MVP? Based on what should of happened? That to me is crazy
Except that bWAR doesn’t actually measure pitcher contribution well. FIP and SIERA are the best for measuring pitcher contribution, while SIERA and xFIP are most predictive of future performance.
If you are really concerned about measuring “what actually happened” and don’t care about the contribution of other players, you might as well just use win-loss record. But if you want to accurately isolate the pitcher’s contribution to winning, FIP and SIERA are the tools of choice.
Because WAR isn’t necessarily supposed to be predictive. I’m not saying one or the other is wrong or better, but FIP-based WAR only accounts for a subset of a pitcher’s skills and contributions (even if they are the most important skills), and doesn’t account for the fact that different types of pitchers are more valuable with different types of defenses behind them.
We don’t penalize batters for inflated BABIPs or other unsustainable peripherals. WAR for batters is explicitly non-predictive, and doesn’t screen out the quality of pitchers/defenses faced. I like the fact that bWAR for pitchers mirrors this.
If all you want is what actually happened, just use ERA.
It’s hard for me to put a lot of stock in RA9-WAR. According to that, the 2017 season top 6 pitching performances include Gio Gonzalez (4th) and Jason freakin Vargas (6th).
It’s not so much as seeing Gio Gonzalez’ name on the list, it’s seeing his name sandwiched between Scherzer and Greinke for 4th place.
As for Jason Vargas…
Can I counter with the fact that Mike Pineda was consistently high on FIP based lists but was clearly bad? That perhaps throwing less strikes and having a few more walks would have made him much less hittable? FIP is measuring lack of walks and therefore control and not command.
So Pineda looks like he’s just unlucky when in fact he’s getting touched up by throwing so many hittable strikes.
If FIP was reworked to include exitvelocity as a quality of contact metric I might have less issues.
But your gio Gonzales and Vargas data points can be countered with equally silly examples of FIP overvaluing guys. Like Pineda.
“That perhaps throwing less strikes and having a few more walks would have made him much less hittable?”
Please share your theory on that one. Seems counter-intuitive.
“So Pineda looks like he’s just unlucky when in fact he’s getting touched up by throwing so many hittable strikes.”
He has had a better than league average Z-Contact% every single year. Same can be said of his overall Contact%. His O-Swing% falls in that category, as well. Oh, and his O-Contact%, too. And while we are at it, you can add his SwStr% in there. Every single year.
“FIP is measuring lack of walks and therefore control and not command.”
FIP is measuring the amount of free baserunners and, the HR’s he has allowed; is a by-product of his bad command. As far as I know, RA9-WAR is incapable of directly measuring command, too.
“If FIP was reworked to include exit velocity as a quality of contact metric I might have less issues.”
I agree that quality of contact needs to be included in a new formula. I recognize FIP isn’t w/o it’s flaws. I’m sure you’d acknowledge that RA9-WAR is imperfect, as well.
A reason I prefer FIP for evaluating talent, is because it’s context neutral; sequencing plays no role; each outcome is independant of the other. Unlike ERA and RA9-WAR.
Maybe his struggles come from something that can’t be measured? Pineda is absolutely consistently inconsistent. No-hit shit one start, BP session the next. Wash, Rinse, repeat.
Pitching fWAR is based on FIP. FIP uses HR, BB, HBP, K, & IP. All of those are things that “actually happened”. If you want something based on runs just look at ERA. But runs are largely dependent on the defense. If you incorporate team defense into the pitching WAR then you’d be double dipping because you also have to factor that into the defenders’ WAR calculations.
B-WAR’s effort to back fielding out of pitcher WAR is interesting, but it’s not at all a simple “what actually happened”. If you want to combine fielding with pitching, use RA9-WAR.
They should put him on the disgraceful list, and work on his mechanics, and hopefully he comes back strong.
I sure hope that was auto-correct speaking there.
I dunno, I kind of like the idea. Manfred would consider it.
http://razzball.com/fantasy-baseball-terms/#Disgraceful_List
Lol! He’s back in the DL. Astros FO just gave H fans the middle finger! Read my original post. I knew they would be the only team to stay pat at the deadline. Every other contender got better except Houston. There’s always next year…right?!