How Good Is Julio Teheran?
Atlanta’s ace, Julio Teheran, has a career 3.34 ERA, a good mark even for this pitching-friendly era. This year’s numbers, at least in some ways, are the best of his career. He’s a 25-year-old with less than $30 million in guaranteed money remaining on his contract, which runs through 2020 if you count the low-cost team option for that season. If the Braves make him available before the deadline, he’d instantly become one of the most valuable assets on the market.
But is Teheran an ace, like the Braves are likely to price him? Or is he more of a good pitcher on a nice run? Since assuming regular major-league duties in 2013, he’s 44th in pitching Wins Above Replacement despite being 11th in innings pitched, as he’s accrued value by staying healthy and racking up innings, but not dominating in the traditional walk, strikeout, and home run categories.
But this year, once again, Teheran is dealing, and he’s doing so without strikeout, walk, or home-run rates that would appear on the first page of each leaderboard. For teams hoping to acquire the Braves ace, they’ve got to be wondering who he will be on their team; the guy who looks great by ERA or the guy who looks like an innings-eater by FIP?
It’s instructive to look at his ranks in a few categories. Let’s start with the main factors included in the more popular ERA estimators. In the interest of smoothing over some of the peaks and valleys of his career, let’s establish 2013 as the beginning point for this investigation.
| Stat | Value | Rank |
| K% | 21.5% | 42 |
| BB% | 6.7% | 61 |
| K-BB% | 14.8% | 42 |
| HR/9 | 1.07 | 96 |
| GB% | 37.8% | 125 |
Teheran has made it this far with slightly above-average strikeout and walk rates, but considering that his ERA over that time frame ranks 30th, the peripherals don’t match the outcomes. So let’s venture further afield. There are plenty of stats that inform projection systems which don’t show up in all of our ERA estimators, so let’s throw these into the mix and see if something pops.
| Stat | Value | Rank |
| FB Velo | 90.9 | 90 |
| PU% | 4.3% | 22 |
| BABIP | 0.271 | 9 |
| Soft% | 17.2% | 81 |
| Ideal Angle Exit Velo | 92.4 | 93 |
PU% = IFFB*FB, or pop-ups divided by balls in play. Average = 3.4%
Ideal launch angles (10-30 degrees) are best for homers and line drives.
Now here are a couple things that stand out. Like pop ups. And batting average on balls in play. He’s been good at those things, and they can drive a good ERA.
The spread on pop ups isn’t very large, though. First-best (Chris Young) is separated from 140th-best (Jaime Garcia) by 6.5 percentage points. Still, the pop-up figure helps explain Teheran’s small BABIP number. If we gave Teheran a league-average pop-up rate since 2013, we’d have to put 68 more hits on his ledger, and his BABIP would soar to .301, or basically league average.
Even though the spread isn’t huge, pop-up rate (pop ups divided by all balls in play) is decently sticky year to year. It has a 0.63 year-to-year correlation, which is much better than the 0.49 number for home runs. In other words, you would make a safer bet to bet on Teheran to continue getting more pop ups than if you bet on him to continue giving up more homers than average. Re-rank Teheran for strikeouts plus pop ups minus walks, and there he is at 32nd in our sample, in line with his ERA. Just outside the top 30 again, though.
On the other hand, given that Teheran has below-average velocity for a righty and lives high in the zone for those pop ups, it’s probably also true that he will continue giving up homers. Derek Carty found that it takes 2.7 years for home-run rate to stabilize, and we’ve got those years for Teheran, too. You can’t ignore the home runs.
And let’s not forget that pop ups are now included in pitching WAR as an automatic out, equal to a strikeout. So a FIP-based WAR isn’t ignoring the pop-ups; he’s getting credit for those.
But when you look at FIP alone, you see the huge gap, with a 54 point gap between his ERA and FIP, thanks in part to all those popups. But how much of that gap should we expect to continue going forward?
Let’s look at pitchers similar to Teheran based on this ability to induce pop-ups. The top 10% in pop-ups since we started tracking the stat in 2007 have had ERAs that were 1% better than league average, while their FIPs have been 5% worse. That’s not Teheran-like — his career gap is 15 percentage points — but let’s look at the guys that have had 600-inning FIP and ERA gaps with great pop-ups, and what they did during and after that stretch.
There are 22 pitchers that have achieved three years of an FIP-ERA gap over 0.4 with a pop-up rate over 4%. Ten of them appeared on the list once and never returned. But we can look at the 19 not named Julio Teheran, Noah Lowry, or Wei-Yin Chen and see how they faired the next three years after they first showed up on the list.
| Time Frame | Ave IP | Weighted PU | Weighted ERA | Weighted FIP | Weighted Diff |
| During Stretch | 598 | 5.0% | 3.68 | 4.24 | -0.56 |
| After | 446 | 4.8% | 4.22 | 4.44 | -0.22 |
Minimum -0.4 ERA-FIP.
Minium 4% pop-up rate.
n in both buckets = 19
Would you look at that. The pitchers got worse, but, as a group, they maintained a noticeable gap between their ERA and FIP. And of course they were going to get worse — they got older! Some of that regression was simply age-related decline, while Teheran is still young. But it is worth noting that they didn’t sustain the same size gap that they posted during their initial run.
The pitchers that fell apart and had a worse ERA than FIP were either near the end of their careers (Al Leiter, Russ Ortiz, and Hideo Nomo) or started to lose their ability to get pop-ups at the rate that would include them in the sample (Ramon Ortiz, Randy Wolf, and Jeremy Hellickson).
Jake Peavy is probably the best comp for Teheran on the list, once you consider age, quality, and arsenal. He had a 3.69 FIP, 3.13 ERA, and a 4.2% pop-up rate built mostly on good command and a great slider. Matt Cain is another good one (3.43 ERA, 3.86 FIP, 4.6% pop-ups). Cain and Peavy both both had stellar ERAs in their next three seasons, which provides a lot of hope for Teheran boosters. There are examples on both sides of the argument.
It is worth mentioning that those pitchers remained in their own home parks for those next three seasons, though. And that the last Brave righty with similar stats didn’t survive a park change, or hasn’t so far. Shelby Miller (3.27 ERA, 3.87 FIP, 4.0% pop-ups) has had mechanical problems, and his arsenal is fairly different, but he makes our ‘before’ list, and the after doesn’t look great.
As long as Teheran maintains his ability to get the pop-up, he should be fine, even if maybe not quite as good as his ERA would suggest. And if you look at pitchers most like Julio Teheran — pitchers with a three-year demonstrated ability to get the pop-up — they’re at least a good bet for the next three years. Even more so when you consider the Braves righty is only 25 years old. Here’s the whole table of comparable pitchers.
| Pitcher | Second Timeframe | IP | PU% | ERA | FIP | Difference |
| Matt Cain | 2010-2012 | 664.1 | 5.4% | 2.94 | 3.32 | -0.38 |
| Barry Zito | 2005-2007 | 646.0 | 5.3% | 4.05 | 4.68 | -0.63 |
| Jamie Moyer | 2005-2007 | 610.2 | 5.2% | 4.52 | 4.76 | -0.24 |
| Bronson Arroyo | 2011-2013 | 603.0 | 3.6% | 4.19 | 4.76 | -0.57 |
| Jake Peavy | 2006-2008 | 599.1 | 4.5% | 3.15 | 3.29 | -0.14 |
| Jeremy Guthrie | 2010-2012 | 599.0 | 3.9% | 4.28 | 4.66 | -0.38 |
| Jarrod Washburn | 2006-2008 | 534.1 | 5.8% | 4.55 | 4.76 | -0.21 |
| Jered Weaver | 2013-2015 | 526.2 | 6.0% | 3.81 | 4.27 | -0.46 |
| R.A. Dickey | 2014-2016 | 520.1 | 4.8% | 3.86 | 4.48 | -0.62 |
| Johan Santana | 2009-2012 | 482.2 | 6.3% | 3.49 | 3.76 | -0.27 |
| Ramon Ortiz | 2005-2007 | 466.1 | 3.7% | 5.47 | 5.38 | 0.09 |
| Carlos Zambrano | 2009-2011 | 444.2 | 4.3% | 3.99 | 3.96 | 0.03 |
| Randy Wolf | 2011-2014 | 395.2 | 4.1% | 4.57 | 4.5 | 0.07 |
| Ryan Franklin | 2005-2007 | 348.0 | 4.3% | 4.5 | 4.93 | -0.43 |
| Jeremy Hellickson | 2014-2016 | 297.1 | 2.1% | 4.54 | 4.41 | 0.13 |
| Ted Lilly | 2011-2013 | 264.1 | 7.0% | 3.92 | 4.24 | -0.32 |
| Russ Ortiz | 2005-2007 | 227.0 | 4.2% | 6.94 | 6.19 | 0.75 |
| Al Leiter | 2005 | 142.1 | 7.4% | 6.13 | 5.16 | 0.97 |
| Hideo Nomo | 2005-2008 | 105.0 | 4.1% | 7.71 | 5.82 | 1.89 |
| Weighted Ave | 446.0 | 4.8% | 4.22 | 4.44 | -0.22 |
Used next three seasons after.
Minimum -0.4 ERA-FIP.
Minimum 4% pop-up rate.
If we assume that Teheran’s youth will allow him to regress less than most of these guys, maybe his true-talent ERA gap is something like 0.3 runs per nine innings, and with a ~3.90 FIP projection, that would put him as a 3.60 ERA guy going forward, in the NL anyway. It’s a little closer to 4.00 in the AL, once you adjust for league quality and the DH.
That’s not a dominating frontline starter, but given Teheran’s youth and controllable years, he remains a very valuable piece. He’s not likely to keep beating his FIP by this degree, but he is likely to keep beating it by a decent margin, and that makes him a quality mid-rotation arm. A team shouldn’t pay ace prices to land Teheran based on his ERA, but he’s a good pitcher on a great contract, and so the line for his services will be quite long.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Great write up. Teheran is a good pitcher with value, but Braves fans and sports media have been hyping him up like he is an established ace, not a good pitcher on a good run, due to regress.
He’s not an ace, but who on the market this year is better? More importantly, who else comes close in value through 2020? Noone. As, the article mentioned, the line will be long. The way you shorten the line is by asking for more than some are willing to give, then see who’s left. The price should justifiably be very high.
Then again, if the asking price gets really really high, it will encourage other teams to consider moving guys because the price is now right.
I don’t think Teheran is head and shoulders above the Cashner / good CC / Ross / Rich Hill rumors that are starting. He has more health, but a team might prefer a shorter rental for a mid rotation guy.
Again, just depends on teh team. I suspect he’ll go for quite a bit less than Braves fans want, and I suspect the team that acquires him will somewhat regret it.
At the least, I dont want my team paying for him unless he comes at a back end top 50-75 price.
I definitely don’t think Teheran is an ace, but if you don’t think he’s clearly head and shoulders above those other guys then I have no idea what you’re looking at, and that’s without even factoring in the contract.
Yea, I’m a little leery of Teheran and the price he might command, but he’s clearly better than everyone you just mentioned, contract notwithstanding. I mean, you listed a guy with an ERA/FIP just south of five, a 36 year old due for some serious regression, a guy with arm problems who hasn’t pitched in over a month, and rounded the list out with a pitcher who’s constantly broken.Give me a choice between Teheran and any of those guys and I know who I’d take without a second’s hesitation.
Then I don’t think he gets moved at all if your scenario is correct. Question, you think Craig Kimbrel is worth more than a #3 in your rotation? Because Kimbrel sure did require more than that price.
Even ignoring the poor examples, I think calling him a mid-rotation guy is doing him a disservice. He’s not an ace, but he’s a poor #1/really good #2 type of guy. That’s a fair amount of value over an average-ish #3, which is what I think when you say mid-rotation. Perhaps we consider the term differently, though.
I’d say more an okay #2 guy and a really good #3. Is there a good team in either league where you would see him being the #1 guy? On most good teams he’d be borderline between the #2/#3 spot.
There are 150 rotation spots, simply breaking it into thirds… top end are first 50, midrange is 51-100, and back end are 150… Tejeran ranks 44th in WAR… that’s a middle #2, but close enough that calling him a midrange isn’t really an understatement… it’s a general enough term that it’s more of an argument over semantics.
I do like the phrasing “good CC” as if a team could just choose that version of CC instead of “bad CC”
Some other factors that must be taken into account that explain some of the gap is Julio’s SB% against and the number of pick-offs he generates.
In the timeframe defined by this article, Teheran has 8 runs saved from his pickoffs/CS skills. Or about 1 win in 2.5 years.
Doesn’t change the calculus that much, but it’s definitely a small effect.
Some of effect of the pick-off skills are harder to quantify. Julio has a higher LOB% this year than in the past, but less pick-offs I believe. Most of this can be explained with the low BABIP, but some could be that runners that do get on base do not advance as many bases on subsequent hits due to not stealing and/or having to stay closer to the bag.
Even when things are “harder to quantify” as you assert, we generally can put bounds on how large they possibly could be. Are you suggesting this is more than a small effect? How large do you posit it to be?
Starting with Travis’ number of 1 win per 2.5 years, let’s say those effects instead make it an even half-win per year (or a 1/4 win per year more than what he said). That’s something like $3.5-4.0 million per year in extra value, right? That, the pop-up rate, the cheap contract and youth… eventually all of this stuff starts adding up to some pretty decent value.
My brain is almost, but not quite, making a connection to someone about a decade ago that I felt similarly about, but I can’t quite bring the name to the fore. It was a hitter who wasn’t great at anything in particular but above average at pretty much everything. By the time you finished summing up all his parts you ended up with someone who was a lot more valuable than it seemed, at first glance, they had any right to be.
When I think of a hitter who wasn’t great at anything but above average at pretty much everything, I think of Alex Gordon’s offensive profile, 2012 – 2014. Having no real weakness, even at the expense of having an elite tool, is a pretty damn good trait.
Somebody put together a breakout of hitters on the community page a year or two ago, and the guys who came out as above average on all five skills measured were Ben Zobrist and David Wright (note this included defense too).
I also wonder how much value his contract would add in a trade. He’s currently signed through 2020 with an AAV below $10MM (2020 is a club option for $12MM with a $1MM buyout).
I’d love to flip Teheran for a ridiculous haul but I’m not sure who is left on the Diamondbacks (hey Stew, give us Pollock!). No other GM is reckless enough.
Oh no you don’t, we won’t get taken again.
Besides, we’re saving up our prospects to win Ryan Braun. Better chance to get to first place with RBI guys than over paying for pitching. Just look at the Oreos.
Tony is that you?
Oreos?
I’d love to see the Braves package Teheran and Vizcaino to the Rangers for Gallo and a lesser minor-league lottery ticket. Teheran would be at least a #3 starter for Texas, and Vizcaino would lengthen their bullpen. #FreeJoeyGallo
What? Gallo isn’t close to enough for Teheran alone. I know he’s had a better K% in AAA this season, but it’s just AAA. No hitter in the entire history of major league baseball has ever posted a worse contact rate than Joey Gallo over a season with at least 100 plate appearances.
I could see Pittsburgh being in play. They have the prospect depth to create an attractive package and Teheran’s contract would make him appealing to the Pirates. Austin Meadows straight-up for Teheran might work for both teams.
The Pirates can’t afford to squander minor league depth given their financial limitations and are frankly in no position to be thinking about adding players unless they go on a huge win streak really soon. At the moment they look completely out of the race.
Budget limitations are precisely why the Pirates would be interested in Teheran, as he’s signed through 2020 at modest salaries. Meanwhile Meadows has no place to play in Pittsburgh unless they dump McCutchen and Meadows proves to be a capable major league center fielder. I think he ends up in a corner.
I think Atlanta’s outfield defense has probably played into his success as well. The Braves had a top 10 OF defense in 2014 and so far in 2016, Teheran’s two best years by BABIP and most other metrics. The Braves had a pretty poor OF defense in 2013 and 2015, which were his worst seasons. I think home park and OF defense would be big factors if I was looking to acquire Teheran. Given park factors and OF defense (as well as an actual need for reliable pitching), I think Pittsburgh would be an ideal landing spot for Teheran. The Pirates may be too far back to make such a move with eyes on this season, but it wouldn’t shock me either since Teheran is under contract for awhile longer.
Their OF has seen significant overhaul between 2013 and present day. Losing Heyward really hurt. Adding Inciarte is a massive boost.
Teheran also fields his position well, which helps your BABIP. This is of course factored into his batting WAR. On the other hand, he’s a shitty hitter. I still think he seems like a better NL pitcher, but not having to hit would mitigate a move to the AL.
I want to preface this by saying that I completely understand why some will think I’m off my rocker thinking there is any reality to what I’m about to point out. I’m not even sure how strongly I believe it myself. But it is something that, watching all of his starts, feels like a real thing, and the numbers show a difference, and so I’m going to point them out.
These are Teheran’s numbers in 2015 and 2016, split a particular way.
Pierzynski catching: 21 GS, 111 1/3 IP, 5.09 ERA, 9.62 H/9, 3.96 BB/9, 8.25 K/9, 1.62 HR/9
Lavarnaway, Bethancourt, and Flowers: 28 GS, 187 1/3 IP, 2.69 ERA, 6.49 H/9, 2.31 BB/9, 7.73 K/9, 0.96 HR/9
Weird. I had never noticed or heard anything about that. Wonder if it’s just bizarre luck? Regardless, definitely going to pay attention to that in future starts.
I also think it’s important to note this could be due to a bad year. In 2015 his FIP was 4.40, which really skews his career average. Not to say he is an elite ace, but the numbers outside of 2015 look like that of a solid #2 at worst.
I saw some stats last year the showed the largest +/- differential in called strikes. “+” meaning balls that were called strikes and “-” meaning strikes called balls. Teheran and Shelby Miller were in the top 5 maybe top three in the “-” category around -40. I’d like like to see how that number has changed this year with Flowers doing most of the catching. -40 would have a substantial impact given the loss of K’s, increase in BB’s, and overall batter’s improvement based on ball/strike state.
On top of that, knowing that pitches needed to be closer to perfects strikes in order to get the call, would lead to many more hittable pitches. Now that Flowers is behind the plate, it is allowing Teheran to pitch more to the perimeter of strike zone and get more swings in those areas.
The only nice framing done by Pierzynski comes at the end of the season when he hangs up his annual “worst teammate of the year” award in his home office. He does nice matte and border work too. Top notch.
I don’t think Julio gets enough credit for how adept he is at controlling the running game. He has an excellent pickoff move and he’s quick to the plate. When you factor in that with his ability to generate pop-ups, you get a pretty reliable FIP beater.
I always say it, but absolutely excellent article — that ancillary stat panel is really stellar stuff and again shows Eno upping his gaming to separate from the pack.
On Teheran, it got lost in the rest of the mess around the Braves, but he initially came up as a very hyped prospect, moving crazy fast from Rookie ball in ’09 to 3 starts with the big club in ’11. There wasn’t a spot for him in ’12, and I think that made it hard to stomach going back to AAA, but had a very solid debut in ’13 and a looked every bit the ace in ’14 before the rough ’15.
The big hit on him in ’15 was that he got killed by LHH — among qualifieds, he was bottom 5 in the league in wOBA vs LHHs. Looking at his Pitch f/x data, the only thing that pops is a significant uptick in his fastball usage as the season went on and downtick in his sinker usage. His wOBA went down in the second half, so maybe that means he sorted things out with this change, but its fair to say either way he lost his approach to LHHs in 2015.
So far in 2016, he still has a significant platoon split, but he’s manage to control LHHs to a tune of a .292 wBOA…..but on the back of a .182 BABIP — to me thats the red flag here. Even in his solid ’14, he had a .267 BABIP vs LHH, which suggests he due a pretty significant correction in BABIP vs LHHs in the near future.
He is a completely different pitcher vs lefties. Currently second lowest babip to left handed hitters (100 pets below his career mark), yet he is 11th is hard hit percentage vs lefties.
Regression is coming fast
This is a case study in why one should use Steamer over FIP. Also, he has some funky moves to first base, which I suspect cause his strand rate to be higher than normal.