Kenta Maeda: One Month In

Major League Baseball has taken steps toward becoming a truly global game in recent years. Cuban players have joined their Venezuelan, Dominican and other Latin American counterparts in making a significant impact on today’s game, and talent from the Far East, particularly from the Japanese and Korean Leagues, has made its presence felt as well.

This year’s most heralded Japanese rookie is Kenta Maeda, who signed a long-term deal with the Dodgers this past offseason. After concerns were raised following a medical examination, he signed a deal that was heavily discounted from the originally negotiated terms, paying him $25 million over an eight-year period. This put the Dodgers in a fantastic position: a low-risk, potentially high-reward scenario. One month in, the Dodgers simply have to be thrilled as Maeda’s posted a 3-1, 1.41 mark with a 28/6 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 32 innings.

Sure, the season remains young, and the sample sizes are small, but it’s not too early to form some early hypotheses regarding whether Maeda is for real. Today, let’s use granular batted-ball data, examining his plate-appearance frequency and production by BIP type data, to see how Maeda is getting it done, and whether we can expect his success to continue moving forward.

First of all, let’s take a brief backward look at Maeda’s eight-year tenure with Hiroshima in the Japan Central League. Maeda posted a 97-67, 2.39 mark in 1510 innings, with a 1233/319 K/BB. That’s just over 7.3 K per 9 IP, a little bit lower than you might want from a foreign-league prospect. That’s certainly mitigated by that BB rate of 1.9 per 9 IP. The surface observation is that his 2.39 ERA is quite a bit lower than one might expect from a pitcher with such a low K rate; his contact-management skills must be quite good for him to be able to consistently execute such superior performance.

Let’s see how his contact-management skills look one month into his stateside career. First, let’s take a look at his plate-appearance frequency data:

Some pretty good stuff here. First, Maeda has pretty much lived up to his Japanese League K and BB rate track record. His K rate has been in the 59th percentile among NL starters to date, and his BB rate is way down in the 18th percentile. That affords him a solid foundation before contact management is taken into account. While it creates a fairly easy path to adequacy, or even toward being a somewhat above-average starter, pitchers with such a K/BB profile aren’t often stars. It’s basically the Bartolo Colon starter set.

As we move into his BIP frequencies, we see a couple more reasons for his early success, one of which is fairly certain to endure, the other which is a regression candidate. Maeda has established a fairly pronounced pop-up tendency this early in his MLB career. That’s really good news; when your K rate doesn’t stand out, you need to reap “free” outs in other ways, via a pronounced pop-up or grounder tendency. Maeda checks that box.

He also has maintained a low liner rate thus far in 2016. While frequencies of all other BIP types correlate quite well from year to year, liner-rate frequencies are quite variable for most pitchers. There’s a chance that Maeda might be one of the chosen few who can prevent hitters from squaring up the baseball on an ongoing basis; it’s way too early to draw that conclusion. For now, let’s expect some regression in his liner rate as the season moves forward.

Frequencies only tell us so much, however. To get a better line on Maeda’s contact-management ability, we have to gauge the authority he has allowed. His relative production by ball-in-play (BIP) type data will give us a better feel for this facet of his game:

The actual production allowed on each BIP type is indicated in the batting average (AVG) and slugging (SLG) columns, and is converted to run values and compared to MLB average in the REL PRD (or Unadjusted Contact Score) column. That figure is then adjusted for context, such as home park, team defense, luck, etc., in the ADJ PRD (or Adjusted Contact Score) column. For the purposes of this exercise, sacrifice hits (SH) and flies (SF) are included as outs and hit by pitchers (HBP) are excluded from the on-base percentage (OBP) calculation.

Right off the top, I’m struck by the absence of numbers anywhere near 100 on this table, either in the Unadjusted or Adjusted Contact Score columns. I know it’s just one month, and the league is bound to adjust to Maeda to a degree, but we just might have an elite contact manager on our hands.

Batters have produced just a .292 AVG and .458 SLG on fly balls against Maeda, compared to MLB average production of .316 AVG-.840 SLG on fly balls. That’s good for an exceptional Unadjusted Contact Score of 48. Looking into the detailed data, it’s no fluke: adjusted for exit speed/angle, his Adjusted Contact Score is even lower, at 45.

Only one fly ball has been hit at 100 mph or harder against Maeda this season. Almost half of the flies he has allowed sit squarely in the “donut hole” between 75-95 mph, within which range hitters bat about .100. Interestingly, the batting average allowed by Maeda on fly balls is near league average, thanks to the higher than average number of low-mph bloopers he’s allowed. There’s simply no thump being allowed in the air, however.

Not only has Maeda allowed a low number of line drives, he’s allowed little damage on them as well. Hitters are batting just .500 AVG-.722 SLG on liners, compared to an MLB average of .659 AVG-.872 SLG to date, good for an Unadjusted Contact Score of 62. He’s been a bit lucky here: MLB hitters bat well in excess of .500 on liners all the way down to the 70-75 mph bucket. Adjusted for context, Maeda’s Adjusted Contact Score on liners moves upward to a still solid 83.

Maeda has also avoided damage on the grounders he has allowed; hitters are batting just .171 AVG-.200 SLG, compared to an MLB average of .227 AVG-.250 SLG, for an Unadjusted Contact Score of 59. He has squelched authority on the ground as well; hitters bat under .200 on grounders once you get under 90 mph, and struggled to bat over .100 from 85 mph down. Two-thirds of the grounders allowed by Maeda have been hit at less than 90 mph, and more than half at less than 85 mph. His Adjusted Contact Score on grounders doesn’t move an inch, staying at 59.

Put it all together, and you have stellar overall Unadjusted and Adjusted Contact Scores of 60 and 66, respectively. That’s the kind of number that can lead the major leagues. He’s been a bit lucky on liners, but all else is real. Add back the K and BB, and he “tru” ERA of 2.35, and a “tru” ERA- of 59. That’s obviously higher than his actual ERA to data, but is better than his 2.78 FIP, which doesn’t give him credit for his suppression of contact authority.

Yes, Maeda throttles contact authority of all types. The average exit speed of every batted ball in MLB to date in 2016 is 89.3 mph. Maeda’s average is 83.1; that’s way, way, off the charts, well over two standard deviations lower than average. This excellence spreads across all BIP types; the average MLB fly ball has been hit at 90.0 mph this season, Maeda’s average is 82.6 mph. For liners, the MLB average is 93.5 mph; for Maeda, it’s 86.8 mph. Grounders, it’s 87.0 mph for MLB, 82.1 mph for Maeda. This puts him in the class with the game’s best contact managers, among Jake Arrieta, Dallas Keuchel and Clayton Kershaw. Arrieta’s MLB-best (among ERA qualifiers) 2015 average overall authority: 84.9 mph.

So where do we go from here? Well, like many countrymen before him, Maeda possesses a wide repertoire of pitches, throwing his fastball far less than the MLB norm. There is an ongoing learning curve for hitters, and adjustments will be made. It will then be incumbent upon Maeda to make re-adjustments of his own. Daisuke Matsuzaka never regained his edge after early success, for injury and other reasons. Hideo Nomo was a monster his first time around the NL back in the day, and then settled in as simply a good major-league pitcher.

We will see about Maeda’s durability. He pitched on a once-per-week schedule in Japan, and is still adjusting to the vagaries of the five-man rotation. Then of course there’s that iffy physical. I was bullish on the signing, especially when I saw the revised contract terms, and I’m even more bullish now. A healthy Maeda can be a well above-average major-league pitcher, and on other clubs with mere mortals fronting their rotations, could be a staff anchor, providing elite quality, albeit with more ordinary innings quantity.

A lot has gone wrong with the Dodgers thus far in 2016, but their premier free-agency prize appears to be a big winner. And that’s an especially big deal once you consider that upward of 80% of large free-agent deals in terms of years and/or dollars turn out to be uninspiring at best.