Not Top Billing(sley)
After yesterday’s seven-run, four-inning fiasco against the Reds, Chad Billingsley is sporting some ugly numbers. His current 4.65 ERA is the worst that number has been at this point in the season. Last year’s 4.34 ERA on June 15th was his second-worst, though, and something has been amiss in his repertoire since as early as 2009. As the doubles kept falling in on Wednesday, the twitter questions began pouring in: “What’s wrong with Chad Billingsley?”
The easy answer is nothing. His 8.09 K/9 is basically the same as his career number (8.18). So is his 3.84 BB/9 (3.86 career). His fastball velocity is still right around 91-92, and he’s still using the same pitching mix as ever. This could just be his ongoing below-average control working hand-in-hand with his career-worst BABIP (.336). It could.
Watching yesterday’s game, you can get that BABIP feeling. In the second inning, Brandon Phillips hit a dink that was a hair away from an out. Fred Lewis‘ double later that same inning was a hair fair. In the third inning, Edgar Renteria slapped a single into right field that wasn’t lined with authority. Jonny Gomes broke his bat on a flare single that prompted Vin Scully to exclaim that he’d “be happy with that.”
Then again, there were some moments that were all poor performance. The Scott Rolen double that plated the first run of the day was down-the-middle belt-high. A couple ball fours were way out of the strike zone. He walked in a run. He hit 94 on the gun a few times… on balls. It wasn’t a good performance waylaid by the bouncing ball. It was a mediocre performance that was augmented by some poor luck.
Scanning his pitching mix, it seems that Bills is using his cutter and curveball less and using his changeup more, and that doesn’t seem optimal. By pitch-type linear weights, his cutter and curveball are by far his best pitches. And yet his curveball usage is at his second-lowest level, and the pitch itself is at its slowest. Perhaps there’s something to this. Per Dave Allen, he only used the pitch eight times last night, in 88 pitches, which is far below his 18.4% career usage. Ryan Hanigan’s two-run single was on a curveball. The pitch broke well enough, but Hanigan seemed ready for it. There might be something off with his off-speed pitches: Billingsley only managed six swinging strikes on Wednesday, and all of them were on fastballs. Perhaps a Pitch F/x centered approach could find something wrong with his curve, even if the pitch is still a positive by linear weights. It doesn’t seem quite right.
Since 2009, Billingsley has the fifth-worst ERA-FIP difference among qualified starters. Ricky Nolasco and Jason Hammel sit one-two in that category. Somehow, this is a fitting group for Billingsley to be in. In recent years, the overall results have not matched up with the outcomes of his individual at-bats. As long as his curveball is okay, though, Billingsley should right ship again. Then again, with Clayton Kershaw in town, he’ll never reach top billing again in Los Angeles.
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.
Also up are his contact rates (at least out of zone); methinks that rather than generating poor contact for outs these are, as you point out above, falling in. That doesn’t explain poor location, however.
Or maybe indeed it does.
Ricky Nolasco, Jason Hammel, and Billingsley… you’re right, they are all remarkably similar pitchers. Above average straight fastball, big curve. Righty. Maybe that type of pitcher gets hit around more than other types if their location is lacking.
Seems like there are enough pitchers who consistently outperform their xFIP and enough other pitchers who consistently underperform it that by the time you get a big enough sample size for it to mean anything, we might as well just go with ERA and be done with it.
I used FIP, and three seasons, and if you do that, it’s enough of a sample that these guys are the ‘extreme’ outliers. About 50% of the pitchers’ ERAs ended up within .27 of their FIP, and Billingsley’s difference (.54) was twice that. Nolasco is the crazy one – 1.11 difference since 2009.
This doesn’t actually tell us that Billingsley’s outlier status is meaningful. Assuming a normal distribution around FIP, if 50% of pitchers’ ERAs fall within 0.27 of their FIP, then the implied standard deviation is 0.40. This would further imply that Billingsley’s ERA-FIP is only about 1.3 standard deviations from expected, hardly a wild statistical outlier. And if we are not to assume that ERA-FIP is normally distributed then we probably shouldn’t be comparing FIP to ERA at all.
Frankly I find it a much more interesting result that only 5 pitchers had ERA/FIP differentials in excess of 0.54. How many qualified pitchers did you end up with in this analysis?
FIP, xFIP, whatever. Whether it’s the 50% where there is no significant difference or the rest that are consistent under or over performers, or too small a sample size to make a determination, you might as well just go with ERA.
just because YOU don’t agree with it don’t mean it doesn’t work/isn’t right. ERA isn’t telling you anything other then the results. FIP and xFIP at least have some predictive ablity. Matt Cain and other giants pitchers outperform their xFIPs and you think they are special outliers, we get it already.
Hair fair. haha
Well, I do think I have some fair-ish hair, so that was an easy one haha.
scott baker or billingsly??????????? anyone wanna take a stab?
Oddly enough, Billingsley’s ERA and FIP in his career are exactly the same. Obviously it’s not really indicative of much (what with years ahead of him) and he’s matured over the years, but I just found that pretty damn interesting.
I was hoping for a comment on martingales in baseball.
could he possibly be tipping his pitches?
This is what I thought. His stuff is good enough that even if he’s missing location (which he isn’t doing any more than he normally does it seems) he shouldn’t be getting knocked around like he has been in his last 4 or 5 starts.
This story feels awfully familiar to this Brandon Morrow fan.