One Night Only! (Opening Day 2011 Edition)
Just as last year, I’ll be previewing the most notable games of the day, where notable means something like, “interesting, for one reason or another, for the smarter baseballing fan.”
The NERD scores that all of America has come to love will be available at the end of April, probably.
Milwaukee at Cincinnati | 2:10pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Brewers: Yovani Gallardo
159.7 IP, 9.92 K/9, 3.83 BB/9, .313 BABIP, 3.29 FIP, 117 ERA+ (ZiPS)
Reds: Edinson Volquez
108.1 IP, 9.56 K/9, 4.57 BB/9, .293 BABIP, 3.80 FIP, 115 ERA+ (ZiPS)
Some Notes on Those Guys
• Both of these starters will pleasure you — that’s a Carson Cistulli Guarantee*.
• Edinson Volquez, as you definitely heard via America’s most important media outlets, is an Offical Member of Team Joy Squad for 2011. His changeup is to the human psyche what the music of Al Green is also to the human psyche.
• Gallardo’s interesting for another reason. Or, er, two reasons, we’ll say.
• There’s his curveball, for one, which you can watch him use to metaphorically — and, in one case, actually — disembowel the Florida Marlins in this video from last September.
• There’s also this weird thing about how he goes about his business. While, typically, a pitcher’s swinging-strike rate (SwStrk%) correlates pretty highly with his strikeouts per nine innings (K/9), that’s not the case with Gallardo. Using merely SwStrk% to predict strikeouts, we’d have expected Gallardo to post a 7.04 K/9. In fact, he posted a 9.73 K/9. This doesn’t mean his K/9 will plummet, necessarily; it just means there’s another variable contributing to his K rates.
*Not a real thing.
Two Images Concerning Yovani Gallardo
Here are two images concerning Yovani Gallardo. Please use them for good and not evil.
Below is swinging-strike rate plotted against strikeouts per nine for the 90-something qualified starters from last season. Gallardo, as you can see, is a major outlier.
Here are the top-10 over- and underachieving pitchers in terms of actual K/9 relative to expected K/9 (xK/9) using the equation above to formulate the latter:
On a Player Who Might Appear in This Game
A player who might appear in this game is Juan Francisco, also a member of Team Joy Squad. If there were an epic poem about him, it’d be called The Epic of Juan Francisco. No, not very catchy, I agree. What do you want, though? It’s a frigging epic poem.
If I Had My Druthers
• There actually would be an epic poem about Juan Francisco.
• It actually would be called The Epic of Juan Francisco.
• All my children — legitimate or otherwise — would write book reports about it.
Two Other Games
Atlanta at Washington | 1:05pm ET
• Who’s svelter: Atlanta’s Jason Heyward or Washington’s Mike Morse? That’s the big question everybody’s asking.
San Francisco (NL) at Los Angeles (NL) | 8:00pm ET
• Albert Lyu has some information for you on the matchup between Tim Lincecum and Clayton Kershaw (read here). Also, Brandon Belt is making his debut today. Big whoop!
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
I can’t make heads or tails of this. Settle down and write, please.
Try re-reading the post, but this time, remember to have fun.
I really love the One Night Only item. Thanks Carson!
Carson, I looked at swinging strikes over the winter and Gallardo really isn’t as much of an outlier as you’d think. (Methodological caveat: I looked at K% rather than K/9 to take away the luck factor). If you look at starting pitchers who threw at least 100 innings over the last three years Gallardo still comes out at the top with a difference in K% of 6.13. However, Jordan Zimmerman, Erik Bedard and C.J. Wilson are all relatively close at 6, 5.98, and 5.98, respectively.
As a side note Gallardo outpreformed his expected strikeout rate by 25% which was actually fourth in baseball behind Mike Mussina (32%), Wilson (30%), and Zimmermann (27%).
Fantastic, I can’t wait to see these again, and NERD is easily one of the best stats of all time.
In the meantime, why not just use NERD stats from last season, until the new ratings can be made available?
I watch every game Gallardo pitches……and just by looking at some of the names on this list, I can spot at least one type of pitcher that might end up on the left handed column.
Gallardo is a high pitch count pitcher….one thing I notice about him is that he often gets ahead in the count and more than your typical pitcher, really wastes a few pitchers trying to get batters to chase way, way outside the zone……few of these pitches are close to strikes, few of these pitches are hittable, even fewer are even swung at. This has led to Gallardo to become one of the high pitch count pitchers in the game.
To me that this does is condition the hitter to take more, or at least wait to be sure the pitch is close, before offering……add to the fact that Gallardo has a ton of movement on his pitches, as does Verlander and Kershaw…..you get more than your fair share of called strikes….batters that are waiting too long to be sure or batters simply giving up on a pitch too early just to watch some filthy stuff break in for a strike on the black or at the knees.
Kershaw, Mussina, Verlander, Sanchez, Gallardo all have wicked stuff and all are prone to truly “wasting” pitches. The right side of the column, those guys consistently work in or around the zone…..because of that, the hitter is just a tad more likely to make contact prior to reaching strike three because they are more likely to throw a pitch that is very hittable at some point during the at bat.
I bet “stuff” scores align with my observation.
If only some poet, somewhere, were interested in the Epic of Juan Francisco, it might come to pass! Carson, do you know of any poets who might be so interested?
Carson,
You gotta ease the Volquez love throttle!