Archive for Carlos Silva

Pitchers whose ERAs and estimators disagree are extremely interesting to analyze. On one hand, their signature run prevention mark might appear toward the top of leaderboards while the underlying numbers aren’t as fruitful. On the other side of the spectrum are pitchers like Zack Greinke, who, as Chris Cwik pointed out yesterday, has a vast disconnect between his ERA and FIP. In fact, it’s been that way since the first week of May when he came off of the disabled list.

His 2.63 FIP and 2.12 xFIP suggest that the newly-minted Brewers starter has been one of the best in the league. But Greinke’s actual 5.63 ERA is closer to the bottom than the top, and is three runs higher than his adjusted marks. One of the more popular stats here is E-F, a sortable number that measures the gap between ERA and FIP. Pitchers with a large separation are expected to regress in some fashion, because it is incredibly rare for anyone to finish with a huge disagreement between those two data points.

I thought about taking that concept a bit further and calculating the difference between ERA and xFIP, since the latter metric is a better predictor of future earned run average than its predecessor. This makeshift ‘E-X’ number would be measurable from 2002-now, and it piqued my curiosity to see which pitchers had the largest such gaps in that span.

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Episode Twenty-Six
In which the panel beats a near-dead horse.

Headlines
Ryan Howard: Ya Heard?!?
CPL Watch: Lee and Lewis Do Battle
Carlos Silva: What Gives?
… and other mind-bending illusions!

Featuring
Dave Cameron, Full-Time Employee
Matthew Carruth, Full-Time Lover (of Words)

Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio on the flip-flop.

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In order to cope with the loss of two starting pitchers from last year’s club, the Twins imported veteran starter Livan Hernandez to fill innings at a reasonable clip. At this point in his career, though, it was clear that Hernandez wasn’t going to be much more than a pitch to contact innings eater. Well, he’s lived up to that persona and then some.

A guy who posted average strikeout rates in his prime is now transitioning into the second stage of his career as the new Nate Cornejo. His K/9 this year stands at a paltry 2.83, second lowest in baseball among starting pitchers. Only Jon Garland, who we discussed previously, is missing bats with less frequency than Livan Hernandez. In fact, both Garland and Hernandez are posting remarkably low strikeout rates compared to recent history.

Since 1988, only 17 pitchers have tossed 100 or more innings in a season with a K/9 of 3.00 or less, combining to make it happen 22 times. Kirk Rueter was the last to do it, pitching himself out of baseball in 2005 with a 2.10 K/9. The previously mentioned Cornejo did it in 2003, but only lasted 25 innings into the 2004 season before seeing his career end as well. Clearly, this isn’t a list of guys who went on to have long, productive careers after watching their ability to rack up the strikeouts all but disappear.

However, Hernandez has managed to succeed despite the strikeout rate by dramatically cutting down on his walks and keeping the ball in the yard. In all, he’s actually posting a not horrible 4.46 FIP, and while he probably won’t be able to keep his home run rate this low, that he’s not walking anyone should give the Twins hope that he can squeeze together a few more months of useful pitching. Hernandez isn’t a guy you want in your rotation long term, but given the choice between paying Carlos Silva $48 million over four years or paying Hernandez $5 million for one year, it seems pretty clear that Minnesota made the right choice.

Over the winter, the Angels decided to acquire Jon Garland to bolster their rotation. In Chicago, Garland’s seasonal performances were something of a model of consistency; 200 IP with a 4.50 or so ERA. The Angels wanted that kind of stability, so they gave up their shortstop, Orlando Cabrera, to get Garland.

Unfortunately for them, they may not have noticed that Garland had taken a step back last year, seeing his stuff lose enough that he began to straddle the line between pitch-to-contact and batting-practice-thrower. As a guy with an average GB%, he just didn’t miss enough bats to sustain any real success, even though the results made him appear potentially useful.

Amazingly enough, Garland’s taken the art of not missing bats to a whole other level so far in 2008. After striking out one batter in six innings last night, Garland has now struck out a whopping four hitters. In 30 innings pitched. That’s an unreal 1.2 K/9 rate. 1.2 strikeouts per nine innings for a major league starting pitcher. Check out the graph:

Carlos Silva has basically set the standard for the minimum possible strikeout rate for a major league pitcher this decade. Garland is making Silva look like Nolan Ryan right now. He is compensating for the ridiculously low strikeout rate by getting more ground balls, but there’s just no precedence for anyone being able to pitch in the majors with a strikeout rate this low for very long. It’s not really working for Garland, either – his 5.04 ERA isn’t much better than his 5.67 FIP.

Garland can’t possibly keep putting the ball in play at this rate, but it looks pretty clear that Garland isn’t going to be the rotation stabilizer that the Angels thought they were getting.