Archive for Ricky Nolasco

While most teams took the opportunity to enjoy a quiet Thanksgiving holiday, the Minnesota Twins instead figured the time was right to hand out the two biggest free agent contracts in team history. On Wednesday, they signed Ricky Nolasco for four years and $49 million; on Saturday night, it was Phil Hughes for three years and $24 million. In the span of four days, Terry Ryan added two pitchers who lost 25 games last year to his 96-loss team, and guaranteed them $73 million in the process.

If you think that’s crazy, know that you’re far from alone. Between the dual questions of “is either pitcher really worth that money?” and “why is a 96-loss team spending this much to maybe get to only 90 losses next year?” it’s easy to question the Minnesota plan here. That being said: these are moves that are still pretty defensible. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Florida Marlins, thought of as very unlikely to compete at any point this season, currently sit in a second-place tie in the so-far-disappointing National League East. They are a team built almost entirely on offense and, because of this, are even less likely to replicate their relative success over the season’s remainder. Because nobody talks about their pitching, and rightly so because those talks might not be so nice, Ricky Nolasco has pitched quite well and deserves some kudos.

In 19 games, two of which were relief appearances, he has posted the following numbers:

3.74 ERA, 4.19 FIP, 110.2 IP, 104 H, 29 BB, 82 K
2.83 K/BB, 1.20 WHIP, .279 BABIP, 74.4% LOB

The statistics above have helped result in a 0.45 WPA, tops amongst starters on the team. Scott Olsen is close behind him at 0.35, but while these two have some similarities in their overall results, there are also some noticeable differences, mainly in their controllable skills:

Ricky Nolasco: 3.74 ERA, 4.19 FIP, 110.2 IP, 2.83 K/BB, 1.20 WHIP
Scott Olsen: 3.96 ERA, 5.01 FIP, 111.1 IP, 1.49 K/BB, 1.30 WHIP

Over the last thirty days, Nolasco has made six starts, giving up just 31 hits and 4 walks in 44.2 innings, striking out 42 in the process. His 0.78 WHIP ranks second and, while the average HR/FB is around 10-11%, Nolasco has sliced his in half to the tune of 5.8%. Though his K/9 of 8.46 in this span ranks 21st, his ridiculously low 0.81 BB/9 helps result in a first place 10.50 K/BB.

Something struck me as particularly interesting with regards to his pitch data: from last year to now he is throwing harder across the board. His fastball has increased from 89 mph to 91.2 mph; his slider from 79.8 mph to 83.6 mph; his curveball has risen from 72.5 mph to 75.6 mph, and his changeup, though used just 2.4% of the time compared to last year’s 9.1%, has increased velocity from 78.5 mph to 82.3 mph.

Ricky has been pitching very much under the radar primarily due to the Marlins’ pitching woes serving as a generalization for the entire team and their propensity for offense. Nolasco is not a Cy Young Award contender—though now that I think about it his W-L record could convince voters he may be—but he has been a nice little diamond in the rough to date.