The Giants’ Shot at Noah Syndergaard’s Vulnerability
I’ll begin with a statement you’re going to grow sick of: No, there’s no predicting any of this. We wouldn’t even really like it if there were, but there’s not, and there never will be. Baseball games are played by people, and the best analysis in the world could be rendered useless by Noah Syndergaard or Madison Bumgarner waking up with the sniffles. Last year’s Blue Jays weren’t eliminated after Russell Martin accidentally bounced a return throw off Shin-Soo Choo because a few minutes later Elvis Andrus made seven consecutive errors. Just last night, the Orioles were eliminated because Zach Britton did all of his pitching off the bullpen mound. I mean, no, that wasn’t everything, but, you get the point. The smaller the sample of baseball, the more insane it seems to get. The thing about insanity is it’s unpredictable.
I feel bad having to include all that, but I’d feel worse if I didn’t. I’d feel like I was lying. The best we can do is to discuss little details, small factors that might slightly shift the win expectancies. On the plus side, that is fun, and it contributes to the conversation. So why don’t we contribute to the conversation about Syndergaard facing the Giants?
This has the appearance of a dream match-up. Two of the very best starting pitchers in baseball are going to go head-to-head with the very season on the line. There’s no one the Giants trust more than Bumgarner, and there’s no one the Mets trust more than Syndergaard, and if this doesn’t turn out to be a pitcher’s duel, well, that’s baseball for you, but we’ve got the whole setting. Odds are, the game won’t end 1-0, but if it did, not a soul would be shocked. The game could last two hours, or five.
Let’s talk about Syndergaard. More specifically, let’s talk about the Giants against Syndergaard. There has been one vulnerability, that being the running game. For much of the year, Syndergaard allowed opponents to run free. It’s something he’s worked to address, and the results have been better lately. Adding on to that, the Giants aren’t the speediest team in the league, and they’re not going to have Eduardo Nunez. The math says the running game probably won’t be much of a factor. Maybe the Giants will steal a base. Maybe it’ll matter.
I’d like to highlight another thing. Leaving Bumgarner aside, here’s the projected Giants starting lineup of position players:
| Position | Player | K% | Bats |
| C | Buster Posey | 11% | R |
| 1B | Brandon Belt | 23% | L |
| 2B | Joe Panik | 9% | L |
| SS | Brandon Crawford | 19% | L |
| 3B | Conor Gillaspie | 14% | L |
| LF | Angel Pagan | 12% | S |
| CF | Denard Span | 12% | L |
| RF | Hunter Pence | 22% | R |
Nothing too weird in there, once you substitute Gillaspie for the ailing Nunez. Right away you see all the lefties. I’m not going to claim this is the most dominant lineup in the world, but just three of its batters will bat right-handed against Syndergaard, including the pitcher. Six guys will take swings from the left side, and Syndergaard does have a platoon split. Since he debuted, lefties have touched him for a .703 OPS. Righties come in at .589. Righties have struck out a lot more, and walked a lot less. The platoon game is a little thing.
Yet you see I also included strikeout rates. The Giants have a low-strikeout lineup. They were just the best contact-hitting team in baseball, and five of these starters are what you might consider skilled contact bats. There’s not an easy strikeout in the group, Bumgarner potentially aside, and last year’s Royals got my brain gears whirring. So out of curiosity, I went through Syndergaard’s history, and I split his results by opposing hitter type.
I looked at how Syndergaard has done against everyone he’s ever faced, and I arranged those same opponents in order of overall strikeout rate. Then I split them into four groups: high-strikeout hitters, modest strikeout hitters, modest contact hitters, and great contact hitters. I calculated Syndergaard’s OPS against by each group, and I also calculated each group’s overall OPS. Here you go:
| Split | PA | OPS vs. NS | OPS vs. Lg | OPS% vs. NS |
| Over 25% K | 316 | 0.410 | 0.618 | 66% |
| 20 – 25% K | 392 | 0.666 | 0.743 | 90% |
| 15 – 20% K | 498 | 0.699 | 0.754 | 93% |
| Under 15% K | 219 | 0.769 | 0.737 | 104% |
I’m not going to act like the samples are bigger than they are, but the smallest sample is still a couple hundred plate appearances. And you can see something of a trend here. Syndergaard has completely annihilated the highest-strikeout hitters. These are also the worst hitters as a group, since it includes a lot of pitchers, but Syndergaard has mowed these opponents down. Relatively speaking, he’s been less successful against modest strikeout hitters, and modest contact hitters. And then you look at the lowest-strikeout group. Five starting Giants would go in this group, and those hitters have actually been more successful against Syndergaard than they have been overall. That’s…odd, and it has to be at least somewhat noisy, but there could still be a general truth, here. The Giants like contact. Syndergaard likes non-contact. Contact hitters don’t allow him to take such charge, and then the Mets’ mediocre team defense stands a greater chance of being exposed.
We talked about this with regard to the Royals a lot. The Royals liked to put the ball in play, and that seemed to give them a slight advantage against postseason pitchers, who tend to be higher-strikeout types. Higher-strikeout pitchers might be better able to exploit higher-strikeout hitters. Aside from Bumgarner, the Giants aren’t going to start a high-strikeout hitter, and they’re going to feature a lot of bat-to-ball skill. It doesn’t mean Syndergaard won’t still dominate, and he is pitching at home, but this is something to pay attention to. The Giants lineup makes contact like the Royals, and it can also draw walks, for good measure.
Anything could conceivably swing this game. Maybe the Giants bullpen implodes. Maybe the Giants bullpen doesn’t implode. Maybe the Giants bullpen doesn’t even ever pitch. Everything we could discuss now only barely nudges the needle. But the Giants’ ability to make contact? It seems like that could sure nudge the needle. It could be a factor tonight, and it could be a factor for as long as the Giants stay alive.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Interesting stuff. The Giants have had a lot of success in the last few postseasons by putting the ball in play and letting the other team make mistakes. Joe Sheehan, I believe, did some research that showed that the team with the higher contact rate won something like 75% of postseason series in a 5 year period, but this was a couple of years ago so I don’t know if it still holds true. But it’s something to keep an eye on, at least.
Well, Fangraphs went to the trouble to compile such data, so why not look?
Best-of-seven series 2010 onward, 11/18… 61%
For comparison, non-pitcher wRC+, 9/18, 50%
Anecdotally, I’ve noticed it seems like Noah gives up an unusual number of weak contact hits, especially towards 3B. The data here seems to match that observation.
My recollection from last year was that, after Harvey and deGrom went up against the high-contact Royals and couldn’t manage to strike, like, any of them out, that Syndergaard came out for Game 3 throwing firebolts and mowed them down. It felt like an “aha, you can make contact against guys throwing 94-96, but this guy throws 100!” sort of moment, like Syndergaard was on a plane of existence above what the Royals’ contact skills could handle.
So I’m a little surprised to see that that hasn’t been true throughout his career. On the other hand that Game 3 start was 6 IP, 7 H, 3 R, 2 BB, 6 K, so maybe not quite so spectacular as we Mets fans all remembered.
It’s very possible we see the same tonight. This time of year, you see increased velocity. You could see Thor sitting 97-99 all night when he’s usually in the 95-97 range. Wouldn’t at all be surprised to see Bum sitting around 94-95 when he’s usually low 90’s.
Hmm, ERA of 4.50, WHIP of 1.50. Doesn’t exactly look like mowing them down.
Two things.
1. Terry Collins is specifically talking a lot about contact and Syndergaard in the pre-game interviews. “He’s grown up, he’s learned to pitch to contact and not try to blow everyone away,” that kind of thing. Seems relevant.
2. Seems like while we’re talking about L-R matchups it might be worth noting how badly that shakes out here for the Mets. With Wright, Flores, and Lagares unavailable the Mets are faced with the Hobson’s choice of either putting a very lefty-heavy lineup on the field against Bumgarner, or else starting guys like Eric Campbell in a one-game sudden-death playoff.
Thanks for this article, Jeff. I was trying to say in the comments section of the article on Thor’s stolen base vulnerability — tho much less eloquently — that it seems to me that Thor’s contact problem is a much bigger issue than his stolen base problem. I don’t know if it’s the Mets defense, Thor’s relative groundball tendencies, or just noise, but Thor’s BABIP ran pretty high this year. When contact guys face Thor, they just seem to stand that much more of a chance than three true outcomes guys, cuz Thor doesn’t walk many either or give up many home runs.
Just going to point out the obvious but…aren’t all elite SP really good against the guys that have high K rates? That’s kind of the point isn’t it? The elite SP’s, be it because of pure stuff or their ability to locate, absolutely chew up the lesser hitters of the league.
I love the piece, but I don’t know…if you watch baseball enough without even looking at the numbers you’d know teams w/ higher contact rates will give better SP’s, more trouble than say…the team or player full of swing and misses.
Isn’t the whole point of sabermetrics that your eyes can deceive you when watching baseball? And that you can draw grand conclusions from watching baseball that may or may not be right? And when you run the numbers like Jeff did in this article, you can come closer to the truth than a broad generalization from “watching baseball enough”?
Well but unless we have ‘All pitchers by batter type’
data to compare Syndergaard to, I don’t think we can say much.
This is an obvious oversight on Jeff’s part.
That would be ops vs league. Unless you are referring to each individual pitcher in which case, that’s a long article.
The Royals, while similar to the Giants of the last few postseasons had high contact rates…but the Royals also had great speed on the bases, and on defense. The Giants don’t. Which is why I think last years Royals team was the worst type of team to play in the playoffs. They put the ball in play AND they are elite on the bases.
“Then I split them into four groups: high-strikeout hitters, modest strikeout hitters, modest contact hitters, and great contact hitters. I calculated Syndergaard’s OPS against by each group, and I also calculated each group’s overall OPS”
how was this done? is this available in the splits tool? especially making the 4 groups
“Anything could conceivably swing this game. Maybe the Giants bullpen implodes. Maybe the Giants bullpen doesn’t implode. Maybe the Giants bullpen doesn’t even ever pitch.”
Maybe Conor Gillaspie hits a three-run donger.