State of the Pitching

One thing that has not been mentioned a lot with reference to pitching performance is left on base percentage (LOB%). Remember Dice-K’s big 2008 season where he put guys on all the time but somehow won a ton of games and had a really low ERA? Well, he stranded a tremendous number of those runners-gaining him the reputation as “a guy who bares down when the situation demands.” However most, if not all, pitchers have very consistent numbers, when taken over a full season, for their LOB%, and a typical LOB% for a starter is in the low 70s by age. For example Beckett over the last 4 years (excluding this year):
2006:69 %
2007:75.2
2008:71.3%
2009:71.6%

One thing you see there is that these somewhat track his overall success (eg 2007 best year, 2006 worst), but also that the range is 70-75% which is typical. Think of LOB% as an inverse of “batting average with runners in scoring position” or whatever typical broadcasters like to tell us about clutch hitting. And like that-if you really look over a long season- it evens out to somewhere close to 70%. Now let’s look at the Sox starters this year:

Beckett:55.9%
Matsuzaka:43.1%
Wakefield:62.8%
Buchholz:68.9%
Lackey:70%
Lester:72.9%

First-this is terrible, but cannot be sustainably that bad. There must be a lot of random variation (mostly bad) here the same way there is over a season with hitting with runners in scoring position for any team. Lackey and Lester look decent (average) but even there it should be noted that Lackey’s career average is 73%, while Lester’s is 76.2%. Even here these are big differences over the course of a full season, but nothing compared to Beckett, Dice-K and Wake’s numbers. If there is anything that screams “positive regression” it is this-even if the Sox pitchers throw the same pitches with the same command and velocity as they have over the rest of the season, it seems impossible that their numbers will not dramatically improve.

How do our cheif competitors look in this regard? Just as in the case of offense, the Rays are getting crazy, fluky, unsustainable production here. Look at these crazy numbers:
Shields:83.3%
Garza:84.5%
Price:80.1%
Niemann:84.6%
Davis:84.3%
(Matsuzaka 2008-for reference-80.6%)

This is absolutely nuts. What you should remeber is this is not a skill at this level. No starter in baseball can maintain those numbers, let alone 5 (for example Roy Halladay’s career LOB% is 72.5%, CC Sabathia’s is 72.6). Thus, the Rays are not only hitting better than any team with runners in scoring position they are also pitching far better than any team with the other team’s runner in scoring position. Over a full season history and number tell us they simply cannot continue this at close to this pace (they still could end up at the top of the list compared to other teams at the end of the year in LOB%, but it cannot be close to 85%, and the Sox will not end up in the low 60%s).
So…hold tight.

Also-good job, Bob.