Crashburn Alley: Who’s Unluckier: Hamels or Santana?

I guess whichever Manuel calls the bullpen too early…

There are a few metrics which help to measure how lucky a pitcher is. I rooted through both players’ game logs and counted their losses and no decisions (QSL and QSND) in which they had a quality start (6+ IP, 3 or less ER). I looked at their run support (RS), their Fielding Independent Pitching minus Earned Run Average (FIP-ERA), their current Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP), and their Expected BABIP (XBABIP), which is LD% plus .120.

Then, I logged on to Baseball Prospectus for a look at their luck-oriented statistics. First, I logged their Current Wins and Losses (CW and CL), and then looked up BP’s Expected Wins and Losses (EW and EL). They actually have a blatant luck statistic (LUCK) and they also log Bullpen Support (BPS).

...Santana trails Hamels in quality start no-decisions, but trumps him in quality start losses. Hamels gets more than a half-run more on average and both pitchers’ defenses hurt their ERA about equally. Hamels, though, has a huge disparity between his current BABIP and expected BABIP (.086), while Santana does but it’s not nearly as much (0.41).

It seems like it’s all in agreement that Santana is the unluckier pitcher, but it’s a close one. My methodology is very rough since the quality start sets arbitrary criteria like the save rule, but it gives a good idea of where the pitchers stand when it comes to luck.