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Monday, November 16, 2009

THT: Clone Wars: Jonathan Sanchez and Clayton Kershaw

This doesn’t follow my normal comparison as I usually have two players with similar stat lines and try to explain why one player might be better or more surprising. This time I found two players who couldn’t have looked more different in 2009, but looking at the numbers they should have been more similar. These two pitchers are two of the better strikeout pitchers, but they also can’t keep from giving up the free passes.

Name W L ERA WHIP K BB IP K/9 BB/9 K/BB GB% FB% HR/FB%
Jonathan Sanchez 8 12 4.24 1.37 177 88 163.1 9.75 4.85 2.01 40.70% 43.10% 10.30%
Clayton Kershaw 8 8 2.79 1.23 185 91 171 9.74 4.79 2.03 39.40% 41.60% 4.10%

This matchup in 2009 came down to one thing. Kershaw gained a huge advantage in his number of homers allowed. You could argue he is going to continue this since he’s pitching in Dodger Stadium for half his future games, but as we know AT&T Park is not friendly to hitters either. Kershaw had the lowest HR/FB% in baseball this year and less than half the amount of any other pitcher on the Dodgers staff. On the other hand Sanchez threw a fairly high HR/FB% based on other Giants pitchers such as Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum. Using xFIP we can get an idea of how similar they are with Kershaw at 3.94 and Sanchez at 4.22.

Really? Baseball-Reference has the park factors for AT&T park at multi-year: Batting - 104, Pitching - 104; one-year: Batting - 105, Pitching - 104.

Dodgers Stadium is at multi-year: Batting - 95, Pitching - 94; one-year: Batting - 95, Pitching - 93

Tripon Posted: November 16, 2009 at 05:21 AM | 3 comment(s)
  Related News: GeneralSabermetricsProjectionsSpecial TopicsBaseball GeeksLA DodgersSan FranciscoScouting

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   1. TroyPatterson  Posted: November 16, 2009 at 09:56 AM (#3388540)
Those are park factors for offense. I was just talking about park factors for home runs. Both Dodger stadium and AT&T;park lower home run totals and most of the starters on those teams will have HR/FB% lower than league average.
   2. The Piehole of David Wells, Red Sox Colostomy Bag  Posted: November 16, 2009 at 10:19 AM (#3388553)
[edited: Forget it. I tried to fix the table above, but the browser doesn't like my formatting.]
   3. Steve Treder  Posted: November 16, 2009 at 11:42 PM (#3389157)
Those are park factors for offense. I was just talking about park factors for home runs. Both Dodger stadium and AT&T;park lower home run totals and most of the starters on those teams will have HR/FB% lower than league average.

Sure, but AT&T;is very asymmetrical in its HR yield: it's a terrible HR park for LHBs, but not too bad at all for RHBs. So, pitching his home games in SF, a LHP such as Sanchez can be expected to have more difficulty with the HR ball than RHPs such as Lincecum and Cain.
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