My guess is young pitchers are used to this now, and that every good pitching prospect gets pulled from a minor league game before yielding a hit? I first noticed it when Tyler Glasnow was pulled two starts in a row back in 2016.

This guy has electric stuff, better than any A's pitcher I've ever seen. Been watching the A's since the 80's

Better than peak Timmy Hudson?

I won't speak to stuff or potential but so far Miller looks to have been lucky. On contact allowed, a 92 EV and 50% hard-hit rate is not good. He gives up a ton of LDs and FBs but, luckily enough, none of them have left the yard yet. Despite all that hard-hitting, nobody is "barrelling" anything (one of the lowest rates in MLB). K rate is above average but so is BB rate. Before anybody gets excited one way or the other, it's just 15 innings and 36 batted balls.

This is unbelievable, incredible, and unheard of!!!


(The part about an A's pitcher having a good outing)

but seriously, the A's are making every hitter this year look like Freddie Freeman:
2023 batters against Oakland: .292/.389/.506
Freddie Freeman career: .299/.386/.509

He gives up a ton of LDs and FBs but, luckily enough, none of them have left the yard yet. Despite all that hard-hitting, nobody is "barrelling" anything (one of the lowest rates in MLB).

His xERA (3.18) is actually lower than his ERA (3.52). I have little to no idea what that means, other than its a component stat built off of statcast inputs, but it seems notable given the 50% hard hit rate.

30 games into the season, and the A's don't yet have a starting pitcher win.

30 games into the season, and the A's don't yet have a starting pitcher win.

Figures it would be the A's to finally Kill the Win.

#3

Yes and I would probably put Harden above Hudson from a stuff standpoint. He throws a 102MPH 4 seamer, 95MPH cutter and a slider at 85MPH that has huge movement. No idea if he can stay healthy or keep the walks down / mistakes from getting hit hard. He's definitely fun to watch pitch.

30 games into the season, and the A's don't yet have a starting pitcher win.

How often would the starter go 5, even with a lead?

I don't know if any rookie pitcher more recently did it, but Daniel Ponce de Leon of the Cardinals threw a 7 inning no hitter in his major league debut. (pulled after 7 innings also but was up to 116 pitches)

This guy has electric stuff, better than any A's pitcher I've ever seen.

Ahem.

#6 ... I noticed that too. Based on "quality of contact" which I assume means that the FBs have been hit with a big launch angle. Anyway, it is true that a pop-up or a GB could have an exit velocity of 95+ (hard-hit I think) but I assume that sort of thing isn't sustainable. So 18 balls have been hit 95+ but only 1 has been "barrelled" -- surely that's a fluke one way or the other.

Or maybe hard-hit is just a kinda useless (or at least highly variable) stat? Miller is hardly alone. Josh Fleming of the Rays has given up 33 hard-hit but just 1 barrel; Eovaldi is at 2 for 43; Stroman 2 for 38. Looking at MLB average for Eovaldi's career, looks like a bit under 20% of hard-hit are barrels which is also about where Eovaldi is for his career.

A bit like some BABIP "huh" stories, Scherzer's statcast career puts him league average for barrels/contact ... but slightly better on barrels/PA. His barrels/hard-hit is a bit above league average. DeGrom is much lower than league average on hard-hit/contact and a bit lower on barrel/hard-hit. Rich Hill has been good at limiting hard-hit/contact but has a high barrel/hard-hit rate nearing 25% ... and so far this year, things don't look good ... still for his career, he's only slightly worse than average on barrels/PA.

Based on that huge sample, we'd expect Miller's hard-hit% to drop by 1/3 or a bit more but his barrrel% to more than double. The important thing of course is to keep missing bats.

Bryce Miller had a perfect game through 5 innings (of his first major league start!). He gave up two hits and a run in the sixth but left with 10 K’s and zero walks.

30 games into the season, and the A's don't yet have a starting pitcher win.

Don’t look now, but they just took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the 6th before pulling their starter, Sears.

Make that 2-1.

Official attendance for Tues was just 2,583. The Steve Miller Band would probably draw better.

So close. With one out in the 9th, make it 31 games.

17. Walt Davis Posted: May 04, 2023 at 12:45 AM (#6126826)
Official attendance for Tues was just 2,583. The Steve Miller Band would probably draw better.

The local 3rd division soccer team averages almost 4k a night.

3rd division, American soccer outdraws a major league baseball team...

Anyway, it is true that a pop-up or a GB could have an exit velocity of 95+ (hard-hit I think) but I assume that sort of thing isn't sustainable. So 18 balls have been hit 95+ but only 1 has been "barrelled" -- surely that's a fluke one way or the other.

I had the same thought but then, he hasn't allowed IFFBs/GBs to account for the hard hits! His launch angle seems pretty high (26.5) so maybe there have been a lot of OF popups?

Or maybe hard-hit is just a kinda useless (or at least highly variable) stat?

I think that's it. And, based on what I understand about hitter EV, maybe that makes sense? Hitter EV doesn't track with best hitters, or even really power production. So it probably shouldn't for pitchers either, although I feel like I'm missing a step in understanding why that is at the moment.

Based on that huge sample, we'd expect Miller's hard-hit% to drop by 1/3 or a bit more but his barrrel% to more than double. The important thing of course is to keep missing bats.

It will certainly be interesting to see how it plays out. His stuff screams swing-and-miss and soft-contact. Neither has really happened, yet he's been successful in a way that at least some metrics don't think is entirely a fluke. I'm going to try and watch him next time out and see if that helps me better understand the underlying numbers (which, of course, could simply be SSS).

FWIW, the Indians just optioned Zach Plesac who had pretty similar EV and HH% numbers, far far worse results (410 BABIP or some such).

What I'd say is that avg EV isn't very important, it's how often a batter crushes it or pitcher gets crushed. I assume that was the motivation behind HH% but I'm not sure that's doing it either. Which brought us "barrels" which is a combo of HH and launch angle.

I will guess (and will soon check) that a low barrels/BBE is hard to maintain for a pitcher. Some will be able to sustain low barrels/PA by striking out lots of guys. Last year, plenty of relievers had quite low marks but that might just be a combo of 1-inning and small samples. The best SPs were somewhat surprising in Alex Cobb and Justin Steele but still not big samples. You start to see some names you might expect like Max Fried and Kershaw in the low 4%s ... and of course Martin Perez. :-) Tyler Anderson's surprise year might have been due to his 4.9% rate. Alcantara, Manoah, Webb are in the 5s and plenty of good pitchers in the 6s. Even the low 7s seems fine -- Javier, Bieber, Taijuan are here. Somewhere around 7.5 seems to be where things get a bit dicey.

But barrels/PA is probably more important. Cease and Ohtani in 2022 gave up 6.2% and 6.3% barrels per BBE but, thanks to Ks, just 3.6-3.7% per PA. Sonny Gray meanwhile gave up barrels on 5.5% per BBE but 3.7% per PA. Tyler Anderson's 4.9% per BBE also came out to 3.7% per PA. The very good ones are generally 4.5% per PA or lower, somewhere around 5.5% is where things start to get hairy. But really, with SPs generally going 20-25 batters these days, that's only a bit above 1 per start. Don't give up a HR = good start.

So Kershaw has had only one season over 5% barrels/PA and that was 2020. For his career he's at 3.6% ... says MLB average is 4.6 but I'll assume that's because of relievers and that an average SP is closer to 5.5 or maybe even 6. But surely it is way, way, way more important that he has a 29.2% K-rate (MLB 22.1%) and 4.4% walk rate (MLB 8.4%) -- statcast era only.

Tyler Anderson comes out to a career 4.6% but it was 3.7% in 2022 and 6.7% so far this year and 6.4% in 2021. The avg EV was also 2 MPH lower and the HH% 5-7% lower so that's all consistent. Comping 2021 and 2022, virtually identical PAs, that 2.7% difference is 19 fewer barrels which is mainly reflected in giving up 13 fewer HRs in 2022. That should account for about half or more of the 33 fewer ERs he gave up in 22. In 2021, he gave up about 1 HR per 6 IP; last year it was about 1 per 13 IP; so far this year it's about 1 per 4.5 IP.

Given it's almost the definition, I assume there's a high correlation between barrels/PA and HRs/PA (and barrels/BBE and HR/contact ... near as I can tell BBE and contact are the same thing).

Very cool breakdown, thanks, Walt.

I do wonder if a low average EV is more correlated to success. The top 20 or so certainly has a lot of pitchers that have had successful starts to the season, more so than the top 20 high average EV. Of course, there's a lot more than EV that goes into that final ERA so it could just be correlation.

Eyeballing it, that seems to be the case in the full 2022 season. Nearly every low EV average pitcher other than a couple had a relatively good ERA (let's ~3.50 or less). Marco Gonzales and Corey Kluber, guys who arguably no longer have MLB stuff, are the two guys with an ERA over 4 in the top 20. The high EV group seems to have more of a mix of good and bad seasons.

I don't have the faintest clue as to how to efficiently compare these subsets using your barrels/PA metric but it wouldn't be surprising to see that be the differentiator between the successes and non-successes in terms of on-contact production of pitchers who post similar EVs.

Statcast provides barrels/PA ... on the leaderboard it's clearly brls/BBE and brls/PA ... on an individual page, the first one seems to be "Barrel %" ad the other is "Barrel/PA." But anything else I came up was strictly eyeballing guesswork. I would guess that "barrel %" in the table you linked is per BBE.

You see some of the usual "many ways to succeed" aspects of all of these non-traditional pitching stats going all the way back to DIPS and BABIP. Most of them didn't give up many barrels but there's one of your exceptions -- Marco Gonzalez with 45 barrels in 183 IP which no doubt is part of the 4.13 ERA and I assume (but am not sure) an even bigger part of the 4.59 xERA. Cal Quantrill was similar with 44 barrels in 186 IP ... I assume he was "lucky" to have a 3.38 ERA and the 4.31 xERA is more what we can expect from a guy who gives up barrels that often.

Comp Gonzalez with Yu Darvish. Gonalez gave up 7.2% barrels/BBE. Darvish gave up 47 in 195 IP at a rate of 9% per BBE. That means Darvish is giving up less contact (fewer BBE/PA). Darvish had about 26% K/PA and 5% BB/PA; Gonzalez was a crazy low 13% K/PA and 6% BB/PA. Darvish's xERA was a cosy 3.49, a full run+ below Gonzalez. We're talking about Darvish getting about 1 extra K per 8 PA while giving up about the same number of barrels in about the same number of batters (despite the IP edge to Darvish, he faced fewer battters becausehe was more efficient with all those extra Ks).

So Gonzlez was (arguably) harder "to hit" than Darvish but Darvish was harder "to make contact against." (Darvish may have also had some extra BABIP luck.) Can Gonzalez keep that up or will ERA catch up with xERA?

It is a lot like those early days. Randy Johnson had a career 295 BABIP, spot on league average. Schilling was at 297 vs a 295 average. We marveled at such things. There are a few guys who beat BABIP by a lot (Ryan was one) but even an unhittable guy like Johnson was hittable. Given his K/BB ratio, Schilling may have thrown a higher rate of "hittable" strikes as any pitcher in history. Seems a hittable pitch in the zone from Randy Johnson wasn't that different from one from Jose Lima (301 BABIP vs 298 league), Randy just threw a lot more un-contactable strikes.

Shintaro Fujinami gave his best effort to continue the streak but came up a run short. Kyle Muller takes the Athletics' first SP win of the year in game 33.

Fun fact: the A's historically awful pitching staff has as many quality starts as the Mets.