Can He Do It Again?
by DanHennessey31 on Feb 2, 2012 9:17 AM PST
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PrintLet me present to you two pitchers:
Pitcher A: 372.2 IP, 4.56 ERA, 4.92 FIP, 4.89 xFIP, 6.1 K/9, 3.4 BB/9, 1.3 HR/9, 36.5% GB%
Pitcher B: 170.2 IP, 3.32 ERA, 2.86 FIP, 3.30 xFIP, 6.5 K/9, 1.3 BB/9, 0.6 HR/9, 46.7% GB%
From those two sets of numbers, they have very little in common. The strikeout rate is pretty close, but that's about it.
Oh, and they're the same guy.
Pitcher A is Brandon McCarthy pre-A's (2005-2009), and Pitcher B is McCarthy's 2011 season. It's a piece of evidence that suggests, "hey, if you increase your K/BB ratio from 1.8 to 4.9, that could make you a better pitcher." And while you're at it, make 12 percent of the balls put in play against you grounders instead of flyballs.
In the interview that Nico transcribed and posted on Monday, when asked what was different about this past year, McCarthy said,
I think it's just confidence more than anything...When I got to the big leagues with the stuff that I had, I found that the margin for error is a lot shorter and it was really the first time in years that I had failed. And I don't think I handled it all that well: Just mentally I think it becomes a struggle, you start to nibble a bit more, you lose your confidence, and once you lose your confidence it's a hard thing to get back. So it really wasn't until I made wholesale changes that I think I got that confidence back, where "Screw it, I can throw this in the zone -- hit it, do anything you want to do with it and beat it into the ground."
Of course, most people don't just "have" confidence. It comes from somewhere; it's earned because of something they've changed, or some new result they're seeing. And I think McCarthy's comes from his fastball and its variations.
For the first part of his career, McCarthy was mostly fastball-changeup-curveball. Some of the Pitchf/x data shows he might have messed around with a slider, but that seems to be noise to me. The following data comes straight from FanGraphs.
| Season | Team | FB% | CB% | CH% | CT% |
| 2005 | White Sox | 61.1% (90.3) | 16.9% (76.2) | 21.9% (77.6) | |
| 2006 | White Sox | 63.4% (90.8) | 12.8% (76.3) | 21.8% (76.9) | |
| 2007 | Rangers | 65.9% (88.9) | 16.5% (75.6) | 17.6% (76.6) | |
| 2008 | Rangers | 65.7% (89.0) | 17.6% (75.5) | 16.8% (78.0) | |
| 2009 | Rangers | 64.9% (88.8) | 11.4% (77.1) | 11.0% (77.5) | |
| 2011 | Athletics | 42.0% (90.9) | 17.1% (79.8) | 2.3% (84.0) | 36.4% (90.2) |
While in Texas, McCarthy's velocity dropped slightly, and I'm sure some of that had to do with his injuries. In 2011, he basically eschewed changeups and threw two-thirds as many fastballs in favor of a cutter. I'm not sure if it's a new pitch, or if the pitch classifications changed, but based on the horizontal movement data, he was definitely doing something different. The cutter has about the same velocity as his fastball, but dives in to left-handed hitters.
If you look at the heat maps on the above-referenced FanGraphs' page, you'll see that McCarthy pounded left-handed hitters in all year, particularly with the fastball/cutter, something he hadn't done in the past. With the change in fastball type/addition of a cutter (whatever you want to call it), I would have expected to see McCarthy's numbers improve greatly against lefties. But not the case:
| Sample | TBF | BA | OBP | SLG |
| 2005-2009 vs. LHB | 756 | 0.251 | 0.336 | 0.428 |
| 2011 vs. LHB | 366 | 0.253 | 0.281 | 0.389 |
| 2005-2009 vs. RHB | 847 | 0.256 | 0.321 | 0.431 |
| 2011 vs. RHB | 324 | 0.253 | 0.281 | 0.349 |
I don't think that's enough to say anything definitive about his platoon split. He was significantly better against everyone. Of course, maybe we should just listen to him:
| Season | Team | Swing% | Contact% | Zone% |
| 2007 | Rangers | 44% | 82% | 50% |
| 2008 | Rangers | 43% | 84% | 50% |
| 2009 | Rangers | 43% | 85% | 53% |
| 2011 | Athletics | 50% | 84% | 59% |
Dude threw a lot more strikes and got a lot more outs. If a pitcher is not going to strike out a bunch of guys, he can't be walking a bunch either. Of course getting out of Chicago/Texas and into the Coliseum helped some, but if a pitcher has decent stuff, let them hit it. They're going to have to at some point if he's not taking care of hitters himself. And it's better with fewer guys on base, especially guys the pitcher has put there. Only took me 750 words to describe rocket science.
At the beginning article, I wrote "Oh, and they're the same guy." But maybe he isn't.
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McCarthy will regress significantly this year
The BB/9 and HR/FB rates are not sustainable. There are only two guys in the league who can consistently put up a BB/9 under 1.5, and their names are Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee. So that’ll rise at least some. The HR/FB rate could definitely stay below average thanks to the Coliseum, but it should also rise.
I still think he’ll be a damn fine pitcher, but it’s not realistic to expect a FIP better than the 3.50-4.00 range.
Don't think I'd include Cliff Lee on that list...
Visit my blog the Todd Van Poppel Rookie Card Retirement Plan!!
He's right around or below that mark every year
BB/9 over the past four years: 1.4 for Cliff Lee, 1.3 for Halladay. Haren is close at 1.6, and Fister, over the 3 years he’s been in the majors, is at 1.7 overall.
Unless I’ve overlooked someone, it drops off pretty quickly after those four. Tomlin has a good mark but in a very small sample. So even if McCarthy has vastly improved his control, which I’d like to believe, that BB/9 rate is very, very likely to come up significantly.
I think he can
Because as he told us in the blogger thing, his BB/9 rates in the minors were very low. Its pure confidence. I think he does just fine and keeps them up. There isn’t luck involved in missing the strike zone.
Visit my blog the Todd Van Poppel Rookie Card Retirement Plan!!
Whatever you want to call it
As with most stats, there is variability in any pitcher’s BB/9 from year to year. Over the past several years, anyone other than Holliday or Lee who has been under the 1.5 mark has regressed significantly the following year.
A reasonable expectation for McCarthy might be Buerhle-type control: right around 2.0 BB/9 going forward, which would still be fantastic.
Lets go back for a second here...
You say this: “There are only two guys in the league who can consistently put up a BB/9 under 1.5, and their names are Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee”.
Cliff Lee has put up a sub 1.5 BB/9 exactly TWICE in his career. TWICE. So that example is just beyond off the mark which is all I was highlighting.
But the completely separate discussion of it being impossible. I can use your example of Cliff Lee quite adequately. Cliff Lee: 2002-2007: 3.1 BB/9. Cliff Lee 2008-2011 1.4 BB/9. So why is it impossible to assume this is the case with McCarthy?
Visit my blog the Todd Van Poppel Rookie Card Retirement Plan!!
I was being generous to McCarthy
By calling it close enough on Lee (1.4 over 4 years, just a tad above in the years he missed … I guess one man’s “close enough” is another’s “beyond off the mark”). Admittedly I was reaching a bit. So throw him out and it only strengthens my original point, which is that there aren’t many pitchers who can sustain such a low BB/9. In fact, now that we’ve discarded Lee it’s down to just one active pitcher: Halladay.
I never said it was impossible that Brandon McCarthy has suddenly developed Halladay-level, best in the game caliber control. I said it was very, very unlikely. Sure, Cliff Lee sustained his improvement, but that’s one guy and he’s the exception rather than the rule. Here are some pitchers over the past several years who appeared to take a huge leap forward, but quickly regressed from elite to very good control: Roy Oswalt, Joel Pineiro, C.C. Sabathia, Joe Blanton, Josh Beckett, Ervin Santana, James Shields.
Sabathia I find particularly interesting. He had a 3.3 BB/9 rate over his first 1165 innings, then improved to 1.38 for a year at age 26. He’s settled in at 2.5 BB/9 in the four years since.
So it looks like the cutter allowed him to throw more strikes
but not ones that were easy to hit, especially for power.
John 3:16
"If they want to pay me like Mike Gallego, I’ll play like Gallego." - Rickey Henderson
Ironically, FIP might be influenced by the field
No supporting evidence to give but A fly ball hit well in Texas is a double. In Oakland it’s an out. That could lead to the confidence thing that McCarthy spoke of.
by Ran on Feb 2, 2012 7:36 PM PST up reply actions
FITZ!!!!!!
I like Cindi. A. She never pretends to know more than she does. B. She has unbridled enthusiasm for her "Hotties," and isn't afraid to show it. -IM4Oakgal
do front page writers write about ex-A's players?
or recently traded ones. From the title, I thought this was an article on Cahill or Moscoso. Are we still going to get analysis on them? If not, I’m gonna miss the ‘how good is trevor cahill really’ debate. I think this season in Arizona will really tell us a lot more about him besides the fact that he loves legos.
Falcon Punch!
Pennington refers to Cahill in his AN FanFest interview
I should have that one ready by the weekend.
I like Cindi. A. She never pretends to know more than she does. B. She has unbridled enthusiasm for her "Hotties," and isn't afraid to show it. -IM4Oakgal
I think it goes up Monday morning.
(Not sure about the Pennington post, though. Oh, he DI’INT!)
I like Cindi. A. She never pretends to know more than she does. B. She has unbridled enthusiasm for her "Hotties," and isn't afraid to show it. -IM4Oakgal
I am just glad that we still have McCarthy.
He’s going to be a bright spot for our A’s this year.
by IM4Oakgal on Feb 2, 2012 3:00 PM PST reply actions 1 recs
He needs to get locked up on a 3 year deal.
I think I’ll be more depressed with him leaving than either Gio or Cahill.
"I would have expected to see McCarthy's numbers improve greatly against lefties"
Just going off the OBP/SLG numbers provided you could definitely say that his numbers against lefties greatly improved.
Pre-2011 LHB OPS against: .764
2011 LHB OPS against: .670
A ~100 point difference in OPS is huge. OPS isn’t park or league adjusted, but a drop that big suggests real factors are at play.
Factors
“Real” factors in the sense that results were not the product of statistical noise or a change of environment.They due to changes in the quality/strategy of his pitching. One could be him pounding the zone in on lefties. One could be the addition of the cutter. One could be his improved control.
But he improved a lot against righties as well
He did improve against lefties but it seems to be a product of McCarthy just being much better overall, not a result of his new repertoire being especially effective against left handed batters.
I agree with this.
He improved against everyone and his numbers are much better all across the board. I was making the case that lefties were included.
“I would have expected to see McCarthy’s numbers improve greatly against lefties. But not the case” just struck me as in contradiction with the numbers provided.
I think it just wasn't a clear statement
I think that the OP really meant to say that "I would have expected to see McCarthy’s numbers improve greatly against lefties while staying about the same against righties. But not the case:"
I bleed green and gold!!! (my doctor is worried)
So evidently Josh Hamilton relapsed.
Maybe we win a few more games this year? It’s always possible that Hamilton falls out of baseball again in a heartbeat (as sad as that is). That’s a risky player to lock up long term, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of contract he’ll get next offseason.
FWIW,
here’s a link to the story. Once an addict, you’re never too far from relapsing. That being said, this doesn’t have the ring, to me, of “career over” so much as “ruh-roh…” He might be just fine.
I like Cindi. A. She never pretends to know more than she does. B. She has unbridled enthusiasm for her "Hotties," and isn't afraid to show it. -IM4Oakgal
there's one big difference:
pitcher A threw over the top; pitcher B throws three quarters.
and not only did mccarthy add that nasty cutter, but his fastball and curve have better velo and movement as a result of the new slot.
http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfxg.aspx?playerid=4662&position=P&season=2011&date=0&dh=0
by NRC on Feb 2, 2012 6:54 PM PST reply actions 1 recs
I Think
It was simply a case of him hitting his spots, getting guys out and getting more ground balls for outs. His velocity went up, and it’s kind of a circle: you hit your spots, get guys out, you pitch better. When you pitch well you can go deeper in to ballgames, which boosts your confidence (as do all good outings). Because you’re confident, you attack hitters more, nibble less, get outs, pitch deeper and see your confidence go up even more. And when this is the case, a bad outing doesn’t spoil any rhythm or lower your confidence; you’re now a more constant pitcher.
Totally agree
And the cycle works in the reverse, too, as I think we saw with McCarthy when he didn’t have as good stuff, lost confidence (for good reason), nibbled more because he had to, walked more guys (partly because he was already behind in the count and who wants to groove a 3-1 pitch?) — all stuff he acknowledged in the interview.
I like Cindi. A. She never pretends to know more than she does. B. She has unbridled enthusiasm for her "Hotties," and isn't afraid to show it. -IM4Oakgal
Yep
This is something that happens a lot, and I remember in 2004 it happened to Zito and Mulder. Zito was struggling at the start of the season and then he started to calm down, stop letting one bad pitch or one bad outing get to him, and finished the season much better then he might have. Mulder started to over-think and lose confidence, and a Cy Young season quickly fell apart.
Oh, and it should be “you’re now a more consistent pitcher”.
by Sean Fortuna on Feb 3, 2012 11:56 AM PST up reply actions
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