He's just had bad luck. I swear.

So far the Oakland Athletics have not been doing so great. People are throwing blame all over the place... for some of us it’s the offense, others say the defense, we all agree it’s mostly the bullpen, but some are blaming some of our starters, but mainly Drew Pomeranz. I am here to say Drew Pomeranz really is not as bad as you think.

Last year Pomeranz put up an ERA of 2.35, and FIP of 3.77 and 0.7 fWAR in 69 IP. Most of us were probably hoping he would be able to keep this up, or have a similar season, although we knew we would see some regression.

So far this season Pomeranz has an ERA of 5.12, an FIP of 4.13, and has put up 0.5 fWAR in 31.2 IP. Not great, but in less than half the innings pitched last year he’s put up almost as much fWAR as last year, so you can see why I still have faith in the guy. Now I wanted to see what has really been going on with Pomeranz this year so lets look at some of his other numbers.

Ok, so looking at these numbers we can see that his K/9 and HR/9 are a bit lower than last year, but surprisingly his BB/9 is actually lower this year, and I know many of you may think it doesn’t feel that way, but that is the case according to fangraphs. One of the things that really stands out is his BABIP, LOB%, and GB%. Now this could be due to last year he was used as a reliever for a good portion of the season, so he was primarily facing lefties right? But when we look at his splits last year he actually did better against right haded pitching when you look at AVG, OBP, SLG, and wOBA

Although when you look at other statistics there aren’t huge splits, but it is important to take into consideration the number of batters faced.. he actually faced more righties than lefties last year.

Now comparing this to his stats this year you can see a bit of a change

It’s a weird split this year if you ask me. His K/9 is much lower when facing lefties, and his K% is much lower than last year when facing lefties compared to last year and his LOB% is super low. However this year when facing RHB his K/BB is nearly identical to last year, but his BABIP is way higher. What stood out to me the most are the splits between his BABIP, and also how much higher it was this year compared to last year.

So lets take a look at his batted ball profile.

The biggest thing I can see here is the increased LD% this year and a 10% decrease in GB% compared to last year, that and the doubled IFFB%. So what it looks like is hitters are getting more line drives on Pomeranz opposed to the ground balls he was inducing last year. So maybe he is relying on different pitches this year? Yes he is.

Based on the comments I’ve read, a lot of people seem to think it is his pitch selection that is limiting him, especially that he only has 2 pitches and he is throwing mostly fastballs. But if you take a look, according to Baseball Info Solutions, he has actually been using his knuckle curve (31.2% in 2015, 26.8% in 2014) and changeup (4.2% in 2015, 1% in 2014) more often than last year, and his fastball less (64.6% in 2015, 72.2% in 2014).

But how is this affecting his BABIP? Well when looking at the plate discipline of those he’s faced the statistics from last year are nearly identical to last year. So then why is he giving up more hits? Well there was one difference; the batters he has been facing have been swinging at pitches in the zone 10% more than before. In 2014 he had a Z-Swing% of 60.3%, this season it is at 70.1%, but wait, according to fangraphs his contact% has not really increased much. So what is going on?

I will tell you what is going on. Drew’s knuckle curve is not moving as well as it was before, it hasn’t been breaking as well, which has lead to the LD% on his knuckle curve increasing. There has been increased contact on his curve both inside and outside of the zone, and an overall increase of 10.6% contact on it. Also his two seam fastballs have also seen an increase in LD% and a drop in GB%, which is leading to more hits. His 2-Seamer has also seen an 11.4% increase on O-Contact%. His changeup has also been pretty bad. In fact, he’s seen 100% contact on his changeup’s this year. His four seam fastballs are not inducing ground balls as often, but that doesn’t seem to be a major problem because it is still inducing a higher IFFB% about 9% higher

Ok, so it looks like all of his pitches are getting hit more often. Which is not good, is there a reason they are getting hit more often? Lets take a look at where he is throwing the ball.

via Fangraphs

Compared to this year

via Fangraphs

The major difference I see is he is throwing more pitches high and inside towards the right side of the plate, I really don’t know if that is the cause of him being hit more often, but its most likely due to what I mentioned above, which is his curve ball not breaking as well. "And that’s all I have to say about that. " – Forest Gump

So after reading all of this, you must be thinking, "why does MehranTheGreat think Drew Pomeranz is so great? Because he still sounds terrible", well I will tell you why.

The guy has good stuff, we saw that last year. To be honest I thought he could keep up that sort of production, and I still do. He actively has increased the use of his changeup (as hittable as its been) and the use of his knuckle curve (even though it hasn’t been breaking as well as before), but he is making the effort to be a better pitcher through using more pitches. I still think that he’s got potential to be the next Kershaw, because I won't accept that I am wrong. But really I think if he starts using his four-seam fastball a bit more to induce more fly balls and maybe try to move away from being a ground ball pitcher he might end up doing a little bit better? I mean who knows it could end up in more HR’s. But he needs to figure out what is up with his curve, clearly he has had trouble this year with leaving it up in the zone. Though if he can figure out how to get his two seam, and curve ball working again, he will be stellar. I believe he can do it, and so should you.

The fact of the matter is, even though he has been pitching worse than last season, he’s put up almost as much fWAR in about half the innings. That has to mean something right? Even if it doesn’t, it’s what’s keeping me positive, and it should keep you feeling positive too.