Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 177: How Much Does Velocity Loss Matter?/The Astros’ Runaway Strikeout Rate

Episode Date: April 9, 2013

Ben and Sam talk about the performance impact of velocity loss, then discuss the Astros’ astronomical early-season strikeout rate.

So what's the email address? Podcast at BaseballPerspectus.com Good morning and welcome to episode 177 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I am Ben Lindberg. You are Sam Miller. Hello. Hi. Hi.

How are you? Okay. Good. Pretty good. You have a topic. I do. We both kind of you? Okay. Good. Pretty good. You have a topic. I do. We both kind of have topics, I guess. Surprise topics.

This is our first, I would say this is our first show of the year where we did it the way we're supposed to do it. Yeah, didn't discuss it beforehand, which we used to do all the time when we started. It was a really, it was a pure process where we would surprise each other and gradually we, I guess, came to realize that we needed some extra help. I don't know that we do. I just think that we might be working our way back into it. It's a leap of faith every day, and I guess we haven't felt the pressure to do it because it's the start of the season. But, I mean, it took us three and a half months before we even started this podcast after we made plans to do it and so we move slow right we we get there eventually and maybe today we're there so uh my topic is declining fastball velocity okay what's your topic ben oh right

uh i kind of wanted to talk about the astros strikeout rate uh and kind of wanted to talk about the Astros' strikeout rate and kind of wanted to talk about the pitch that ended the Rangers' raise game, but I'm still in the process of gathering information about it, so we'll see. So you start. Okay, so I just wanted to kind of... We've talked at... I hope i can say this we've talked at bp about ways to make uh pakoda even better and what sorts of data might be useful information and sort of thrown things up against the wall and one of the things that i remember you mentioning at some point

is fastball velocity and um we don't really know how to do that, I guess, right now. And there are reasons not to do it, et cetera. And yet I get the sense that, well, this has kind of been the week of fastball velocity. It seems like this has been kind of the most I can remember a lot of pitchers showing velocity drops at one time, like really high-profile pitchers and concurrently struggling or in some cases not struggling. And so I just wanted to get to sort of throw out a scenario to you and see how much you kind of would factor it in if you had to predict, not Pakoda because Pakoda has to be responsible

about things but but if you were the prediction system if you were the if you were the computer and you made each of these predictions uh on your own based on what you felt what you would do so i just wanted to sort of hypothetically say let's say there's a pitcher with a uh era of three over the past three years and and let's say a fIP of three as well, so there's no distortion there. And then there's another one with an ERA of 3.75 over the last three years. And they each throw 91 miles an hour on average. And I tell you that I know the future, and the future is that the better pitcher loses a mile and a half of fastball velocity this year.

the better pitcher loses a mile and a half of fastball velocity this year. So you've got ERA of three, but just lost a mile and a half of fastball velocity, or ERA of 3.75, but is healthy. Who you got? Who you take? And we're talking about long-term, and they're the same age? We're talking about for the next year. Next year. Yeah, they're the same age. Next year.

I think I would probably still take the more successful pitcher for one year, but I would probably be worried that it would continue or accelerate or maybe he wouldn't age as well. And so over time, I would prefer the guy who started out less successful. So what if I cut the difference in half, and now it's an ERA of 3 and an ERA of 3.37? Still take the better guy? No.

Now I take the guy who still throws harder. So basically, you're willing to adjust a half a run roughly. Yeah, I think so. Uh, I think so. And I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm Googling as we speak because there has actually been some research about this. Um, and if I were trying to project, I would want to look at that research first, but yeah, I guess that is my, my gut feeling that it could be worth that all else being equal. And is there a number that the guy would start at velocity wise that you think would be the most damaging to lose a mile and a half off of that?

And the reason I ask is because I was on the radio with our boss, Joe Hamrahi, yesterday, and I was asked about Jared Weaver and his velocity loss. And Weaver has had velocity losses in the past, and he's also kind of proven me wrong in the past. And so I said, you know, it's troubling, but I'm not willing to say anything definitive about him. And I kind of dodged the question. But I was sort of trying to figure out whether the fact that Weaver was only throwing 88 to begin with or 89 means that it's less of a big deal or more of a big deal. So at what point, what kind of pitcher do you least want to see the velocity loss? I guess the more often he throws his fastball,

maybe I would be more concerned about the fastball losing velocity. If it's someone like, say, Felix Hernandez, who throws a ton of pitches, and all of those pitches are still very effective, and he still seems to be able to vary speeds and maybe throw those pitches a little more slowly if his fastball is slower. I would be a little less worried about that than I would be, say, if someone like, I don't know, Justin Verlander or someone who just has a really, really good fastball and is not, I mean, he's not an all fastball pitcher,

but someone who has a lot of other things to compensate with, I would probably be less worried about. I wonder, uh, I wonder if it's, if it's linear, if, if the decline in performance, uh, declines, if that decline is kind of linear along with the decline in velocity, I mean, is there a point at which it becomes sort of an exponential thing? Like when you drop below a certain speed, everyone can catch up with your mistakes and punish your mistakes. Whereas if you're going from 95 to 94,

then maybe you still have the speed to to beat most hitters um but if you're going from 90 to 89 then it's more problematic right it's tricky because you would think that going from 90 to 89 would be more damaging for the fastball than going from 95 to 94 but the flip side is that the harder you throw to begin with, the more likely you were to rely on your fastball. So, like, I mean, you know, like, you can always come up with exceptions. For the most part, there is not an ace going who throws as soft as Jared Weaver, and so that seems like this current velocity drop should be a big deal, but you could have said the same thing about him, his velocity last last year and you could also maybe point to sean markham a couple years ago who was throwing in the mid 80s

at the most and was also getting one of the best strikeout rates in the national league at the time and so there's no real rule where you go okay it can't work anymore uh from this point on but yeah i would i would think I would agree with you that the more you use your fastball, probably the more troubling it would be. One more question along these lines is that if you lose a mile and a half off your fastball, you're probably losing roughly that much off your changeup

and roughly that much off your slider. Do you know whether a slider that loses a mile and a half is less effective? I mean, you could certainly understand that the whole package would be less effective as a package. But the slider itself, is the slider itself less effective when it's slow? Or is a splitter less effective? I don't know. I would guess that everything is if the movement is the same and the separation from the other pitches is the

same i would guess the slower it is the worse it is but i don't know i'm i'm looking at uh mike fast's article called lose a tick gain a tick it's from april 5th 2010 so almost exactly three years ago and he sort of he looked at guys who gained velocity from year to year and lost velocity from year to year and how it affected them. So his conclusion, I think if I'm, if I'm skimming this while talking correctly, uh, is that for each one mile per hour increase in fastball speed, a starting pitcher, uh, his, his RA, his, his runs allowed average goes down 0.28. And for a reliever, his goes down 0.45 for every one mile per hour increase, which makes sense because relievers throw more fastballs than starters.

And they also typically have fewer off-speed pitches or less effective off-speed pitches so i guess that kind of supports what we were just saying so point 0.28 per mile yeah so what so what was the initial scenario you gave me with the the 3.75 and then the the three originally it was three quarters of a run and then this the second one was three three ace of a run okay so three ace in a run that that sounds about right then i guess for losing to me yeah okay all right did you see holiday pitch by the way uh i watched him for about two innings uh and he initially looked a little better, but the results weren't really better. I don't know. Did you think he looked any better?

I thought that his slider looked good, but that he didn't overall look very good. He didn't, you know, if you'd changed the name on his jersey, he wouldn't have stood out in any positive way. I don't know. There's a sort of a, there's a kind of depressing feeling. Very depressing. It's just like. I was't know. There's a sort of a there's a kind of depressing feeling that this is just like morbid. I'm thinking of mortality when I look at reality, not pitching well. What if he never gets it? And how long will he pitch like this to try to get the 200th win? I mean, if he were at 204, he might only go for like a season and a half. But he's at 199. He might go for three years without winning a game.

And when was it that we were doing our Cliff Lee versus Roy Halladay debate? It was this offseason, two starts ago. Did I? I had a bad answer didn't i did i say i preferred holiday i guess i think i think i think uh it might have come down to the peanut butter right yes oh that's right it was yeah it was very close i'd like to change my answer yeah yeah wow. We're falling right into the trap, Ben. Yes, confirmation bias week.

This is terrible. People should ignore us. People should ignore us until about mid-August. Okay, well then, all right. So then the other thing that I wanted to talk about is, I guess, sort of similar in that it is a small sample thing that seems very significant right now. Zach Levine is writing or has written an article for BP that may be up on Tuesday by the time you hear this. We're still sort of sorting out the stats and doing some edits and things. But he wrote about the the astros strikeout rate which is astronomically high right now as we are recording the astros are i think in the sixth or seventh inning and

they've only struck out five times uh which doesn't really show saunders yeah so um so you can kind of dismiss that maybe but but uh into that game, they had some truly impressive strikeout stats. Ryan Lind, one of our excellent crack researchers at BP, sent some sort of Jason Starkian tidbits to the email list earlier today. So this is going into Monday's game. to the email list earlier today. So this is going into Monday's game. The Astros had struck out in 36.1% of their plate appearances. That is, of course, well above the record for any one player ever for a full season.

Mark Reynolds, 35.4% in 2010. The lowest walk-to-strikeout ratio since 1920 for a team is 0.32 by the 68 Mets. The Astros entered Monday night's game at 0.12 and the Astros were on pace for 1998 strikeouts. So basically 2000 strikeouts and 143 walks and that would blow away the record by those 2010 Diamondbacks that Mark Reynolds was on. They struck out 1,529 times, and the fewest walks since 1961 is what he sent, was 345 by the 1966 Cardinals. So going into Monday's game, very small sample size. They were on pace to break the all-time team strikeout record by 350 or so and walk about 100 times fewer than any team of the last 50 plus years. And the individual performances are just as entertaining. Brett Wallace had struck out 13 times in 18 plate appearances. Chris Carter had struck out 11 times in 23 plate appearances.

So anyway. Rick Ankeel. Rick Ankeel is, I think, 11 out of 13. 10 and 12. Yeah, he struck out tonight too. Yeah. So I don't know. You've been watching the Astros.

You're kind of on the Astros bandwagon. Um, what have you thought? I mean, obviously we knew this was going to be a bad offensive team. No one thought it was going to be good. And probably we expected it to be a pretty high strikeout team with guys like Anquil and Carlos Pena and Chris Carter. So it's not a shock that they fit this profile, but they have kind of taken it to the extreme in the early going.

And I don't know that there is significant to this. I mean, the sort of sabermetric line is that strikeouts are just like any other out, more or less. They are very bad sometimes when you really need a ball in play, but other times they're not so bad when they're better than a ground ball double play, which causes two outs. So I don't know. I remember reading the annual essay for the 2010 Diamondbacks, which I think was written by Matt Swartz,

and he sort of got into kind of like a compounding effect for team strikeouts that beyond a certain point, it just kind of snowballs. And there is some extra cost associated with just having an entire lineup full of people who strike out. But it wasn't a gigantic thing. It wasn't like, I mean, we know the Astros are bad, so the fact that they strike out all the time and are bad, I don't know, does that change anything? Are you surprised from watching as much Astros as you've been watching

that they have been missing so much? And it's all swinging strikes. I think Zach said that they haven't really taken a lot of strikes looking, which I guess makes sense because I guess they're swinging at everything. So they're not taking any pitches, but they're just missing a lot. His line was, it's a collection of guys who love to swing and just aren't very good at it. Yeah. So the question is, are the Astros bad? Yeah, I don't know. I guess. I don't think, I mean, I, I, if you're trying to get me to care about the strikeouts in particular,

I'm, uh, I'm completely amused by these stats. I don't think it's the reason that they're, that they're doing poorly. I mean, they're striking out. I mean, strikeouts aren't particularly bad generally, but like hitters who are particularly bad strike out a lot. And, um, I mean, there's two kinds of guys that strike out the like hitters who are particularly bad strike out a lot and um i mean there's two kinds of guys that strike out the good hitters and then the terrible terrible hitters uh and the astros have collectively hit like a pitcher basically they're 199 234 286 going into tonight's game that will go down a bit more because they face joe saers. And, I mean, you do. You look at Chris Carter, and I'm sure I saw Chris Carter last year, but nothing sort of prepared me for how helpless he looks.

And Matt Dominguez looks really kind of shockingly bad at the plate, and Brett Wallace looks terrible. They all look terrible. I mean, other than Justin Maxwell, this is a team that is playing as bad as the worst team in baseball can play. So there's not a huge... I don't think that you really need to go that much deeper than that.

They're a bad team playing really, really badly. I mean, they faced good pitchers and they faced some good strikeout pitchers. And so the fact that they struck out a lot against Hugh Darvish, and the fact that they struck out a lot against Brett Anderson, and the fact they struck out a lot against Alexi Ogondo all makes sense. And then Dan Straley comes in, strikes out 12, walks nobody, and gets demoted the next day. Makes you sort of think, okay, well, something is going on here.

But, I mean, I don't know. They're in a very bad space right now. And the middle of their lineup looks completely lost and helpless. And that's about as far as I'm willing to go with this team right now. They aren't playing well. They're playing very poorly, very, very poorly. And from about the fifth inning on, it's like one of those games where in the NCAA tournament

where like a 15 hangs with a 2 until like six minutes left in the first half, and then they lose by like 36. That seems like it's every game lately. So your plan was to watch 50 asterisk games or something and you were very excited about it are you just as excited and committed to that plan now having yeah i'm enjoying it a lot yeah no i i still really like watching this team somebody asked me in the chat what the strategy is for watching this team uh if there's a way to do it besides hate watching

or watching just for the badness to make gifts. And I actually don't watch it with either of those mentalities. I watch it imagining that I'm the GM and that I'm trying to figure out how to win in 2015. And that you're just constantly assessing what you're seeing and the players you're seeing and trying to figure out who's fixable and who's got growth and who needs to be replaced. Yeah, I mean, that seems to be just about everyone, though, at this point.

I feel like if you're the GM trying to figure out how to win in 2015, you should just be touring your minor league affiliates and never watching the Houston Astros. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. There's bright spots here and there. Altuve's been hitting somewhat. I mean, Maxwell looks very good just in every facet of the game, and Dominguez is a much better defender than I was even prepared for.

And, you know, the bullpen's disastrous. Umber had a good first start. Norris has had some really good stretches within games, although he's had a couple of bad innings. And there's stuff there to watch. I've been enjoying it. I mean, I have no expectations that they're ever going to win any of these games. But what do we, I mean, you know, all of baseball is absurd and ridiculous.

So this is really not any more absurd and ridiculous than the rest of it. They have been kind of a trendy pick, it seems like, on the internet. Everyone is kind of an honorary Astros fan right now, it seems like. I don't know, it's like a badge of honor. It's like a sign that you are the ultimate non-frontrunner, or maybe that you are intellectually interested in the game and you don't have a rooting interest. You're not watching baseball like the typical fan. You are watching the Astros and analyzing them or something. Well, there's also the fact that you could be playing for them tomorrow.

I mean, it's like Dan Evans told you. You've got to stand by your phone. If the phone rings, it might be. Yeah, the Astros might be offering you a spot in their lineup. Well, I can certainly understand why anyone would want to watch the Astros because they are doing things that have never been done. And that is fun because most teams don't do that. Most teams do things that 100 other teams have done in a slightly different way.

The Astros are doing it in a slightly different way. The Astros are doing it in a very different way. So that's reason enough to watch for me. Okay, we're done. We will be back tomorrow with email show. We haven't gotten that many emails, I don't think, this week. So send us some and we will probably answer them at podcast at baseball prospectus.com.