Brad Lidge’s Issues
Of all of the pitchers struggling on the Phillies, Brad Lidge is the most surprising. A glance at the relievers’ WAR board has Lidge firmly at the bottom of the totem pole; something unimaginable just a few months ago. Lidge’s 9.15 ERA is a scrambled mess of the 1.95 ERA posted last year. Lidge’s important metrics aren’t fairing too well either.
About 32% of the batters to step to the plate against Lidge last year went down via strikeout. That number is down to 21% this year. Fewer pitches are being thrown inside of the zone, and far less first-strikes are being recorded, leaving Lidge down in most counts. Batters are still swinging out of the zone at about the same rate but Lidge is still getting fewer strikes overall. When he is throwing pitches in the zone, batters are making contact at a ridiculously high rate. Lidge’s career Z-Contact% is 74.5%, this year it’s 86.4%.
Of the 29 hits given up, 12 have gone for extra bases, including six homeruns and doubles apiece. Lidge’s BABIP is a rotund .400. Combining this information, it would be easy to infer that Lidge is having a ton of line drives hit against him, yet this is simply not the case. His line drive percentage is at 16.7%, lower than last season or his career total. The Phillies defense is middle of the pack in UZR and BABIP against, which suggests Lidge is an outlier, that or the story lies beneath the numbers.
Looking at the pitch data, Lidge’s pitch usage is roughly the same, but velocity on his fastball is down just a bit. Lidge’s slider is still moving about the same, as is his fastball, which raises all kinds of questions about why both pitches are being hit harder than before. Our linear weights have Llidge’s fastball at -5.51 runs per 100 pitches and his slider at 0.27 per 100; last year Lidge’s fastball was worth -0.53 runs per 100 pitches and his slider 2.5 runs per 100. So again, what’s the deal here?
Per Baseball-Reference, Lidge’s fly balls have resulted in three doubles, the same amount as his line drives allowed. Lidge has a .192 fly ball BABIP against while his line drive BABIP against is .900. If those numbers seem high, well, they are. Major League average for fly ball BABIP is .143 this year; .725 for line drives. Either Lidge is unlucky, is being hit harder than the league average pitcher – which the homeruns support, although not the line drive percentage – or a combination.
Until we get more data to suggest otherwise, I’m going to assume Lidge will be fine, but he’s an interesting case none the less.
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Great article, R.J. Do you have any numbers on Lidge’s performance when he throws a first ptich strike as opposed to not throwing a first pitch strike? Seems he is getting behind hitters and they are just sitting on fastballs, laying off the slider.
OPS
.692 after 0-1
1.375 after 1-0
Great article, this is my first year in fantasy baseball and I have Lidge, brian wilson, and brandon morrow, so I’ve learned quickly why people hate pitchers.
I’d imagine the OPS discrepancy would come down if “First Pitch Strike” included first pitch hits within the strike zone, but I’m not sure if you have that available.
Would it fit the data if Lidge were tipping his pitches?
Interesting you ask that… I’ve heard that Phillies batters have looked at Lidge on tape and say that he is not tipping.
As for the luck component, his last blown save, on Saturday, was definitely a case of bad luck. The hits he gave up were measly grounders that snuck through.
Still, he needs to start missing more bats.
he’ll miss more bats when he can get a first pitch strike. no point in swinging in the guy is throwing balls and then hanging sliders.
he’ll be fine. he’s throwing 95 again and he still has some good break on his pitches.
This is where I disagree. If his sore knee is the reason why he is having trouble locating then he surely isn’t fine.
This is spot on. We had a very similar discussion about Brad Lidge over at TheGoodPhight.com:
http://www.thegoodphight.com/2009/5/26/887438/the-big-question-what-to-do-with
Same conclusions for the most part– fewer first pitch strikes, higher homeruns/flyball, more contact with pitches in the strike zone, higher BABIP. Still the strikeout rate is a huge issue. His QERA has been remarkably constant between 2.92-2.95 for 2006-2008 and now stands at about 4.66 largely due to his much lower K rate.
is there a site that displays fastball strike percentage?
Not that I know of. You could do it manually through PitchFx data mining, but that’s a ton of work.
yea, i figured that was possible. but i don’t know how to operate any of that stuff.
i know his FB k% is terrible. one of the reasons why his fastball is -5.xx per 100 pitches.
you can do that pretty easily here:
http://baseball.bornbybits.com/php/combined_tool.php?pit=400058&bat=0&type=0&result=-1&count=-1&r_spd=1&spd=-1&r_brx=1&brx=-100&r_brz=1&brz=-100&l_b=0
thanks a ton tide.
surprisingly, he’s getting squeezed by about 2x. way more strikes are being missed than balls.
on an 0-0 count alone he had 11 missed strikes compared to 5 balls. that is just on the fastball alone.
When Lidge has his bouts of bad performance with the Astros, hitters were able to immediate differentiate the slider and fastball. As a result, they didn’t swing at the slider, which is normally outside the zone. At first, the Astros believed he was tipping pitches, but correcting that didn’t cure the problem. My recollection is that Brad Ausmus identified mechanical/slot issues which allowed the batter to tell the difference between the fastball and slider.
His fastball has been pitched badly. I believe he has thrown more balls than strikes when throwing his fastball. This allows the batters to take his sliders. Last year he threw more fastball strikes so the batters had to swing more.
So for anyone keeping score at home Lidge is up to 11 BS…I believe the record is 14?