More Javy Frustration
The offseason for the Atlanta Braves was highlighted by the 4-yr deal given to Derek Lowe and shadowed with controversy surrounding deals with Rafael Furcal and Ken Griffey Jr that never came to fruition. Hidden amongst the headlines, their second best move involved trading for Javier Vazquez of the Chicago White Sox.
Vazquez has been written about here on several occasions, primarily due to the fact that he has been the most frustrating pitcher in recent memory. He routinely posts incredible peripherals and marks of controllable skills yet often sees his ERA soar much higher than his FIP. A return to the more pitcher-friendly senior circuit, in theory, could be the cure for such frustration.
Entering Monday’s game against the Mets, Vazquez had toed the rubber on five different occasions, pitching 32 very effective innings. In his time on the mound, Vazquez had issued just eight free passes, fanned 42 hitters, and kept his ERA down to a very solid 3.38. Having allowed just one home run, coupled with the K/BB north of 5.0, Javy’s FIP stood at an incredible 1.70.
He is usually right around a 40% flyball rate/38% groundball rate but had surrendered a pretty penny of line drives right around the corner of 30%. Those line drives will be displaced by flyballs, some of which are going to leave the yard, normalizing both the LD- and HR/FB-rates in the process. Two of those balls left the yard last night against the Mets as Vazquez performed in his typical frustrating fashion.
Javy threw first pitch strikes to 18 of the first 21 hitters he faced and looked dominant. Speeds were mixed, pinpoint control decided to attend his arsenal, and command did not elude the righty. In the sixth inning, Javy sported a 3-0 lead. As dominant as he had looked, I figured this was a sure thing. A quick check of my e-mail and channel flip with the remote later, the Mets had taken a 4-3 lead on the heels of two-run homers from Carlos Beltran and David Wright.
Last night’s game sums up Vazquez’s career perfectly: he looks dominant 85% of the time, leading many to scratch, no, claw their heads as to why he is not a perennial award contender, and allows enough damage in that remaining 15% to inflate his overall numbers.
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I looked into this before and it is actually quite simple. He is a completely different pitcher with runners on base and pitching in the stretch.
Here is my work – http://fantasypros911.com/the-anomaly-of-javier-vazquez.html
The essence is he has a K/BB of 4.10 when the bases are empty in his career, but only a 2.07 with RISP. This leads to giving up large run totals in innings where he allows runners on base.
If he could ever find a solution to this he would be one of the best, but he has trouble still. This year his numbers are obviously a small sample size, but they have been better. K/BB – bases empty 7.00 RISP – 3.67
The addition of a pitcher to the lineup could help him raise the K/BB from the stretch enough to make his numbers passable with RISP that he meets his expectations.
Troy, that is one-half of the analysis and forgive me if you did the other half. But the other half is comparing Vazquez to the rest of the league in this situation.
We ALWAYS, ALWAYS have to use the appropriate context. Perhaps the spread across the league with runners on is a dropoff of about 1.5 on the K/BB, meaning that Vazquez’s 2.03 differential is somewhat significant but not insanely ridiculous. Perhaps the average differential is lower, at 0.5, making Javy’s 2.03 dropoff incredibly significant.
We need to know how it relates to everyone else not just to himself. It’s the same thing with Ryan Howard against lefties…. sure, Howard is MUCH better against righties, but his overall numbers against lefties are actually slightly above average when compared to how other lefty hitters fare against lefty pitchers.
You’re right Eric and I did not have that data for the league averages. I have been looking for it and if you have access to that I would be greatful. My guess by looking around is the average is between your two examples at about a 1.00 K/BB drop. This would make him twice the league average, but again this is only a guess.
I would guess most of the pitchers who are worse than the league average likely have a lower LOB%.
MLB K/BB in 2009 (AL and NL nearly identical)
2.13 – bases empty
1.52 – men on
1.31 – RISP
MLB K/BB in 2008
2.35 – bases empty
1.69 – men on
1.45 – RISP
Wow I was almost right on with the actual split of 0.9 between bases empty and RISP. He wasn’t double that in 2008 though as his split in 2008 was 1.51.
I think the point still stands though that he is worse in the stretch and that causes his numbers to always underperform numbers that are based on league average like FIP.
He’s also never posted a BABIP under .284
I meant to add that the lower K/BB from the strecth has resulted in low LOB% numbers over his career, especially in the AL.
Vazquez gave up 3 home runs last night.
So, the takeaway is that Javy Vasquez is a good candidate to pull a Scott Baker?
Javy has been doing this MUCH longer than Baker.
I know, I was specifically to having the wheels fall of a no-no that rapidly.
Why don’t we wait for a couple more duds before saying it is the same old Javy? Beltran and Wright are pretty good hitters after all…
I think you really should only be focusing on JV’s k/bb rate when a runners on 1st, 1st & 2nd, and 1st & 3rd.
With a runner on and 1st base open a pitcher is more likely to nibble the strike zone and not give the batter anything to hit because the penalty of the walk is not as great. But with the bases loaded he will be pitching from the wind up again. So using RISP may not be best way to look at this.
I’d love to look into this, but have no idea where to pull this sort of information from. It would be nice to have stretch and wind-up splits for every pitcher. Could pull out velocity and movement differences of pitches. See which pitchers are more confident in their pitches and don’t rely too heavily on a fastball when they are in a pinch.
Very interesting stuff.
This comment board reminds me of a similar fangraphs analysis last week when Dave Bush attempted a no-hitter. Despite vastly different styles, these two pitchers have similar results: overly prone to the long ball. I have had Vazquez in my keeper league since he was an Expo and have won several championships with him; he even was World Series MVP for me one year! This year, I traded him for a draft pick (which became Clay Buchholz) and protected Scherzer instead. Results still pending…
Having mlb.com package for the first time, I’ve seen a few White Sox games. In one of them, I think it was Harrelson(no paragon of objectivity for sure) started talking about not missing Javi. He said something I’d never heard, which was that he uses different release points for different pitches and hence gives up HR’s when he misses. I’m not going to do the video work, but it caught my ear as a scout notation. Might pay to look.
Using the awesome new Pitch F/x single game data that isn’t true as his release point does not vary significantly by pitch type.
Vazquez is awesome! I believe he’s one of the most underrated pitchers in the MLB. However, he’s also one of the most unluckiest pitchers as most of you probably already know. I don’t understand how a guy that eats up innings and strikes guys out like Vazquez keeps getting traded. Every team can use a pitcher like Vazquez. Sometimes I think he challenges hitters too much. Oh yea Ozzie Guillen is a complete clown by calling him out. Ozzie’s just mad because he wasn’t half as good as Vazquez as a player! I also read somewhere that Vazquez was hiding an arm injury in the 2nd half of the 2004 season when he was with the Yankees. Imagine if this didn’t happen he could possibly still be with the Yanks picking up a bunch of wins and some more All Star appearances! But then again if the queen had balls she would be the king. Overall, I concluded that Vazquez is really unlucky and played for some bad teams with bad defenses and he also played in some great hitters parks.