Nolasco’s Insane Performance
The season may be in its final days, but last night we saw one of the finest pitching performances of the campaign. Ricky Nolasco faced off against Javier Vazquez and the Atlanta Braves and pulled a pretty incredible feat. In seven and two-thirds innings against a total of 29 batters Nolasco struck out 16 batters. He also walked two, allowed four hits, generated five grounders, and a single pop fly; all on 123 pitches.
Since 1954 only 103 games have featured a pitcher striking out 16 or more batters. 21 of those games saw the pitcher go eight or less innings with almost a half a dozen of those belonging to Randy Johnson. Nolasco did it on 29 batters faced; something only five other pitchers have done:
Pedro Martinez 4-8-2001 16 K 29 BF
Randy Johnson 8-23-2001 16 K 28 BF & 7-18-2001 16 K 23 BF
Mark Prior 6-26-2003 16 K 27 BF
Johan Santana 8-19-2007 17 K 26 BF
Jake Peavy 4-25-2007 16 K 25 BF & 5-22-2006 16 K 25 BF
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention those who struck out 16 or more while facing 50+ batters in a game. Tom Cheney pitched 16 innings in 1962, striking out 21 of the 62 he saw. Nolan Ryan faced 58 and fanned 19 of them in 1974. Chris Short struck out 18 of 56 in 1965 and Bob Veale sat down 16 of 52 the year prior. These guys were less about efficiency and more about longevity.
Back to Nolasco. This has been a tumultuous season for the 26-year-old righty. In late May he was demoted, but since returning two weeks later he’s thrown 133.2 innings, struck out 142, walked 29, and thrown 66% strikes. He’s one of those oddballs with FIP and tRAs far more soothing to the eye than his 5-something ERA this year – a factor that could raise some to question whether he has the ability to pitch successfully in the majors.
Those questions ceased for at least one night.
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Why isn’t Kerry Wood’s 20K v 27 BF on the list? Or am I misreading this somehow?
Eight innings or less brah
I guess. But still the focus of the list below is date, K’s, and BF’s.
Well it’s 29 BF; there was a balk and intentional walk in the game by Wood.
No there wasn’t. He allowed a “hit” which was definitely an error, then got a DP. I actually own the game on iTunes.
definitely an error? if you had viewed it in a game where the starting pitcher had not gone on to strike out 20 and walk zero in the greatest 9-inning pitching performance ever, you would’ve said that was definitely a hit.
BB-Ref’s play by play for the game says otherwise:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN199805060.shtml
Hit, sacrifice to second, and a balk brought the runner over to third. No double play. He also hit Biggio (no surprise there) with a pitch
Looks like his LOB% (61.0) and BABIP (.336) could be somewhat worse than league average.
Haven’t looked at team defense numbers, but I could imagine it isn’t the best with marginal to poor middle infield defenders with Hanley and Uggla. Or maybe he’s still learning to pitch from the stretch.
Didn’t Nolasco actually generate six ground balls, or was Hanley’s error on a liner? I admit to not seeing the actual play, but IF errors are typically on GB, no?
It was a grounder.
Where does everyone feel comfortable taking Nolasco next year in a 12 team draft? As someone who gives up more FB than GB, he will probably continue to deal with a HR/9 on the wrong side of 1.0 and the poor Marlins defense won’t help. I think 3.75, 1.20 with a 4.0 K/BB sounds reasonable with some risk that the ERA pushes toward or past 4.0. He won’t be a discount at the draft…one of the ESPN analysts ranks him as the #34 best SP in 2010, just behind Oswalt and Burnett but ahead of Brett Anderson, Wandy, Lilly and Scherzer. That’s good company for Nolasco.
Honestly not that comfortable. I would definitely take Way-Rod and maybe Lilly before him. And if it’s a keeper league I would take both Scherzer and Anderson ahead of him.
I say this despite Nolasco basically winning me a 16-team league championship with last night’s game.
He really hasn’t been that much better in the second half than the first. His second-half ERA is mid-4’s. His HR/9 and K/9 are basically the same; he’s just given up fewer hits in the second half. Florida’s bad fielding only makes it worse.
His K/9 since the July 4 is 10.38 compared to 8.22 before that. That’s a pretty big jump.
B-R has him at 8.9 K/9 pre-ASB and 10 K/9 after. This is just one more K/9 and is pretty skewed by his 16 K game, which is not something you should expect more than once or twice in his career. If you take that game out then his post-ASB K/9 is 9.2, a pretty small difference. I think when I had checked the site just hadn’t updated.
His BB/9 pre and post ASB are 4.29 and 4.57 respectively, again not a big difference. What someone said about him having trouble pitching out of the stretch makes a lot of sense.
Bases empty: .605 OPS against
Men on: .933 OPS against
RISP: 1.010 OPS against
Obviously a lot of that is luck, but this isn’t a unique problem.
This is a case where “clutch” stats are meaningful. His clutch rating on FanGraphs is the worst in the league by far – so the slightly high BABIP is made even worse by giving up hits at all the wrong times. I’d put that down to some really bad luck and expect him to return to something close to last year’s performance – or maybe slightly better.
It’s most definitely bad luck. He’s actually been better this season than last year, which is scary considering his previous season was very good. His strikeouts are up, around 25% of batters faced, while his walks are around the same. He’s one of those pitchers who gets killed by the “big inning,” meaning he either has a significant issue pitching in the stretch (not sure, I’d have to do Pitch f/x work to find out) or he’s just had really bad luck with hitters bunching singles against him.
Interestingly enough, he’s actually allowed more ground balls in his starts recently, which is definitely a good trend. I don’t know if it will stick, but he’s been consistently getting ground balls for the last six or seven starts. If he’s somehow improved in that regard, he’ll be even more of a force next year.
Oh yeah, and last night’s performance was great. Of course, it took the Marlins one ninth inning to load the bases and allow two runs in and almost throw the game away for Nolasco, but that’s more of a defense/bullpen issue.
I’m going to chalk up his bad ERA to bad luck. Those peripherals are too good for someone to suck that much.
I’m going to chalk up his bad ERA to that ridiculously horrible start to the year. 44 earned runs in your first 44 innings is going to be tough to recover from (ERA-wise) for anyone, reminds me of Smoltz’s start to the 2002 season.
Check his game log and tell me there isn’t some crazy bad luck going on (even though I don’t think you were being argumentive, I feel like pointing it out anyway):
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.cgi?n1=nolasri01&t=p&year=2009&share=3.34#75-83-sum:pitching_gamelogs
No, not being argumentative, just amazed at how horrendous those first 9 starts ended up being. There’s more than just bad luck there, that’s bad luck meets bad karma meets statistical anomaly territory.
.429 BABIP against or something. Yuck. He was giving up liners but that’s ridiculous.
Other players in the bottom 35 of clutch (1st page).
Joel Pineiro
Javier Vazquez
Brett Anderson
Josh Beckett
Jon Lester
CC Sabathia
Clayton Kershaw
Felix Hernandez
Josh Johnson
Dan Haren
Ubaldo Jimenez
Roy Halladay
Justin Verlander
Although I admit that Nolasco’s is much worse than the others. Nolasco at -2.18 and Pineiro at #2 is -1.58.
This is weird… it just reads like a list of a bunch of the best pitchers in baseball this year.
That’s probably because clutch is a measurement against one’s own performance. A pitcher with excellent numbers is at a natural disadvantage because to have a high clutch rating, he has to pitch as well as he normally does if not BETTER in high leverage situations. Tough to do, as you can see.
Sure he’s at a natural disadvantage having to compare his clutch numbers against his already-stellar numbers… but the advantage that balances that out is that he is a really good pitcher, so his clutch numbers should be around his overall numbers. I don’t think this is an answer. Maybe it’s just fluky.
All I’m saying is the bar is set very high for the top pitchers in the game to have a high clutch statistic. Forgive me if I’m not running through the streets shouting “Braden Looper is the most clutch pitcher in baseball this year, by far.” It just doesn’t hold a lot of weight.
Like someone else mentioned: why no Kerry Wood (5/6/98 vs. HOU)?
29 BF, 20 K (1 H, 1 HBP, 0 BB)
I think that this might actually be a case of a pitcher who has not yet mastered the ability to pitch out of the stretch
A couple of splits:
Nolasco bases empty:
.29K/PA, 40.45 AB/HR, 25.8 PA/BB
Any men on base:
.187K/PA, 23.42AB/HR, 16.9 PA/NIBB (Non intentional Base on Balls)
All of his rates are considerably worse when pitching from the stretch, Ks are down to 67% of what he gets from the windup, while home runs are nearly doubled, and bases on balls are increased by about 50%.
Just for reference, the NL averages:
bases empty
.189K/PA, 33.19AB/HR, 12.52 PA/NIBB
men on base
.174K/PA, 35.68AB/HR, 11.60 PA/NIBB
So despite the fact that bad pitchers are overrepresented in the second set (because they pitch with guys on base more often), his windup/stretch difference is huge compared to the league average.
The splits indeed are quite large. It might be worth some look into Pitch f/x. Still, this presumably is something that can be coached, which is great news for Marlins fans, if and when the team’s staff can fix any issues with Nolasco’s stretch.
Yeah, interesting, but I would really want to compare it to average gap, as opposed to gap of averages.
For the reason you stated.
Interesting, but I thought the whole point of FIP & tRA was to show who CAN pitch successfully in the major leagues? You are questioning that ability based on his ERA? Doesn’t that fly in the face of everything this site stands for – I am confused at that statement. Unless you are talking about the public in general and their affliction with meaningless stats like ERA?
What is the highest ERA in history with a 1.25 WHIP? Is Nolasco in the discussion?
According to B-Ref, he’s on top.
http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/pP9JW
Randy Johnson had a 5.00 ERA in New York in 2006 posting a WHIP of 1.24 as well.
Interesting, Scott Baker’s 2009 is pretty high on that list as well. He’s had a very similar season to Nolasco, ridiculously horrendous start, fantastic since.
Great list. I enjoy the fact that Eric Milton places 3rd, 4th and 9th on this list.
Fly ball pitchers are always going to run into these low WHIP, high ERA scenarios. Lilly, Jered Weaver, 2008 Slowey, Javy Vazquez. If you have a HR/9 near 1.1 or 1.2 and each HR comes with one man on base, you only can give up 1.50 non HR generated runs per nine innings to have a good ERA. That’s tough.
Neil, if you have a low WHIP, you realize it’s highly unlikely that all of your home runs will be surrendered with a man on base, right?
At one point in the game Nolasco struck out nine batters in a row (the third to the fifth inning). Eight of those strikeouts were swinging, with only Javier Vazquez striking out looking. If I had to guess I’d say that most of those swinging strikes were on his slider.
I’d love to see his Pitch f/x for the game, I wonder how many swings he got on his slider out of the zone.
Just did a piece on my blog, click on my name’s link to check out some stuff via Brooks Baseball.
By my count, I believe he got 10 whiffs via the slider out of 20 whiffs in the entire game. If I had to guess, I’d say only three of those were in the zone, so that would make 7 whiffs out of the zone.
“eight or fewer innings”
Corrected that for you.
So many people make that mistake. Maybe I’m just a little rigid in my views of English grammar, but it’s a little distracting to me.
You have a lot of company on this site.
It looks like he’ll be cheap in fantasy again next year. Good news for me!
I have him in a 5 keeper h2h points league. Is it silly for me to keep him in a pitching scarce league? (every owner keeps 2 or 3 arms)
Not only did he have that awful beginning to his season (results-wise at least), he also got lit up on Jul 10, August 12 and September 14. When he gave up runs they came in torrents. 10 earned runs on August 12? Kinda heartless to keep him in so long.
He’s pretty good. Some guy in my league froze him over Greinke. May as well freeze him again.
Talking about low WHIP/high ERA seasons (though not enough innings to qualify as a starter), Taylor Bucholz had a 1.25 WHIP and a 5.89 ERA in 2006 (113 innings).