Comments on: What to Make of John Lannan

By: puck

puck — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:07:30 +0000

“Groundballs are adequately accounted for in tRA.” Their run value is averaged across all MLB plays, like other events, right? If Lannan gets more grounders in double play situations than the average pitcher, that’s not going to be accounted for in tRA.

By: Nats Fan

Nats Fan — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:02:41 +0000

Lannan can repeat the weak hitting of other players pretty consistently. I have watched almost every start he has ever made and it is almost comical how pathetic he can make some of the games top power hitters look on balls they put in play. Its repeatable for sure! His weakness are speedy guys who get infield hits off his stuff constantly. He struggles with the light hitters and dominates the homer run hitters from my observation.

By: Nats Fan

Nats Fan — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:58:53 +0000

Do not forget JMax. Sample size is small, but he looks legit with both the bat and glove. Check out his stats on this site. Amazing.

By: Mike Green

Mike Green — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:44:47 +0000

Dave Allen has the answer to that question:

http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/07/can_pitchers_co.php

Now if you have a map of where Lannan’s O-contact pitches were, you could get an answer about how important that factor was. If he’s getting a lot of contact on pitches inside, that would explain it. Changeup outside, sinking fastball in on the fists to the RHH. When you’re throwing 90, that works.

By: Mike Green

Mike Green — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:00:36 +0000

For his career, the contact rate on Lannan’s pitches outside the strike zone is almost 10% higher than league average although the swing rate is just about average. One might hypothesize that the BABIP on contact on pitches outside the strike zone is significantly lower than BABIP on contact on pitches in the strike zone.

By: Natty Nation

Natty Nation — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:14:05 +0000

Lockdown Lannan is a huge building block for our team going forward, a 1-2 punch of Strasburgh and Lannan and a closer in Storen is huge!!

Hopefully Baby Zimmermann comes back and Ross full of Rage can continue his improvement. I am hoping for Ian Desmond to take over at SS so we can move Cristian Guzman to 2ND to shore up the infield and provide good offense. Career years from Flores and Dukes will also help get the Nats playing relevant baseball in September/October.

By: lookatthosetwins

lookatthosetwins — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:33:41 +0000

Groundballs are adequately accounted for in tRA. Controlling the running game is not, although I doubt that has as much of an impact as you think. The real reason he’s overperforming is what was outlined in this post: his BABIP is incredibly low. We’ll see if this continues in 2010.

By: Mike Green

Mike Green — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:55:32 +0000

It looks like he’s a classic lefty in the Tommy John family, controls the running game very well, gets the double play and doesn’t walk many. If he strikes out 3.9/9 IP going forward, I doubt that he will be able to sustain it, but if he can strike out 4.5-5, he may be able to. He’s young, so the possibility remains that he will get it up over 5 and aim for Glavine, behind Strasburg’s Ryan.

I don’t know the mechanics of tRA, but I doubt that the combination of controlling the running game and getting ground balls is adequately accounted for.

By: Troy Patterson

Troy Patterson — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:28:03 +0000

I would suggest his FB and LD data is a sample size to small based on the high groundball rate. Then looking at his infield defense he had an amazing season from Zimmerman at third base and if he was able to avoid Dunn at first the infield defense would have been neutral or even above neutral.

By: Big Oil

Big Oil — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:28:26 +0000

I’d clarify this is only for vertical movement and not horizontal movement.