MASH Report – (6/13/13)

Today I am going to examine Ryan Dempster and Jon Lester in detail. Also, I am rolling out some changes to HURT and PAIN. With PAIN (called Pitcher Abuse INdex based on a poll during the Tuesday night chat) Contact% is added and a regression amount factored in. With HURT, instead of evenly weighting the three previous seasons, I weighted the most recent seasons more. On both of them, I put the max value to be around 100, but a few players are determined to go over.

• Ryan Dempster ranks 12th in the most recent PAIN. His fastball velocity is down 0.6 mph from last year which should be expected from 36-year-old pitcher.

The main item setting off the high ranking is a lowering Zone%. In 2012 it was 48% and it has dropped to 43% this year. The dropped began in early 2012 as pointed out by David.

The drop in Zone% can be seen in his BB/9 going from 2.7 to 4.2. Another injury risk factor for Dempster is his near 30% slider usage (28.5% in 2013). Finally, he has not be able to maintain anything close to a constant release point with over a one foot variation.

Dempster has all the signs of a DL bound pitcher. He may be able to make it the entire season starting, but I would bet on him being DL bound at some point.

• Eno Sarris just interviewed R.A. Dickey. Dickey talks about struggling through some early season injuries and is feeling better. Maybe see if an owner is willing to sell low on Dickey.

• By reading reports from Jon Lester’s last start, it may seem he is an injury risk because he is not able to repeat his delivery:

“The first inning kind of sums up the whole night,” said Lester, whose seven walks on the night matched a career high. “Not able to repeat whatever pitch I made — fastball, curveball, changeup, cutter — I just was not able to repeat, whether it be location or the pitch itself. Not good.”

Overall, his game release points are tightly clustered together (three curve outliers).

Also, his velocity looks fine.

His only problem, as he noticed, was his inability control his pitches as seen in his four straight sub 45% Zone% games. I don’t think all is horrible, but also not all is good. It will be nice for him to get his control back.

• Darren Oliver has finally pitched after returning from the DL. His velocity is in check with previous values.

HURT (Hitter’s Under-performance from Recent Trauma) Rankings (min 20 PA in 2013 and min 600 PA from 2010 to 2012):

Name	HURT	2010 to 2012 PA	2013 PA
B.J. Upton	92.4	1883	222
Garrett Jones	55.2	1647	202
Nolan Reimold	50.7	505	113
Ike Davis	47.7	1334	207
DeWayne Wise	44.1	461	66
Cesar Izturis	43.8	719	74
John Jaso	43.2	1038	172
Josh Willingham	37.2	1629	249
Yorvit Torrealba	37.2	1000	86
Matt Kemp	36.9	1806	210
Seth Smith	34.5	1372	212
George Kottaras	32.7	582	53
Albert Pujols	32.1	2021	285
Mark Teixeira	31.8	1920	49
Lance Berkman	31.8	1165	237
Justin Turner	30.6	690	94
Jay Bruce	30.6	1870	286
Shelley Duncan	27.6	770	64
Shane Victorino	26.4	1900	159
Melky Cabrera	26.4	1716	279
Alex Avila	26.4	1318	178
Jarrod Saltalamacchia	26.4	864	193
Lonnie Chisenhall	24.9	374	99
Giancarlo Stanton	24.6	1498	100
Vernon Wells	24.6	1437	244

• Mark Teixeira shows up after returning recently from the DL because of a wrist injury. Two stats are causing the high HURT value, Contact% and IFFB%. His contact rate is way down from around 90% to 80% and has caused his K% to jump from 16% to 33%. Besides not making contact, he is hitting a ton of weak pop flies. His IFFB% has gone from near 10% the last few seasons to 27% in 2013.

Teixeira may still be feeling the effects of his wrist injury. It will be interesting to see if his Contact% will improve over the next few weeks.

PAIN (Pitcher Abuse INdex) Rankings (min 10 IP in 2013 and 20 IP in 2012)

Name	PAIN	IP 2013	IP 2012
Jeff Locke	116.7	75.1	34.1
Jared Hughes	106.5	16.1	75.2
Lucas Harrell	86.6	77.2	193.2
Francisco Liriano	81.5	42.0	156.2
Jonathan Broxton	81.1	26.1	58.0
Jason Marquis	78.3	77.2	127.2
Alexi Ogando	73.0	55.1	66.0
Chris Resop	68.5	18.0	73.2
Craig Stammen	64.5	31.2	88.1
Cory Gearrin	61.1	27.1	20.0
Santiago Casilla	60.5	19.0	63.1
Ryan Dempster	57.2	75.2	173.0
Tanner Scheppers	56.1	32.0	32.1
Esmil Rogers	55.1	35.0	78.2
Luis Mendoza	53.5	58.0	166.0
Matt Harrison	51.2	10.2	213.1
John Axford	50.5	28.0	69.1
Mark Lowe	49.7	11.2	39.1
Wily Peralta	48.5	74.2	29.0
Carlos Villanueva	48.1	62.0	125.1
Paco Rodriguez	45.7	22.2	6.2
Burke Badenhop	44.9	29.1	62.1
Darin Downs	43.3	23.0	20.2
Javier Lopez	42.1	16.0	36.0
Matt Moore	41.9	69.0	177.1

• Jared Hughes is the poster child PAIN is supposed to find. A two mph drop in velocity. A Zone% under 30%. And the Pirates put him on the DL with an inflamed elbow.

Players on the DL

(*) 15 Day Disabled List
(**) 60 Day Disabled List
(***) 7 Day Concussion List
Red colored entries are updates since last report.