Wainwright and Pujols: Rough Starts
Adam Wainwright – Adam has had a rough start to the 2012 season. So far he has 3 losses in 3 starts with a 9.88 ERA. After not pitching at all in 2011 because of Tommy John surgery, he seems to be struggling in 2012. By looking a little deeper into the numbers, it may be the perfect time to buy low on him.
While his ERA is approaching double digits, his ERA estimators paint a better picture. His FIP is at 6.52 and his xFIP (3.13) and SIERA (3.28) are almost at 3. The final two values are close to his career ERA of 3.08. Adam’s main problem so far in 2012 has been the HR. Currently, he has a 3.3 HR/9 value which is almost 5 times his career value of 0.70. He is allowing 1 home run for every 3 fly balls while historically he has allowed a HR for every 12.5 fly balls.
While this home run rate is not sustainable against him, he does seem to be getting hit a little harder. His 0.325 BABIP is 20 points higher than any other time in his career. His average fastball velocity (89.6) is near a career low he set in 2007 (89.4).
Adam’s 2007 season looks to be a nice season to compare to 2012. The fastball velocities are indentical. They are the seasons when he had his highest BABIPs (0.304 and 0.325). Adam had is worst season in terms of ERA (3.90) and WHIP (1.40) in 2007 until this season happened.
Adam’s stats should regress as the season goes on. I would not expect him though to return to his glory of 2009 and 2010. Right now expect him to be an average to above average pitcher. Anything more should just be icing on the cake.
Albert Pujols – Albert has not been living up to his expectation so far this season. Looking over his stats, two values stick out as potential areas of concern, his walk rate and power.
Currently Albert has a career low 7.1% BB%. It is less than half of what it was just 2 years ago. It might seem that this value is not much of a concern because he is not being intentionally walked as much. Albert has been intentionally walked 3.3% of the time over his career. By subtracting out the intentional walks and the non-intentional intentional walks (IBBump), here are his walk rates and corrected walk rates over the past 5 years:
Year: BB%, corrected BB%
2008: 16%, 8%
2009: 16%, 7%
2010: 15%, 7%
2011: 9%, 6%
2012: 7%, 3% (2 of his 5 BB have been IBB)
His corrected BB% was similar from 2008 to 2011. This season it has been cut in half. He is definitely not being walked as much.
A reason he may be seeing more strikes is that pitchers don’t fear him as much as they did in the past because of a lack of power (0 HRs in 2012). Here are his ISOs from 2009 to 2012:
Year: ISO
2009: 0.331
2010: 0.284
2011: 0.242
2012: 0.108
It would be nice to have Hit FX data to see exactly if he has been hitting the ball weaker or in the air more. GameDay data, while not perfect, does give us some clues that he is just not getting as much distance behind his hits. Here are his 2011 and 2012 batted ball locations from texasleaguers.com:
2011
2012
So far in 2012, Albert has not even put a ball near the warning track. To further illustrate the point, here are the average distances of his fly balls and home runs from 2010 to 2012 as taken from baseballheatmaps.com:
Year: Distance
2010: 313 ft
2011: 303 ft
2012: 275 ft
One possible explanation for the drop in power this season is that he is not yet familiar with the pitchers in the AL. MGL over at The Book Blog looked at how hitters and pitchers did once they became more familiar with each other. Here is his conclusion:
.. there is a large advantage to the batter when he has faced a pitcher a lot in the last year.
Albert should expect to hit better as he becomes more familiar with the pitchers in the AL.
Albert is displaying a lack of power that has been trending down the last few years. On top of the power decline, he is not walking as much even when IBB are taken into account. I would not recommend selling on him just yet. He should see an increase in production as he becomes more familiar with AL pitching. It might be a time to see if his owners are getting impatient with him and try to buy low.
I recently traded Jason werth, and Kenly Jenson for Gabby Sanchez and Adam Wainright.
This is a keeper league 20 teams with the standard stats, + OPS, BB, K, Fielding%% and for pitching OPA( or something like that forget what its called) And holds being the none usual stats.
I’m fine with bats, was weak on starting pitching, and extremely weak on saves (basically punted them)
Befor the Wainright trade my top 3 pitchers were Matt latos, Edwin Jackson, and Mike Minor.
Did i win or lose the trade? What do you guys think?
for a 20 team league, latos jackson and minor isn’t too shabby. Mines an 18 teamer and I’ve got jimenez jackson lilly buehrle carpenter and leake and humber on the bench (yes, he was benched for the perfecto…) with carps injury I have Ogando in there because he still qualifies with only 9 games, but once that changes its probably time for humber.
Anyway, werth and jansen for wainwright and gaby…I’m gonna say no because of what this article was about and Wainwright not necessarily deemed to break out…and sanchez isn’t a whole lot above replacement. Jansen is one of the best holds guys out there, so you may have really hurt yourself in that category. Werth is pretty good.
So, picking Pujols second overall instead of Kemp. Bad idea, or worst idea?
Career best 3 weeks vs Career worst 3 weeks?
except kemp’s great stats so far are in the books and won’t be removed, even when he comes down to earth
I took him 3rd overall. Still no regrets, but I feel where you’re coming from. I’ll need this season to be in the books before I declare Albert Pujols anything but a top-5 pick.
It needs to be mentioned that Pujols’ O-Swing % is 39.9% vs a career 21.6%. And his Z-Swing % is 58.2% vs a career 65.1%.
It certainly seems like he’s not familiar with the AL pitching.
This is right. It isn’t that pitchers are magically not walking Pujols anymore, it’s that he isn’t letting them.
Yeah, but this is the 5th year in a row that’s trended up, and he swung at 32% of pitches outside the zone last season.
Unless I’m mistaken I believe Albert’s numbers in interleague play are nothing short of awesome. Wasn’t he equally unfamiliar with AL pitchers for all those games?
Yes, I understand he may not be vintage Pujols anymore, but I’d say this just represents a slow start due to him pressing a bit and tryin to force the action.
Yeah, that’s a good point. His career interleague numbers are
.348/.438/.632 in 635 PAs, or nearly a season’s worth of PAs. 39 HRs, 121 RBIs.
If his interleague numbers were one season, that’d be a damn fine season.
Yeah that tripple slash line beats his numbers overall as a member of the Cardinals. Just a Slump. He’s also living in a new city for the first time in his MLB career.
A reminder that Albert’s numbers in interleague play are skewed because the Cardinals play the Royals for the rivalry games.
I dunno. It might just be a slump. Probably just a slump. But there are some scary indicators in those numbers.
Wow, I know it’s early but it seems like the Angels offense is this year’s Athletics offense, solid on paper, but nearly everyone under performing drastically.
An even scarier thought for Angels fans? ……Pujols is this years Adam Dunn 8(
Anecdotal: Pujols hit a high fastball off Phil Hughes to dead center. His first few steps out of the box were slow, as if he were getting ready for the home run trot. Then the ball landed 10 feet short of the wall.
While I agree we aren’t witnessing the same Albert of the past, your data might not be complete. Last Thursday, I was at the Angels/A’s game and saw Albert hit one 6 inches from the top of the wall. Then again on Friday he flied out just in front of the wall. Those are just two instances that I remember off the top of my head. I don’t think your statement that he hasn’t even put a ball near the warning track is correct.
everything else makes sense, but did you just quote wainwright’s BABIP from three starts to say that he has been hit harder as a result of talent change? I understand that pitchers have some control over BABIP, but it is much less than hitters. So he has little (although some) control over his BABIP, a statistic that does not stabilize even year to year, and he has only three starts worth of data, and you are using that as evidence of decline? I agree that his velo being down, his coming back from tommy john and all the rest make a convincing narrative that his BABIP fits right into, but you cannot really use his BABIP as a fact to support your claims. I mean, Kyle Drabek has a .239 BABIP right now, are you saying that is enough to claim that he has made a step forward this year in allowing only weak contact?
Excellent article and conversation – exactly why I come to FG.
I picked kemp with the 2nd pick, behind pujols, I’d have taken him even if I had the first. I just think he’s the best all-round player in baseball
Albert is merely pressing at the moment. Once he’s hit a couple of dingers and got the monkey off his back we’ll see a sense of normalcy again. He absolutely ripped in spring training.
Being in Anaheim, I’d think he’d want the (rally) monkey ON his back, not off.
Interesting that Pujols has more Ks than BBs. Looking only at season totals, there has been only one other time (his first season in 2001) where his BB/K<1. Could this be a byproduct of the lineup he is in? It is true that Kendrys is hitting for decent average behind Albert (with the help of a .350 BABIP), but Mr. Morales has only a .118 ISO to this point, which does not give pitchers much incentive to give Albert something to hit.
He’s been walking less and swinging more frequently at pitches out of the strike zone the last few years. The K/BB rate may be the new norm.
Look at 2006!
OBP .431 49 home runs and only 50 strikeouts. Incredible.
So a pitcher who has started out the season with a K/9 higher than any full year in his career, the second highest BB/9, by far the highest K/BB, who is still inducing 50.8 GB%, and has the highest SwStr% he’s had, and whose other plate discipline stats are all in line with his career, and who has all his pitches put his sinker at the same speeds and movement as in years past (and whose sinker is only off by 1.2 mph under his career average and the vertical movement only off by 2.0) should not be expected to return to his previous form and should only be expected to be an average to above average pitcher?
That makes absolutely no sense.
By “highest” BB/9 I meant “best” so: lowest.
just traded votto straight up for pujols in a keeper league. I think pujols turns it around and when he does he will have a huge chip on his shoulder. Buy low
How the fuck is that buying low?
You my friend, were swindled. Pujols declining, Votto in his prime…
If I traded Kendrys Morales away for Adam Wainwright am I getting a good deal?
Hard to say without some context. It looks good to me for a shallow mixed league, but if you’re in an AL-only league, it’s a really bad deal.
How could he be in an AL-only league if he traded for Wainwright? :-P