How Good is the Starting Rotation
The rotation was excellent in Arlington. Will it last? Pitching+ data shows that good pitching should continue, especially by an improved Cristian Javier.
The Astros starting pitching was excellent this week in in Arlington. It powered the team to a 3-1 series win over the Rangers.
The Astros began their 6 man rotation this week, and received good starts from each of Framber Valdez, Jake Odorizzi (!), Cristian Javier, and Justin Verlander. The four combined for 24 innings pitched, a 1.50 ERA, a 0.75 WHIP, and a 4.25 K/BB ratio. These numbers are all excellent.
Here, early in the season, it is hard to make firm conclusions about any player due to the small sample sizes. We can see that most easily in the performance of Jake Odorizzi. In Arlington, Odorizzi gave up only a homer and a walk in 6 strong innings. It contrasted greatly from his performance in his previous start at home against the Angels, when Odorizzi gave up 4 walks and 2 hits only two-thirds of an inning. Odorizzi is likely neither the DFA candidate we saw in that game or the All-State candidate we saw in Arlington.
One measure that does start to stabilize early, allowing us to start making conclusions about the quality of the results we are seeing on the field is the Pitching+ model, which is most associated with Eno Sarris, fantasy baseball writer for The Athletic.
The model takes Statcast data and "judges pitchers solely on the physical properties of their pitches and the location of those pitches at the plate." These numbers quantify the “physical properties” of pitches (i.e. velocity and movement) into a measure called Stuff+. They quantify the location to “Location+,” and combine the multiple measures into a single comprehensive measure—”Pitching+.” The plus tells you that these numbers are normalized—100 is average and numbers above it are the percentile above average; numbers below are the percentile below average.
This morning, Sarris published the latest data in an article headlined “A month into the season, we have new pitching ranks to unveil.” These are up-to-date rankings of how pitchers have been pitching so far this season.
Sarris argues that these data tend to become predictive quicker than results based data, and give us a chance to "try to see into the future.” In short, players who have good numbers are likely to have good results in the rest of the season. And those that have bad numbers will likely have bad results in the rest of the season.
So what do these numbers tell us about the six different pitchers who have started a game for the Astros this season. The chart below shows the numbers. I also included each pitchers rank among the 140 major league pitchers who have thrown at least 200 pitches this season.1
The results should be encouraging for Astro fans. The team has three pitchers in the top 17 of major league baseball. And it’s led by, surprisingly enough, Jose Urquidy. His pitching plus number is 8% better than league average. He is boosted primarily by excellent location (106.5 Location+).
At 16 is Justin Verlander,2 who also stands near the top of the rankings due to his excellent location. These numbers mean that Verlander and Urquidy are keeping their pitches on the corners of the strikezone, out of the danger zone in the heart of the plate but still in the strike zone.
Cristian Javier also has a high ranking, but he is doing it primarily through his stuff. His 115.2 Stuff+ rating puts him 13th among MLB starters in that ranking. His Location+ numbers are right about average, but put together, he has has excellent ratings here.
Luis Garcia and Framber Valdez are ranked 44th and 61st in Pitching+. Those numbers are above average, but not in the top echelons of major league starters. Both are at similar rankings in their Stuff+ and Location+ numbers. Valdez’s numbers are the most puzzling to me. He is slightly below average in Location+, which I expected. Valdez has walked 12 batters in 20 innings pitcher, so I did not expect a good number there. But I expected better stuff numbers from Valdez, who is noted for the movement and sinking action on his pitches. But not this year, according to this metric.
At the bottom of the rankings is Jake Odorizzi, who ranks 132nd among MLB starters in Pitching+ (again, out of 140 pitchers). Odorizzi’s location numbers are average, but his stuff ratings are not. His 76.4 Stuff+ rating is 23% below league average, and ranks 135th among MLB starters.
The Odorizzi numbers are worrisome, as they indicate his start against the Angels is closer to what to expect than his start against the Rangers. But overall, these are encouraging numbers, especially for Cristian Javier, who is throwing the ball like a top starter.
Another question worth asking is how do these numbers compare to last season. Are these pitchers throwing as well as they did last season? Sarris provides these numbers on a Google Doc, and one can simply go to another worksheet to find the numbers from 2021 and compare.
I do so in the chart below. For each of the three categories, I include the 2021 rating for each pitching in a left hand column, and then the 2022 rating in the column to the right. These comparisons are a little bit apples to oranges, as the 2021 data are for a full season and the 2022 data are for less than a month of baseball. But since these numbers stabilize earlier than others, they do provide an early way to compare similar data.
The numbers show that Jose Urquidy, Luis Garcia, and Framber Valdez are pitching at similar levels this season to what we saw last year. In fact, Framber’s numbers are slightly better this season, in large part because his location is better. All three have worse results in their three starts this season than they did over the 2021 season. These numbers indicate that all three pitchers should be able to pull their numbers up in the near future. The results should follow these numbers.
But for Cristian Javier and Jake Odorizzi, the numbers are very different in 2022 than they were in 2021. For Javier, these numbers show a big improvement in both his Stuff+ and Location+ numbers, indicating that he is throwing the ball better so far this season than he did in 2021. These are encouraging numbers, especially his Location+ numbers. Javier struggled with control in the 2021 season. So far this season, he has improved his BB/9 rate from 4.7 to 2.0. These numbers indicate that is not a fluke. Instead, these numbers give hope the Javier will be a high quality pitcher this season.
The opposite is true for Jake Odorizzi’s numbers. His Stuff+ rating has declined from 90.7 to 76.4. In short, he’s throwing the ball with less velocity and movement in 2022 than he did in 2021. These numbers are worrisome, as they indicate the the decline in results that we have seen from Odorizzi this season is not due to bad luck. He’ll need to improve the quality of his pitches to improve the quality of his results.
I also included the numbers for Lance McCullers and Zach Greinke in 2021 and Justin Verlander in 2022 for illustrative purposes. McCullers pitched just above league average in both Stuff+ and Location+ in 2021. He was effective by doing both well, but was held back as a pitcher by his inability to dominate in either category.
For Zack Greinke, the numbers show a below average Stuff+ rating, which could be seen by his declining strikeout rate at the end of last season. Greinke’s Stuff+ is even lower this season for the Royals (it’s at 87.7) and his strikeout rate has declined even further.
Finally, these comparisons show how good Justin Verlander is, and how he continues to be among the best pitchers in baseball. One day, age and injury will make Verlander a mere mortal pitcher, but despite being age 39 and coming off Tommy John surgery in Fall 2020, that time has not yet arrived for Verlander.
Overall, these results paint a good picture of the state of the Astros rotation. They have five above average pitchers in it, and if McCullers returns to form when he returns to pitching in June, they could add a sixth. The decline from Odorizzi is worrisome. But Javier’s improvement means that the Astros may have a ready replacement to step in an upgrade the pitching staff.
I wanted to set the cut-off to include Javier, who has thrown 13.1 innings in 1 start and 3 relief appearances this season, but cut off relievers.
There numbers are through games on Wednesday, so they do not include Verlander’s great start in Arlington yesterday.