Quick 'n Dirty Analysis: Catching Up on the Rotation
01/05/2024 15:00
How is the rotation doing? Pretty much exactly as expected.
Good morning, Viva El Birdos!
As I mentioned in my post last Wednesday, I am trying to get caught up on the 2024 Cardinals after essentially missing the first month of action. If I'm going to bring you content – in written or podcast form – on this year's Cardinals team, I have to know what I'm talking about. (At least as much as usual.) That means research. If I'm going to take the time to research the 2024 Cardinals, I might as well write about it.
Today, I'll return to an old format: Quick 'N Dirty Analysis. Having considered the offense last week, it's time to turn to the rotation. How are the starters doing? What are they doing well? What are they not doing well? What can we expect going forward? We'll take them one at a time based on their statistics before Tuesday's doubleheader.
Sonny Gray
Before we dig into what Gray is doing right, I just want to post the dashboard image from his Baseball Savant page. It's glorious! It won't last like this, but wow is it something to behold!
Look at all that red! And not just red. It's dark red! His Baseball Savant page is like a bloodbath of awesomeness.
Gray has been amazing. Far better than most of us thought he would be and most of us thought he would be really good.
What is going right for him? Gray is a living walking testimonial for what can happen when a pitcher has really really good stuff that batters can't hit.
I know. It's crazy. Absurd, really. I know no one has ever considered this before. And I'm sure it's just a fluke. So, just hear me out before you toss me off the site. Apparently, if hitters struggle to make contact with your pitches, you'll be a better pitcher.
(Pause to let that sink in.)
I know… I know… that pretty much flies in the face of everything we know about pitching based on what the Cardinals have taught us over the last umpteen years, but there's a kind of insane logic to it. If batters can't hit pitches then they can't be good batters and that makes a pitcher better! It's a bold approach. BOLD! But it's just crazy enough to work.
And – you probably won't believe this – but apparently, other organizations have known about this whole "pitchers with good stuff are good pitchers" thing for years!
Dripping sarcasm aside (and it's not an entirely fair criticism since the Cardinals intentionally targeted Gray; it's not like they stumbled into him), just consider some of the percentiles Gray has so far this season. He is in the 88th percentile in whiff percentage. Beautiful! He's in the 96th percentile in K percentage. Wonderful! He's also in the 87th percentile in walk percentage. Amazing! And when batters somehow do manage to make contact against him, it's really poor contact. He's in the 95th percentile in hard-hit rate. Superb!
All this makes me want to do a deep dive on him, and I certainly will later if his current rate stats hold up. For now, though, we're going quick 'n dirty. What we have is a very small sample size of complete domination that's built on him doing everything that he's always done well, but just more weller.
Will it last? I don't think so. His history is too well-established for this kind of massive change in his K, BB, and whiff rates to hold up over a larger sample. That said, the thing we were most worried about – a regression in his HR rates – has stayed stable so far. His xFIP is still just 2.16. He could fall back toward his rate stat norms, including homers, and still be one of the best pitchers in baseball.
So, Gray might not be Bob Gibson this season. But Gray is my favorite color! And I'm not going to rule out the possibility that he'll go ahead and replicate last year's unreplicable performance. That would be an unexpected treat for Mr. Jones and me.
Lance Lynn
On the flip side is Lance Lynn, who has been good by some metrics. And truly terrible by others.
It really shouldn't be surprising at all if I told you that a pitcher entering his age 37 season was experiencing a notable decline in his K rates, a significant increase in his BB rates, and is in the bottom quarter(ish) of qualified starters in HR/9. That's what we should expect out of aging pitchers. It's just what happens.
The good news is that Lynn's HR rate is so much better than last season that it feels like he's been pretty good! Last year's 2.16 HR/9 has become 1.47 (still pretty bad) and that makes all the difference. As does his completely unsustainable 86.5% strand rate.
So, while his underlying metrics are pretty terrible, there's no reason at all to be disappointed with Lynn's 2.64 ERA. He's kept more balls in ballparks and his bulldog attitude and clubhouse leadership have somehow kept baserunners from scoring. That's the kind of unmeasurable magic the Cardinals were banking on.
They're also not traits that a pitcher can control for very long. Lynn's FIP is 4.78 and that is, frankly, way more predictive of what we'll see this season than his much lower ERA.
Still, that's what we expected out of Lynn, wasn't it? We came into this season knowing that Lynn was probably going to suck. But if he could at least suck while staying healthy, keeping a few more balls in the ballpark, and not allowing basically every batter who got on base against him to score, he wouldn't be all that bad!
That's what he's been. Lance Lynn. Not all that bad. Not all that good. So far.
Steven Matz
It seems a little unfair to evaluate Matz right now. He had a solid start to the season, allowing just 3 earned runs in his first 15 innings. That's a 1.80 ERA with a 2.91 FIP. Remember that high point.
Since, then, it's been nothing but lows. In two starts covering 9.1 innings, Matz has allowed 12 earned runs. His BB rate has skyrocketed – 6 in the 9 innings. His K's have increased, but that's the kind of thing you get with small sample-size analysis.
Overall, Matz has not been either acceptable or bad depending on which stat block you prefer. ERA? He has a 5.55 with a 5.05 expected ERA. That's bad. FIP? That's just 4.17, which is just slightly better than his 4.24 carer FIP.
Put all of that together and Steven Matz is still Steven Matz.
I do have some concerns about him. His whiff and chase rates have never been exceptional but they've tanked this season. His Ks have too. He's down to the 11th percentile. He was 37th last year. And 70th the year before. (You know, back when we were still optimistic about him.) Those rates are tied a little too closely to his first few starts of the season for me to make a big deal about them. It doesn't seem like the Cardinals starters entered the season at the peak of readiness. We'll circle that for now and revisit it at the All-Star Break.
Kyle Gibson
By the way, my system of ordering these arms is based entirely on my level of interest in looking at their stats. Kyle Gibson is next and that tells you something about my level of interest in looking at his stats.
Which are pretty terrible. Last season, we all know that Gibson had a very high ERA. It was 4.73. That followed a season where his ERA was 5.05. The (very, very thin) silver lining to his past performance is his FIP. 4.13 ('23) and 4.28 ('22) are average or better. Maybe Gibson is just an average performer hiding behind a bad defense and run-scoring environment?
That was the presumption. It hasn't been the reality. So far, Gibson's ERA/FIP ratio has flipped. He's been acceptable by ERA – 4.35 – but his FIP is a terrible 5.22. He's been worth 0.0 fWAR on the season. Perfectly replaceable by your typical AAAA starter.
Like Lynn and Matz, Gibson's K rates have plummeted. He's at a 16% K rate on the season. His BB rate has increased to 9.6%. The one thing that Gibson absolutely can NOT do is walk batters. He is. That's bad.
With Gibson, I want to land somewhere similar to what I said about Matz. Maybe I should have considered it with Lynn, too. This pitching staff was slow out of the gate in Spring and maybe didn't enter the season ready to perform at their best. The last few starts from Gibson have been better. His K's have been up. He hasn't allowed a homer. Run totals are down. He's still walked more batters than he should. Maybe he has some upward momentum. But if someone wanted to argue with me that Gibson is and will remain one of the worst starters in baseball, I don't have much I can say in retort.
It's nice that he's already compiling innings. It sucks that those innings aren't any better than what Andre Pallante or Sem Robberse are likely to give. (And are far behind what my choice for his rotation spot, Shota Imanaga, is providing for the upstart Cubs.)
Miles Mikolas
Last, there's Miles Mikolas. I have some good news and some bad news about Mikolas.
First, the good news. His K rate is up. Last season he sat at 15.9%, a sharp decline from his 19% in '22. All those numbers are terrible, but more Ks are better than fewer Ks even when we're not talking about very many Ks at all. He's at 18% this season, pretty close to what he did in '18 and '19 in his prime seasons with the Cardinals. His BB rate is a little up but not enough to quibble. The "old" Mikolas – pre-2023 – is back.
The bad news is that the same variable that's been Mikolas' boom or bane in the past is still there: HR rates. Mikolas is extremely dependent on luck from homers. He had it last year – a 9.8% HR/FB rate – and it still led to a 4.78/4.27 ERA/FIP season. This year, the luck has left the building. His HR per fly ball rate is at 16.7%. That, plus stuff that's very easy to hit and a declining ground ball rate, has brought him to a horrendous 5.91/4.78 ERA/FIP.
Will he improve? It depends on that HR rate. My gut feeling is that will get a little better. Why do I say that? Because Mikolas has adjusted his pitch selection, throwing his slider a lot more and his fastball types a lot less. His slider should be a good pitch, but it just hasn't been so far. His actual wOBA against sliders is .446. It should be about 100 points lower by contact rates and 175 points lower by previous performance. I like him throwing more sliders and it should help him over a bigger sample size.
His best pitch right now is his sweeper, which he's only throwing 6.1% of the time. He's generating a 31.3% whiff rate on it with a .163 wOBA. He might not be 100% comfortable with it and I'm not sure he's capable of commanding it in the zone. (See his heat map.) Still, whiffs are whiffs and if I were the Cardinals, I would push any pitch from Mikolas that showed some signs of being able to miss bats. Because the rest of his offerings are, frankly, terrible. 84% of his pitches thrown this season have generated a wOBA between .504 (OUCH) and .371 (PAIN).
Better results on a slider should yield better results and more sweepers as the season goes on should lead to a better home run rate. But I'll just repeat the same thing I said about Gibson above here: if someone wanted to argue with me that Mikolas is and will remain one of the worst starters in baseball, I don't have much I can say in retort.
How Does This Rotation Compare to 2023 and Previous Seasons?
What about the broader picture? How does this rotation overall compare to previous seasons? By ERA, the 2024 Cardinals are much better. They are at 4.21 so far this season and had a 5.08 ERA overall in '23. On May 1, 2023, the Cardinals had a 4.94 ERA and a 4.76 FIP. So, any way you slice this, the team's rotation is improved. That hasn't quite shown up in the standings yet, but once the offense gets going, it should.
What about non-2023 seasons? This team does not stand out from the last five seasons (excluding 2023.) The 2024 Cardinals have, so far, the second-worst ERA at 4.21, but they're pretty much right on pace in terms of FIP with '21 and '20. '22 was quite a bit better (3.96 FIP) overall. That's not saying much. Those rotations were not particularly good. The Cardinals found themselves having to make some pretty significant adjustments on the fly in several of those seasons to cover for injuries and unexpected poor performance.
So far, the 2024 Cardinals have not had a major problem with injuries in the rotation. Their performance is probably pretty much as expected. The one exception is likely Gray and he's overperforming. Unlike previous rotations, the Cardinals arms have been healthy and are still just mediocre with very limited room for improvement.
As I indicated in my sarcastic diatribe earlier, it's talent that makes a difference. Good pitchers miss bats. They force weak contact. If they can't, it doesn't matter that much if they are staying in games to preserve the bullpen. (Even if the bullpen is exceptional.) Runs allowed are runs allowed. More runs from the rotation and fewer runs for the pen ends up being the same number of runs. Outside of Gray, this team simply can't generate whiffs or Ks. They don't give up a high level of walks but they still allow too many for the type of pitchers they have. They give up a lot of hard contact. The defense can't make up for all the balls in play. Especially when the best defense still hasn't seen the field together.
The 2024 rotation, so far, has been about what we expected. They've been largely healthy. They've provided some innings. They aren't very talented. They, outside of Gray, haven't been very good by a collective understanding of starter metrics. I don't expect that to change much going forward.
