Player Profile: Clayton Kershaw

I’m surprised you were so easy on the second item.  That in my opinion is the whole discussion with Kershaw right now.  If his BB/9 stays above 4.5 he is never going to equal these numbers again if he totals 200 IP.

Also based on his xFIP he is actually around 4.00 if all his numbers regress.  I think 2010 is going to be a dissapointing year for Kershaw owners as to many overvalue him based on this season.

Your right about his splits though.  A 1.51 K/BB against righties is dismal since ~80% of his batter faced are righties.

Actually they were very similar and De la Rosa even had a better K/BB and a better GB%.

The bonus for Kershaw is he pitches in the NL West and Dodger stadium most of his games, which should keep his HR/FB down.  Other than that bonus if he can’t control his walks he would be very similar if not worse than De la Rosa.

Rad-they are equals?? maybe for 2009. Let’s not forget the humidor effect at Coors Field.
Agree on nice write up. Thanks Mike.
Nolasco next?

Raygu,

You just proved the point.  If his HR/FB isn’t helped by Dodger stadium this year he would have been near a 4 ERA pitcher this year.  His overall HR/FB% was 4.1% so even in LA I expect that to go up.

Right now Kershaw is pitching like a slightly better Matt Cain.  He has a better K/9 to help him out, but both are sustained by the NL West parks.

Both Matt Cain and Clayton Kershaw have similar K/BB, but Kershaw has a higher K/9 (obviously a higher BB/9 as well)

Their ERA’s are maintained by their home park deflating their HR/FB rates.

His xFIP was 3.94, which accounts for a normalized HR/FB.

Sure, since they have no were to go but up.  HR/FB% is not a pitcher controlled stat.  It is controlled by park factors and the hitters a pitcher faces.  As long as Kershaw is in LA he can expect to be below the league average, like Matt Cain.

On the other hand Cliff Lee won a Cy Young the same way Kershaw beat his xFIP this year and was doing it again this year with a low HR/FB, but now in Philly it has started to rise.

DO you think Cliff Lee will have a HR/FB under 9% in Philly next year?

First off, Kershaw gets me as wet as any young pitcher.  I agree that there’s best pitcher in the game potential and with the overall assessment of this piece.

For the people that said that Kersh pitches in the NL West and JDLR doesn’t….  De La Rosa actually does pitch in the NL West.  Obviously there’s a big difference in their home parks, and I realize that was your point, but I just wanted to nitpick an inaccuracy.

I agree that Kershaw’s HR/FB% is unsustainable, but I’d also expect pitching so much in Dodger Stadium, Petco, and AT&T to help keep it below league average.

One thing I take issue with is categorically saying that HR/FB% is completely out of the control of the pitcher.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Pitch F/X data started to refute the absoluteness of this assumption.  Similar to the hypothesis that GB pitchers would have higher HR/FB rates) it seems to me that pitchers that are particularly adept at moving the ball vertically within the zone, and who have pitches that diverge violently on the vertical plane (e.g. kershaw’s 4-seam fastball versus his ungodly curveball) would be better at inducing weak contact in the air.  If anyone knows of more research in this area, I’d be interested in reading it.

If there isn’t, I’d think that someone like Barry Zito would be worth examining as a case study. 

Obviously Zito has been greatly aided by ballparks that suppress both batting average and HRs, but I believe a large part of his success can also be attributed to inducing a lot of weak contact through the air.  Zito has a career IFFB% of 13.6% that is well above league average.  This is despite having a fastball that one would expect to limit his upside to that of a LOOGY at best.  Zito’s M.O. has always been to throw his fastball up in the zone to capitalize on that big rolling curveball (note again how the FB and CB are again used in conjunction here).

I believe this ability to induce weak contact in the air helps explain what is an otherwise anomalous career BABIP for Zito (.275).  I also think it contributes (along with park effects) to how Zito was able to keep his ERA so far below what his FIP and xFIP would predict it to be.  He has only once had an ERA higher than his FIP, and that year corresponded with a career low IFFB%.

I wish we had pitch FX data from his Oakland days as more objective evidence, but scouts and other observers have said that Zito’s curveball was different in SF from what it was in Oakland (e.g. less vertical movement).  With less vertical movement on his CB, and a fastball that had even lower velocity than before, I think it’s no coincidence that Zito’s IFFB% were by far the lowest of his career during his first two years in SF.  Correspondingly, his BABIPs were .305 and .290. Despite these scores being within the expected range for the majority of pitchers, both are above his career .275 career mark.

If anyone has any additional thoughts on the subject, or if they can point me in the direction of more research in the area, I’d appreciate hearing/seeing it.

As is, I expect that our predictive abilities will be refined even more as Pitch FX gets better and we get more and more data.  One of the conclusions I feel we’ll come to is that HR/FB% is indeed something that is at least somewhat under a pitcher’s control.