The Hardball Times Fantasy

CAPS Profile: Aaron Harang

by Derek Carty
February 16, 2009

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Aaron Harang had a rough 2008, but could he be a steal in 2009 drafts? (Icon/SMI)

Aaron Harang was a popular pick in 2008 fantasy baseball drafts, often going as early as round six in 12-team mixed leagues. He had posted three consecutive seasons with 200+ innings and a sub-4.00 ERA and two consecutive seasons with 16 wins and over 200 strikeouts. Naturally, he seemed like a pretty solid pick. As we know, however, things didn't work out as expected. Harang allowed a career high 35 home runs en route to a near-5.00 ERA. His full fantasy line looked like this:
+-------+---+------+------+-----+----+
| IP    | W | ERA  | WHIP | K   | SV |
+-------+---+------+------+-----+----+
| 184.3 | 6 | 4.78 | 1.38 | 153 |  0 |
+-------+---+------+------+-----+----+

That's a very ugly line and meant Harang actually had negative value in many leagues. Flash forward to 2009, and we're seeing Harang regularly being drafted in round 15 and ranked outside the top 35 or 40 starting pitchers. Was he as bad as his 2008 season indicated, though, and if he was, what are the chances of a bounce-back? Let's take a look.

CAPS Profile


If you're unfamiliar with CAPS (Context Adjusted Pitching Statistics), it's a stat I invented and then improved upon earlier this offseason. It's a stat that can't be found anywhere else and can give us a much better picture of a pitcher's true talent than unadjusted number. CAPS adjusts each of a pitcher's component stats based on the following factors:

So what can CAPS tell us about Mr. Harang?

Note: In this table, the first line is Harang's actual line for the season. The second line is his CAPS line for the season.
+------+-----+-------+------+------+-----+------+---------+-----+-------+-------+
| YEAR | AGE | IP    | ERA  | QERA | K/9 | BB/9 | K/BB RI | GB% | BABIP | HR/FB |
+------+-----+-------+------+------+-----+------+---------+-----+-------+-------+
| 2006 |  27 | 234.3 | 3.76 | 3.67 | 8.3 |  2.2 |    0.69 |  39 | 0.326 |  12.1 |
| 2006 |  27 | 234.3 | 3.76 | 3.47 | 8.5 |  1.9 |    0.73 |  40 | 0.328 |  11.4 |
+------+-----+-------+------+------+-----+------+---------+-----+-------+-------+
| 2007 |  28 | 231.7 | 3.73 | 3.44 | 8.5 |  2.0 |    0.75 |  40 | 0.292 |  11.2 |
| 2007 |  28 | 231.7 | 3.73 | 3.34 | 8.6 |  1.9 |    0.76 |  41 | 0.295 |  10.4 |
+------+-----+-------+------+------+-----+------+---------+-----+-------+-------+
| 2008 |  29 | 184.3 | 4.78 | 4.22 | 7.5 |  2.4 |    0.36 |  34 | 0.318 |  15.3 |
| 2008 |  29 | 184.3 | 4.78 | 4.07 | 7.4 |  2.1 |    0.40 |  36 | 0.315 |  13.9 |
+------+-----+-------+------+------+-----+------+---------+-----+-------+-------+

As you can see, Harang's 2008 ERA was higher than his QERA would indicate. This is due to a worse-than-average HR/FB and BABIP, but mostly the HR/FB. League average was 11.3 percent, and Harang's was over 15 percent. That's a huge difference and explains most of the discrepancy.

If we look at his CAPS HR/FB, though, we see that it should have actually been 13.9 percent. That's just a 2.6 percent difference from league average, and well within the range where we can safely assume that it was simply bad luck and not something more serious.

While we can write off the HR/FB rate, Harang's 2008 CAPS QERA of 4.07 was still well above his 3.47 and 3.34 rates from 2006 and 2007. This tells us that while Harang was unlucky, he also experienced a skills decline. His K/9 dropped a full point, his walk rate increased by nearly half a point, and his groundball rate dropped six points.

I was hoping that CAPS would explain the strikeout drop, but unfortunately, it looks like it was for real. His CAPS BB/9, however, was in line with previous years (meaning there was nothing wrong with his control), and his groundball rate shouldn't have dropped quite so far. Put this all together and Harang's CAPS QERA is a respectable 4.07. And the good news is that, because of his history, this will likely improve in 2009. Marcels projects a 7.9 K/9, which would easily drop that QERA below 4.00.

Other considerations


If we look a little deeper, we can see why Harang's strikeout rate was down this year.

Note: Below, I've listed his CAPS K/9, the percentage of pitches outside the strike zone the batter swung at, and the percentage of those pitches that the batter swung on and missed. The later two were derived from data on Harang's FanGraphs page.
+------+----------+------------+-----------+
| YEAR | CAPS K/9 | OOZ-Swing% | OOZ-Miss% |
+------+----------+------------+-----------+
| 2006 |      8.5 |       27.7 |      50.8 |
| 2007 |      8.6 |       26.5 |      45.4 |
| 2008 |      7.4 |       26.0 |      35.2 |
+------+----------+------------+-----------+

As you can see, Harang induced just as many out-of-zone swings as he did in 2006 and 2007, but a far fewer number of them were swings and misses.

This amounted to losing 88 total strikes and—if we work off the assumption of three strikes per out—29 strikeouts. An extra 29 strikeouts would have increased his K/9 to 8.9. We obviously can't make the assumption that he would have actually gained 29 strikeouts (those 88 strikes wouldn't have been perfectly efficient), but I think it's safe to say this was a big reason for his strikeout drop.

Some people like to use this—the ability to make batters swing and miss on pitches they shouldn't be swinging at to begin with—as a measure of "stuff" and I generally tend to agree. In this case, though, I don't believe that's the case. Check out Harang's PITCHf/x movement chart (a big thanks to Josh Kalk for the data).

image


Harang is primarily a two-pitch pitcher with a 90 MPH fastball and slider that usually sits just under 83 MPH (both are very good-to-great pitches). There's also some change-ups and curves in there, but for simplicity's sake they were classified as either a fastball or slider. As you can see, the movement on his pitches hasn't changed very much at all from 2007 to 2008. There's some wider variability in his 2008 fastball (more good than bad) and his slider dropped to around 81 MPH, but those are about the only differences in "pure stuff" I can tell.

So while Harang wasn't able to get as many batters to go fishing in 2008, it doesn't appear to be a matter of "stuff." I'm not about to automatically qualify it as bad luck, but it's certainly possible. Even if it isn't bad luck but rather a matter of approach or something, it will be easier for Harang to correct than if he suddenly had lost some MPH on his fastball or movement on his pitches.

Concluding thoughts


When all is said and done, a 3.85 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, and 175 K (given 200 IP) would be quite attainable (and likely) for Harang, with his upside as his 2006/2007 numbers. Even if he does nothing more than this (and wins 12 games), though, Harang would still be worth roughly $20 in a 12-team mixed league and well worth the 14th- or 15th-round pick it would cost for him.


Derek Carty, 23, has also been published by NBC's Rotoworld, Sports Illustrated, FOX Sports, and USA Today. This season, he'll be contributing to FanDuel and will be linking to all of his work at DerekCarty.com. In his three years competing in expert leagues, he has won 2 titles with 4 top three finishes, including a LABR NL title in 2009, making him the youngest person to ever win a major expert league title. Derek is a proud graduate of the MLB Scouting Bureau's Scout Development Program and is a firm believer in the importance of combining stats and scouting. He welcomes questions via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.

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