Notebook Stories
Going to try something different with notebook style postings every now and then. There won’t be a sole focus or topic but several smaller topics that I feel are relevant. Hopefully, I can find larger posts to build from these smaller topics.
Is Lance Lynn really the second best pitcher in the majors?
This is a serious question, because I cannot decide.
I think it simply comes down to how much you care about ERA, because his 4.16 ERA doesn’t really scream #2 Starter in all of baseball. The peripherals tell a much different story. He’s striking out nearly 10 batters per nine innings, and giving up homeruns at a rate of .77 per nine innings. He’s not walking many batters either while going deep into games. It could be that his BABIP is .345, whereas the vast majority of starters on that list are below .300 BABIP.
Lynn was once a remarkably consistent starter for the St. Louis Cardinals. He consistently was around 3.0 fWAR per year before he blew out his elbow and missed the 2016 season. His 2017 season was not great, compared to his past and for that the Cardinals let him walk. But he wasn’t particularly good for the Minnesota Twins in the first half of 2018 either. The walks were still increasing and he was giving up more homeruns despite his solid strikeout per nine innings rate of 8.79.
Clearly, Lynn found something with the New York Yankees after he was acquired. That’s not really surprising, given what we’ve seen from the Yankees and their young pitchers. His strikeouts per nine innings climbed to 10, his walks per nine innings was slashed in half and his homeruns per nine innings was cut by two thirds. He’s mostly sustained that performance with the Texas Rangers this year, even with his homeruns per nine innings regressing back to his career average.
What do we do next? The Rangers have a 2% chance of making the playoffs, but Lynn is signed to an affordable contract for two more seasons at $10 million per season. He’s also 32, so how much longer can we expect this to last? Are we ready for a world where Lance Lynn is one of the best starting pitchers in the major leagues?
Cease and Desist
Dylan Cease was looking great earlier this year at AAA. I was convinced he would be called up. I was also looking forward to the White Sox rolling out a Lucas Giolito-Michael Kopech-Cease-Carlos Rodón rotation, until Kopech and Rodón blew out their elbows. But a Giolito-Cease one-two punch was fine by me.
That hasn’t really been the case either. While Giolito has been great, Cease has faltered. His strikeout per nine innings has dropped considerably at AAA, while his walks per nine innings has grown slightly. His BABIP has also grown to .354, the highest in his minor league career by far. I’m concerned to say the least.
I haven’t seen any mention of injury, but it is possible he is hiding one from his coaches. It’s something to watch, simply because it would be yet another devastating blow to the White Sox and their young talent. They lost out on Manny Machado and Bryce Harper (granted they didn’t try very hard), who could’ve jump started their rebuild. Now they have yet another year of a really bad team.
Precedent for Hyun-Jin Ryu
On Sunday Night Baseball, ESPN posted a graphic comparing Hyun-Jin Ryu’s 2019 season to Bob Gibson’s 1968 season. I have no qualms with the comparison other than it solely focusing on ERA comparison from what I remember (I didn’t grab a picture in the moment).
It is true that Ryu posses an ERA 1.26, and it compares to the 1.12 ERA that Gibson posted in ’68. There’s just so much to talk about here. First being the two eras we’re talking about here. Gibson’s 1968 season (among others) was the impetus for the league to change the height of the mound. Gibson also had a larger strike zone to work with, from the knees all the way to the shoulders. Gibson’s career actually traverses those two eras and while his ERA inflated along with the pitching mound, he still was an otherworldly pitcher in the latter half of his career.
Ryu, on the other hand, resides in the post steroids era but also what we can effectively call the juiced ball era. He works with a smaller mound and smaller strike zone, in comparison to Gibson. On top of all that, it has become more and more obvious that the MLB has modified the composition of the baseball, affecting how it travels and has contributed to the jolt in homeruns we’ve seen recently. So how do we compare?
Well, we can use this image first:
Gibson and Ryu have their strengths. Ryu simply doesn’t walk anyone, while Gibson gave up fewer homeruns. They both strikeout batters are nearly the same rate. A big difference and probably advantage for Ryu is that he is most certainly not going to start as many games nor pitch as many innings as Gibson did.
ERA+ is a good way to compare across eras, as it normalizes for ballparks and league averages. Gibson is in the top six ever, with an ERA+ of 258 (100 is average and the higher the number, the better). So, where does Ryu sit currently? Ryu’s ERA+ as of 6/19/19 is 335. That would be the greatest ever recorded. But ERA is a flawed stat! What if we normalize by the more analytically acceptable stat, FIP?
Gibson’s FIP- (normalized so 100 is average and lower is better) in 1968 was 65, which is impressive but not even his career low (61 in 1970). Ryu’s FIP- is currently 59. That brings them closer but still provides an upper hand to Ryu just by the numbers.
Those who lived during Gibson’s era are going to dismiss this as hosh posh and I’m not trying to diminish his performance at all. What I want to highlight is how good Hyun-Jin Ryu has been this year. That I can even write this up as a comparison shows how good he’s been. The thing we need to hope for is health. Ryu has only had one healthy season and is coming off a season where he pitched less than 100 innings. How will the Dodgers handle him down the stretch? How will it impact where he stands with some of the best to ever pitch in the MLB? We can only wait and see.
