The Bad News About Brandon Beachy
June 5, 2012 at 2:41 am by Kevin Orris under Atlanta Braves
At this time last year, Jair Jurrjens was pitching like an All-Star. Entering his June 4th start at Citi Field, the Jurrjens sported a 1.51 ERA while opponents hit just .234/.271/.331 against him over nine starts. Come the end of the month, his ERA declined to just a few ticks above two and opponents posted a measly .626 OPS against.
Following a one-hit, complete game shutout on July 1 against the Baltimore Orioles, Jurrjens pitched just 47.1 more innings over the rest of the season. During that stretch, he posted a 5.32 ERA while opponents batted a much improved .290/.365/.532. Right knee issues aside, Jurrjens regressed heavily. His luck finally ran dry.
It pains me to write about it, but Brandon Beachy’s 2012 season has taken a very similar path to Jurrjens’ 2011 campaign. As I write this, Beachy leads the league with a 1.87 ERA over 72.1 innings pitched. Meanwhile, his FIP rests nearly 1.5 points higher than his ERA while his xFIP sits at 4.02. Statistics say that we’re currently witnessing the calm before the storm.
Sabermetrics be dammed, why not take a look at his approach to understand why Beachy has been oh so good this year. Below is a table of Beachy’s pitch selection against both left- and right-handed batters in 2011 vs. 2012.
|
|
Fastball |
Changeup |
Curveball |
Slider |
|
2011 vs. RHB |
61% |
26% |
8% |
5% |
|
2012 vs. RHB |
61% |
25% |
9% |
5% |
|
2011 vs. LHB |
61% |
10% |
12% |
17% |
|
2012 vs. LHB |
66% |
10% |
11% |
14% |
After studying the data presented, there isn’t much of a difference. When taking a more detailed look at various advanced metrics though, things begin to change.
|
|
In Play% |
Zone% |
Miss% |
Chase% |
|
2011 vs. RHB |
33.5% |
48.8% |
27.3% |
30.6% |
|
2012 vs. RHB |
40.6% |
54.7% |
22.4% |
22.5% |
|
2011 vs. LHB |
31.8% |
40.6% |
31.6% |
32.1% |
|
2012 vs. LHB |
35.5% |
45.6% |
16.7% |
28.3% |
Across the board, Beachy is throwing more strikes and allowing for more contact in 2012 compared to 2011. While his success has been tremendous to this point, it is impossible to allow this much contact, with a sub-par defensive alignment no less, and maintain the current results.
In fact, Beachy’s .207 BABIP ranks first among qualifying pitchers by .014, while his HR/FB% sits in the top 10 and LOB% ranks among the top 30. If Jurrjens’ 2011 season was any indication, Beachy’s results will soon take a turn for the worse.
Even so, there may be a solution. Now, Beachy is a good pitcher, but he’s not really the best pitcher in baseball, though he could easily rank among the top 25 in baseball. In fact, his lucky approach early on this season may only help him as the season continues.
Since Beachy has been so strong in 2012, he has relied heavily on throwing all four of his pitches for strikes and allowing hitters to make contact, rather than fooling hitters with balls that look like strikes. As the old saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
It is important to note that Beachy led qualifying starting pitchers in K/9 in 2011 at 10.74. In 2012, he ranks 63rd at 7.09. Look again at the drastic change in Beachy’s zone%, miss%, and chase% in 2012. He simply hasn’t been trying to strike batters out. Instead, he’s throwing the ball over the middle of the plate and daring opposing batters to hit it. So far, it has worked.
Simply put, if he continues this approach, the results are likely to favor opposing batters. However, if Beachy returns to his 2011 method of locating more pitches – both fastballs and off-speed – outside of the zone, his strikeout rate should return to its 2011 standard. Though, right now, batters aren’t chasing his pitches because they don’t have to.
Ultimately, it’s up to Beachy to determine his approach, but know that if it remains constant, the results are destined to change.
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You also have to look at his LD%, which sat at a fairly high:
2011: 21.1%
vs.
2012: 17.5%
and also his GB%
2011: 33.8%
vs.
2012: 42.0%
as reasons to believe his comments at the beginning of the year about being ‘more of a contact pitcher’ have some credibility. Yeah he’s going to regress a bit, as no one besides ‘Greg Maddux in a career year’ could get close to a ~ 2.00 ERA. But I think he’s still a top 25 MLB pitcher, WITHOUT changing his approach. my two-cents.
I like the idea that he has pitched to more contact, gotten more groundball outs and pitched deeper into games. But I think he can go back to striking out more batters (if he has to) because he has the stuff to do that while also maintaining his ability to pitch deeper into games. The reason I say this is because he doesn’t seem to be giving up as many foul balls this year as he did last year which ran his pitch count up. Now I don’t know if that is true. That’s just the way it seems to me.
No, Beachy probably won’t be this good over an entire season. Not sure anyone expects him to be. But he’s a better pitcher than Jurrjens. Better stuff and, from everything I can tell about him from a distance, a much better mental makeup.
I think the real hope is that Beachy could shift gears when he needs. Atlanta starters didn’t go far into games last year, and that led to the possible overworking of the bullpen. If Beachy can go another inning/start, that will go a long way in shifting the workload in the ‘pen.
Are there any signs that Beachy is pitching more for strikeouts when he has runners on base? It would explain the good LOB%. Are there examples of other pitchers that are able to change their approach based on the situation with consistent success?
To answer my own question, it appears once runners are on base Beachy is going after the K just as aggressively as last year.
K% with bases empty:
31.9%(2011) vs. 17.6%(2012)
K% with runners on:
24.7% (2011) vs. 24.7% (2012)
This is actually a good point, because it shows that he is trying to conserve pitches (stamina) for when “it matters.” I hate to compare it to a video game…but its the same way I pitch when I play those. Pitch strikes to contact when no one is on…pitch for strikeouts (more pitches) when someone is. It allows you to get more innings out of your starter.
Also, interesting that he’s getting more groundballs than last year, and our defense is so shoddy, yet has such a low BABIP.
This is a great point. It shows why–although saber stats are generally more useful than traditional stats–ERA is not entirely useless as a complement to FIP or WHIP. Some pitchers change their approach when runs are in danger of being scored, thus maintaining an ERA that is sustainably superior to what FIP or WHIP would indicate.
That’s not to say that the DEGREE to which Beachy’s ERA is superior to his FIP/WHIP is sustainable, however.
I believe his new approach won’t result in a regression.
Now that he’s throwing more strikes hitters may be putting the ball in play more but they don’t seem to be making good contact. This makes sense when you think about how good his stuff was last year (best K/9 in Baseball). If you’ve watched him pitch lately, he’s also clearly finding a medium between getting easy outs and putting hitters away when he’s ahead (higher K/9 in last few starts)… His stuff is good enough (even though none of his pitches really seem to be plus) that even when he throws balls over the plate, few batters can square him up.
The difference is that Jair has never been a strikeout pitcher, while beachy can strike 10-12 hitters a night and is choosing not, so that he can go deep into more games. Thats a big difference you are leaving out.
Is he really throwing it down the middle more? I don’t have the data or heat maps, but i would hope he is painting the corner more this year. I would rather he paint the black than chuck it dead red. If you cut it and fade it off the strike zone, you get more Ks, walks, and feebly hit balls. If you throw it in the corners, you get less ks and walks and hitters are still lIkely to hit it pretty feebily. But if you go dead red, you ain’t walking anyone, but you ain’t striking anyone, and you are gonna have to do a whole lot of chucking and ducking because you will get slaughtered
He has been throwing more strikes, but like you said, in places where the hitter isn’t going to make good contact. Instead of having a breaking pitch start in the zone and end up out of the zone, it’s almost like he’s backdoor-ing people more and having his off speed and breaking pitches end up in the zone in hard to hit places. Also, it seemed like last year he used the high fastball to record K’s and now it seems like he uses it low to get consistent strikes early, then keep them off balance throughout the rest of the AB by mixing pitches.
Also, I think it’s good having seen that he can take both approaches if needed. Once the scouting report gets out that he’s just throwing strikes (which was probably a long time ago) he can use that to his advantage to get ahead of hitters by throwing things out of the zone early in the count. JJ was a ground ball pitcher through and through but Beachy has good enough stuff to operate in a couple different ways.
I’m sure it helps that his fastball looks like it floats towards the end. Anyone else notice that? I saw the post about the cutter, but his fastball almost looks like it rises, or holds some plane that most other fastballs don’t.
Beachy is certainly pitching to more contact this year than previous years, but this is highly skewed to situations when the bases are empty. I don’t have access to too many stats, but Beachy’s K/9 & BB/9 with the bases empty is 6.41 & 3.11 & yet 8.31 & 2.42 with men on base. So Beachy appears to be saving his best stuff when runner reach base.
Since Beachy is also generally a FB pitcher, maybe he is taking advantage of Atlanta’s stellar defensive outfield to help reduce his BABIP. However, a .188 BABIP is likely not sustainable. But a LD% of 15.7 with the bases empty is an encouraging stat. This leads me to think that Beachy has thus far been very successful at pitching to weak contact. Also to note, His FB% goes from 45.6 to 29.7 with the bases empty and with men on base. If Beachy is changing his pitch location to induce more ground balls with men on base, I believe this will help keep Beachy’s ERA below his FIP as he is more likely to give up solo HRs than other types when his HR/FB inevitably regresses.
So is Beachy going to sustain an ERA of sub 2.00, doubtful. But I also do not predict any where near the collapse we saw from Jurrjens.
I think Beachy is already showing his willingness to change approaches mid-game or mid-inning:
2012 K/9
Low Leverage 6.63
Med Leverage 7.52
High Leverage 8.10
Bases Empty 6.10
Men on Base 8.31
Men in Scoring 8.53
I also found it interesting that his LD% is highest with runners on and also high leverage situations, while his GB% is lowest in high leverage but highest with runners on. I think most of the batted ball data should be chalked up to SSS, but the K/9 numbers are at least interesting when discussing his ability to change approaches. FYI the link for his splits is… http://www.fangraphs.com/statsplits.aspx?playerid=8851&position=P&season=2012
While it is understandable that you wouldn’t want to put stock into BAA, because it really doesn’t measure a lot of pitcher skill, I wonder if a pitcher’s well-hit average against would give anything more to say about Beachy. While he is allowing hits, is the contact, when he allows it to happen, strong or weak?
It is a pitcher skill to miss bats, but how much of a skill is it to allow weak contact when contact is made? I would feel that we put too much into the fact that, once a pitcher allows contact it is all up to the defense behind him to turn that ball into an out. But is it really?
Hopefully what he did last year was throw balls that looked like strikes, and this year he is throwing strikes that look like they are down the middle and easy to hit but are really strikes that are hard to hit well at the corners. It really is my hope that is what he is doing. And if it is, then lookout because once he is able to master and incorporate both approaches, he will have hitters totally confused. Imagine how could he can be if he is able to be efficient early in counts and then is able to finish them off with the big K as the count gets deeper like he did last year. I dunno. Still have the gut feeling i am being a little too pollyanish with this analysis and should see that it is a little but of a jurrjensesque smoke and mirrors act that will eventually catch up to him
I think pitchers do have control over how well a ball is struck, but I do think they have little control over whether a batted ball in play no matter how well struck turns into an out. Look at the ninth inning of game 7 of the 2001 world series. Rivera didn’t get hit hard in that inning. Everything that was hit was off the end of the bat or in on the bat handle. Nothing really got barreled. But he got dinked and dunked enough by batted balls landing perfectly in the field of play to lose the game.
I’ll take that over putting people on with walks.
In the same way you can look at having good luck with well hit balls right at someone, the Rivera game presents the opposite: bad luck with poorly hit balls. But, more often then not, poorly hit balls turn into outs and well hit balls turn into hits. In a given game, luck can go either way, but over a full season forcing hitters to make poor contact will keep his stats where they are.
Here is Beachy’s heat map vs. RHB this season:
Hasn’t Beachy stated that one of his goals this season was to pitch longer in the games?
I think it follows that he’s not nibbling on the corners as much. As a result, he might be challenging hitters a bit more rather then trying to be really fine in pursuit of the strikeout.
I think innings are important. Getting five exceptionally strong innings with a bunch of strikeouts is not, IMO, as important as getting seven good innings with maybe fewer strikeouts. It seems to me that no pitcher should really be trying to strike out hitters, except in specific situations. He should be trying to make good pitches and, if his stuff is good enough, the strikeouts will come. I think that’s what pitching to contact means; you aren’t going to throw the ball down the middle just to get contact. You can be a good strikeout pitcher while still maintaining a reasonable pitch count if you are efficient; there’s a big difference between striking a guy out on, say four pitches and striking him out on six or seven. .
To this point, all the best in the game go deep into games and get a ton of strikeouts (Verlander, CC, Kershaw, Halladay, Lee, Hamels, vintage Lincecum and Johan). We knew Beachy could rack up the strikeouts with the best of them, now he is learning how to go deeper into games. What remains to be seen is whether he can do both.
I’m not trying to suggest that Beachy is the next Verlander in the making. In fact, I’d trade half our rotation and all our guys in the minors (Minor, Hanson, JJ, and Tehran) for a Verlander. What I am saying is that hopefully, we are witnessing this progression from a good pitcher to a great one. Hopefully, in a few years time, we’ll be able to add his name to that list of elite. But in the mean time, we should expect some regression.
I think Beachy could adjust if he starts seeing regression and gets knocked around a bit. His could go back to the “strike um out” Beachy instead of the “efficient let um hit it” Beachy.