8/30 News, Links, Discussion: A Look at Hanson’s Splits, AFL Roster, Medlen & Kimbrel
August 30, 2012 at 1:33 pm by David Lee under Atlanta Braves
A Heap of Hanson
Tommy Hanson did this, continuing a career-worst season in which he has a 4.45 ERA and 4.39 xFIP.
A big problem lies in a .382 wOBA against left-handed batters compared to a career .332. While his wOBA against right-handed batters is also up, it’s not nearly the same difference as from the left side. Some numbers:
HR/FB vs. LHB: 16.5%
HR/FB vs. RHB: 7.7
BABIP vs. LHB: .341
BABIP vs. RHB: .290
FIP vs. LHB: 5.35
FIP vs. RHB: 3.72
The increase in BABIP vs. LHB tells that he has had both bad luck and more hard hit balls, and a slight increase in line drive percentage backs this up. The huge difference in FIP shows he’s getting fewer strikeouts and allowing more walks against lefties. But you put those two together, and add in the biggest factor affecting his FIP, a really bad home run rate against lefties, and you get a nasty split.
Hanson allowed just five home runs to left-handed batters in 2010. That’s five in 95.1 innings. He has already allowed 14 in 70.2 innings this year. What happened? His stuff is simply not getting left-handed batters out anymore.
In 2010, Hanson’s slider had a LD/BIP rate of 6% and a FB/BIP rate of 28%. He didn’t allow a single home run on the pitch.
In 2012, his slider’s LD/BIP rate is 13% with a FB/BIP rate of 44%. He has a HR/(LD+FB) rate of 9% on the pitch. His curveball has also seen a dramatic jump in similar form, albeit in a slightly smaller sample.
In no way am I trying to answer Hanson’s problems with just a few batted ball numbers. It’s just a way of showing that Hanson’s stuff isn’t fooling the left-handed side of the plate like it did in his best season, namely the secondary offerings. When people comment that Hanson’s stuff isn’t getting batters out like it used to, it doesn’t have to mean whiff rate, because his swinging strike percentage is maintaining surprising consistency. The problem lies in his inability to avoid hard contact, especially from the left side.
As I wrote on Twitter, I would not oppose calling up Julio Teheran and letting him loose in Hanson’s spot for the next few starts. To simplify it, Teheran couldn’t be any worse, and the potential is there for an upgrade. Teheran has exactly 20 innings remaining to match his career high for a season, so his innings total is in good shape, and I’m sure his arm has benefited from some of his shorter outings. There’s really nothing to lose here. Remember, rosters expand Saturday.
More Links
Braves.com recap for Wednesday’s loss.
AJC quotes following Wednesday’s loss.
The Braves announced their Arizona Fall League roster. Zeke Spruill, Edward Salcedo, Nick Ahmed, Matt Kennelly, Gus Schlosser and Cory Rasmus will play for the Phoenix Desert Dogs.
Ben takes a look at Kris Medlen’s season for FanGraphs.
Jacob Peterson takes a look at Craig Kimbrel’s season for Talking Chop.
Around the NL East
Bryce Harper hit two homers before being ejected in Washington’s win on Wednesday, giving the Nationals a five-game lead again.
Tyler Cloyd pitched well in his major league debut for the Phillies.
The Phillies are considering Chase Utley at third base in the future.
Ozzie Guillen plans to change how he handles player injuries.
The Mets will shut Matt Harvey down before the season ends due to an innings limit.
Check us out on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter: @Ben_Duronio, @fjrabon, @David11Lee, @EthanPurser.
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You know what hurts? Thinking about the value that both Jurrjens and Hanson had at the half in 2011. Alas…
Bypassing last off-season’s shoulder surgery for Hanson is not looking like such a good idea right now.
Why are pitchers placed on innings-limits each season instead of pitch-count-limits?
(I’m not very knowledgeable of the finer workings of baseball/stats, so I apologize if I come off as ignorant.)
I don’t know much about it myself, but I think that in the last few years there hasn’t been much evidence found to suggest that using strict pitch counts alone have much of an effect on the tendency of a pitcher to get injured. I seem to recall a few years ago the idea that young pitchers (under 25) shouldn’t go much higher than 100 pitches in an outing–but I don’t think any studies ever confirmed that this practice helped avoid injury.
I think the jury’s still out on innings limits, but I personally believe that being cautious with young and/or previously injured pitchers is advisable.
I also think that being ignorant is not a problem–you don’t know something, you ask. The problem is when some folks (not you) come in and spout beliefs that are demonstrably false.
Thanks for the input.
When teams place total-innings-limits on young pitchers for the season, do they take into account the average number of pitches the pitcher uses per inning? What if pitcher A takes 30 pitches/inning average, while pitcher B takes 15/inning? Does that mean B is allowed to pitch twice as many innings, or is he still held to the same number as A?
It’s typically just assumed that over the course of a season all innings even out (in terms of stress from runners on base etc) and that the pitches each inning average themselves out as well. This coupled with the fact that there is much longer set of data about innings pitched and the ease of keeping the information, clubs tend to go by that reference.
I would further suggest that if a pitcher is averaging 30 pitches an inning for any appreciable stretch, he isn’t long for the majors.
haha, agreed. Well, let’s look at two extremes:
Player A: 182.2 IP
Player B: 151.0 IP
If we only look at innings pitched as a judgment for when to shut him down, we would be much more tentative about Player A. However…
Player A: 2613 pitches
Player B: 2686 pitches
So, by using innings pitched instead of total pitches, we have covered up the true usage of the pitchers’ arms.
(for what it’s worth, Player A is Dickey and Player B is Lincecum… and, yes, I realize their age and pitching style dramatically affect the decisions on their limits. I just wanted to highlight how much of an affect P/IP can have.)
I think you made Karyn’s point. Lincecum hasn’t been good this year. His ERA led the majors for awhile among qualified starters. He was routinely throwing a ton of pitches per inning. If he wan’t Lincecum he would have been demoted. If he was in the minors, he wouldn’t have been promoted. I still don’t see how pitch counts vs innings are a real benefit or upgrade in terms or wear and usage over a season. In terms of a game I think it can have some benegit, however I’m also of the belief that most teams aren’t setting their minor league guys up for long term success. You put guys on pitch limits their whole minor league career instead of working to strengthen their arms and build pitch counts year over year. I don’t believe a person has only “so many bullets or pitches” in the life of their arm before it can’t handle any more. It’s like anything else in the body, you build it up and do it progressively and you’ll see the long term strength and benefits from it. I realize my thoughts go against what many inside and outside of baseball think
@Karyn: you are correct that the state of the science here is nothing more than “belief”. However, just as those beliefs haven’t been proven true, they haven’t been proven false.
@Joe: I’m a physician, and I’m trying to study this better (but not finding the friggin time). Here’s the problem. There are multiple variables we know we should consider and probably some variables we haven’t considered. Everyone has looked at a few obvious variables (IP, age, incremental IP, ie increase in workload). The fact that methodologically flawed studies have failed to show the trend we’d like to see does not prove the trend isn’t there.
Here are some other variables (some of which you astutely point out): pitches/inning, pitches/start, throws per season (includes warm-up and bullpen sessions plus pitches).
The point is we’ve been chasing a relationship between IP and injury that probably doesn’t exist for lots of reasons. The key is the load placed on injury prone areas (e.g. rotator cuff, elbow joint) and with what frequency that is repeated. This is, as you again astutely point out, wildly different for different pitchers because of pitching styles. Strasburg’s heater puts a much higher load on his elbow than Dickey’s knuckler. But it’s not all about fastballs, as you know. Arm angle and follow through are important, and any “snap” involved in breaking pitches may subject ligaments to greater instantaneous loads. Besides that, not every UCL is the same. Insertion points, inherent tensile strengths, and speed of recovery differ from one athlete to another. Knowing these variables is either impossible or would require invasive surgery. Also the fusing of growth plates happens at different times. It’s likely that these pitchers arms are breaking down over a period of years, and the catastrophic “rupture” is only the final event. Top TJ surgeons believe this is why velocity declines and then rebounds after the TJS (rather than TJ surgery improving inherent velocity).
Long story short, a relationship between load/frequency of use and injury MUST exist. To say it doesn’t exist implies injury is purely random and is just as likely to occur after pitch 1 as it is after pitch 2000. The problem is that we don’t yet have any good way to predict injuries or understand injury thresholds. In light of that, innings limits and pitch limits are reasonable, but there is almost certainly a better strategy. Even if we do understand this better, though, it may be impossible to implement (e.g., suppose that pitchers under 23 shouldn’t throw more than 20 pitches in an inning)
How about moving hanson to the bullpen, making him the ROOGY and put Julio in his starting spot? I’m sure Hanson probably wouldn’t be to happy with this, but it would make the team better IMO
If we’re talking about a ROOGY, why not just wait until rosters expand and use Gearrin in that spot? Tommy Hanson should not throw a single pitch for a contender the rest of the year. The Braves have too many options to use Hanson as any kind of excuse. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gilmartin outperformed Hanson (though I know he won’t be given the opportunity). Hanson can get strikes, but he can’t miss bats for a third strike. He runs the count full with seemingly every batter and then doesn’t have an overpowering pitch that hitters can’t just foul off until they get a ball.
Anyone willing to look up the numbers on his changeup usage against lefties this season? Obviously his slider to lefties isn’t working, which would suggest he should use the change more against lefties. But when your fastball velocity is down to 87 I guess a changeup isn’t much of a change anyways.
Gearrin and Moylan are in better position to use as ROOGYs with the expanded rosters and at this point Teheran cannot be any worse of a choice to start in Hanson’s spot. With the Braves pitching we should try for 5 bench bats and position players to bring up and the rest pitchers of all types to try and stop the bleeding our rotation has developed.
While I’d rather see Delgado take Hanson’s spot than see Teheran take it, I agree that giving Teheran a chance couldn’t be any worse than continuing to run Hanson out there.
I’m going to enjoy hating Bryce Harper for years and years to come.
I thought I read that Gattis was going to play in the AFL.
What would Hansen’s trade value be at this point? What could we get for him??
2 bags of balls as opposed to the 1 bag we’d get for J.J.
Hanson is getting bad luck vs LHB? Hanson’s issues are not luck related. You even pointed out why later the in article “His stuff is simply not getting left-handed batters out anymore.” “In no way am I trying to answer Hanson’s problems with just a few batted ball numbers. It’s just a way of showing that Hanson’s stuff isn’t fooling the left-handed side of the plate like it did in his best season.” He’s not having bad luck but his BABIP is up b/c of the reasons you stated. BABIP isn’t always about luck and shouldn’t be referred as such so often imo. BABIP ref usually assume the pitcher can’t control it or something is taking place that can’t be quantified. Sometimes that happens but Hanson’s issues stem from his own performance (or lack of lately) not seeing eye ground balls.
Which is why the rest of the sentence reads, “…and more hard hit balls, and a slight increase in line drive percentage backs this up.”
Hanson is getting hit harder against left-handed batters, but it’s unfair to completely rule out at least some bad luck simply because he’s getting hit harder. He has the highest infield-hit and bunt-hit percentages of his career this year. You can’t say that doesn’t have some sort of impact.
I don’t have any solid evidence–and am too lazy at the moment to look it up–but Tommy just looks terrible after getting to a 2-strike count. I’ve seen many 0-2, 0-1 counts turn into 3-2 counts. I’m not saying this is the central issue, but that strikeout just isn’t happening anymore.
I was gonna ask why Teheran was mentioned to take Tommy’s stop and not Delgado, but I just noticed that he hasn’t made it past 6 innings in his past 7 starts. Yeesh.
Tommy’s always been terrible at finishing hitters. When he gets and 0-2 or 1-2 count, he usually either gives up a hit on a pitch over the middle of the plate or the hitter hits multiple foul balls and the count runs full. It’s been that way since his first season.
I’d say use a trio of Hanson, Teheran, and Delgado as the 5th starter. Each pitch 3 innings a piece
Good to see Jacob is back and a good piece on Kimbrel. Anyone know what the heck happened to him? He went off the grid for like 3 months.
In regards to Hanson, my fiance (yankee fan) made an astute observation: Tommy Hanson is like Phil Hughes. You pray he pitches well, but expect the worst, and most of the time are not disappointed.
Hanson has been a good pitcher in the past, I still think he’s pitching through an injury, or constant soreness at the minimum.
Part of Tommy’s problem is that when a player gets a single or a walk and has a modicum of speed then it’s an automatic double.
Right now, the Braves have four pitchers who are doing pretty well (Hudson, Maholm, Medlen, and Minor) and one (Hanson, obviously) that sucks. Most teams do not have five good starters. If they make the playoffs, Hanson won’t see the light of day. Even Fredi wouldn’t be that stupid, would he? My point is, that as bad as Hanson has been, he’s not likely the Braves biggest problem. Right now, it’s the holes in the lineup. The way the schedule lines up in September, after next week they have an offday each week for the rest of the year. So, they wouldn’t even need a fifth starter the rest of the year, if they just trashed this stupid six-man rotation. If they keep running Hanson out there, that’s management stupidity.
They are back to a five-man rotation, as Sheets is on the DL.
While Hanson may suck this year and destroys any hope the bullpen may have for rest, you cant ignore that the braves give some crazy run support when he pitches. He is 12-7 so its not like we arent winning when he pitches. They tend not to rally as much around pitchers with less of a track record, like Minor. Or if you guys remember kawakami (who sucked but didnt deserve 0-12 i think it was). Maybe if they rally around his suckiness, shouldn’t we stick with it?
[...] be called up once the Gwinnett season ends on September 3. David Lee, of Capital Avenue Club, proposed that Teheran should take the starts of Tommy Hanson. If not, both Teheran and Delgado would wind up [...]
Hanson cannot be trusted at this point…. I see that Milwood just cleared waivers. The Braves should make a quick trade for him tonight
When Sheets comes back, I’m betting Hanson is headed to the DL to get him out of the rotation.