The 2008 White Sox have seen several pleasant surprises this season, but no player fits that description better than fifth starter, Gavin Floyd.
The 25-year old right-handed hurler has posted a 2.50 ERA and a startling 0.96 WHIP on the young season. It was said by many in March that Gavin Floyd was the key to the success of the 2008 White Sox, and so far, he has been everything these hopeful fans could have asked for and much more.
So why not trust him?
In baseball, there are statistics such as ERA and WHIP that evaluate how well a pitcher has fared on the mound. What we are interested in here are not statistics that represent past performance, but others that are better indicators of how a pitcher will fare in the future.
In this article, we'll look at strikeouts per nine innings (K/9), strikeouts-to-walk ratio (K/BB), ground ball-to-fly ball ratio (G/F), and perhaps most important to the understanding of why the rest of these are important, batting average on balls in play (BABIP). We'll start there.
There is conclusive evidence that generally, pitchers do not have much control over whether balls hit into play turn into hits or outs. Therefore, BABIP (calculated by (H-HR)/(AB-K-HR+SF)) is a statistic that is influenced primarily by how lucky a pitcher has been, and how well his defense has played behind him, rather than the pitcher's own ability.
A good estimate of a league-average BABIP is about .290. Gavin Floyd's current BABIP? It's .144. That is an insanely low number for this statistic. In fact, it's the lowest total of any starter in baseball by a full 40 points (in front of Erik Bedard's .184). This suggests that Floyd has been incredibly lucky with regard to where baseballs land off of opposing hitters' bats. There's pretty much no way that something like this can be sustained over a full season.
So, you may ask, what can a pitcher do to be effective if he is so helpless to have any control over balls hit into play? There's four things, actually. Pitchers can strike out a lot of hitters, not allow many walks, not allow many home runs, or induce lots of ground balls (which are far less harmful than fly balls, as 11 percent of those are homers).
First, we examine strikeouts per nine innings. Currently, Gavin Floyd is at 4.31, which is very sub-par. That's even lower than what's typical of Mark Buehrle and Jon Garland, who are two low-strikeout guys that thrive on their ability to induce grounders (more on that later).
Here are the guys who finished close to that mark last year: Chad Durbin, Matt Morris, Braden Looper, Ramon Ortiz, Jon Garland, Brian Bannister, Odalis Perez, and the late Joe Kennedy. You'll notice a stunning lack of ace-like pitchers in this crew, and a few of them (Durbin, Ortiz) are flat out bad.
Next, we look at strikeout-to-walk-ratio. Right now, Floyd's is almost dead even, at 19/18 = 1.06. That is very dangerous territory for a pitcher to be in.
5 comments Last one added about 1 year ago — Leave a Comment
JJ Stankevitz about 1 year ago
I agree that Floyd can't keep pitching this well, but I also don't see him having a massive dropoff. It seems that Coop has told him to pitch to contact, and that's exactly what he's doing. Plenty of pitchers have been successful with low K/9 rates (look no further than Mark Buehrle) and I don't think BABIP tells the whole story about a pitcher. Yes, that number is ridiculously low, but he's not getting hit all that hard. A lot of the outs he gets are on routine fly balls or soft line drives, not rockets that a defense will have trouble getting to most of the time.
His K/BB ratio is certainly worrisome, though, as someone who pitches to contact. If he's walking that many hitters and only one of those balls drops in, it'll lead to runs being scored. The best contact pitchers are the ones who don't walk many—like Buehrle for the last few years—and if Floyd wants to keep pitching this well, eventually he's going to have to lower his walk rate.
I could still easily see him finishing the year with 12-14 wins and an ERA hovering around 4.00, though. And, you know what? Out of the fifth starter spot, that's pretty good.
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Chris Pennant about 1 year ago
I really think you're burying too much into figures and computer stats, man. Gavin Floyd was a high first-round pick for a reason: he has the makings of a good pitcher. What I've seen from him this year is good stuff(good off-speed and breaking pitches), a willingness to attack the hitter(he's been throwing inside and working both sides of the zone), and confidence. I know he was bad last year, so that's why I want to say that he's coming into his own.
Aside from that, this is, as they like to say, a game of inches. While mathematics can make predictions and simulate likely outcomes, it can't play the game for you. Tell me what set of statistics would have predicted that Fernando Tatis would hit two grand slams in the same inning, or that Tadahito Iguchi would have done what he did to Houston in 2006. Back-to-back innings, late in the game, and singlehandedly tie the game with two crooken-number home runs?
Don't lean on the statistics so much. Trust what you see rather than what the calculator says.
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Patrick Nolan about 1 year ago
Chris - There's no question that Gavin Floyd's stuff and strategy has looked good. I mean, any pitcher who's getting outs with efficiency will look good, but you're right, Floyd has a plan of attack that he's been following well.
However, you are certainly misguided on exactly what type of performance statistics are used to predict. Statistics are useful for projecting performance over a large sample size. No, of course statistics can't predict Fernando Tatis hitting 2 grand slams in an inning. That's just variance. No method on the planet could have been used to predict that. Even if you watched Fernando Tatis take great swings in batting practice, can you honestly say there's a chance you would have seen it coming? The same thing can be said for Iguchi. You're talking about a sample size of TWO at-bats. Statistics can, (and did) however predict that despite hitting 2 grand slams in an inning, Fernando Tatis does not have the makings of a good baseball player. Where is he now? Slumming in the minors. You're taking things that statistics were never meant to predict and saying, "Well, statistics didn't see these crazy events coming, so they must not be useful!"
So lets bring this back to Gavin Floyd. I'm telling you that over a sample size of a full season, it's very, VERY unlikely that Floyd, with his current K/9, K/BB, and GB/FB ratios, will have a successful season. I'm not trying to predict the results of one pitch, one inning, or even a game, because that is impossible. There's too many factors involved. But over a full season, things like luck and weird anomalies like a .144 BABIP tend to even out. And unless Floyd starts missing bats, walking less guys, or getting the ball on the ground, he's going to start bleeding runs very soon.
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Chris Pennant about 1 year ago
Well, according to today's game at least, I stand corrected. I've got to admit: that crow doesn't taste good at all. Just about as you predicted: he walked too many today, and he was leaving the ball up in the zone too much. A lot of those fly-ball outs looked like they should have left the building. Hope it's just this one start for right now.
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Wally Wojciechowski about 1 year ago
This is just an excellent article that was well researched and laid out with peers on each stat level.
I too am ready for the other shoe to drop on Floyd as I believe in BABIP as an indicator. This is not to say he will be a complete bust, but is a mid 4 ERA out of the question? I dont think so. When it gets warm at the cell those flyballs are going to catch up with him.
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