Mission 2012: How Do the Royals Pitchers Stack Up?

An interesting idea was proposed to me recently (via @grogg on twitter): how does the front end of the projected Royals 2012 rotation, compare with the playoff teams front end starters from 2011?  Well, there is a lot that goes in to this question. 

First, it will have to be determined who the front end starters for the Royals are.  That, in and of itself, is pretty much the issue, but I digress.  Right now, most will agree that the locks for the rotation are Luke Hochevar, Jonathan Sanchez, and Bruce Chen.  Felipe Paulino and Danny Duffy are the leaders in the clubhouse for the other two spots but Mike Montgomery, Aaron Crow, and possibly Everett Teaford and Luis Mendoza will also factor in.  If Montgomery or Crow show they’re ready for the rotation the Royals will not hesitate to move Duffy or Paulino to the pen or down to the minors.

That said, I think the front end of the rotation has Hochevar and Sanchez and locks and that 3^rd front end spot will probably go to Chen but if Paulino pitches as he did last year it’s possible he could snatch up that spot.  In order to move forward with this exercise we will have to determine who gets that #3 slot. 

In 2011, Bruce Chen had, by all accounts, a pretty good year.  With a 3.77 ERA, and a 12-8 record Chen was the best pitcher on staff, statistically.  That is assuming you are just looking at the “surface level” stats.  While I don’t ever purport to be a SABRMetrics expert or a snob, at this point I think we can all agree that peripheral numbers are just as important as ERA.  Looking at those, the case for Chen begins to dissipate. 

Even with the solid 12-8 record, Chen recorded his lowest K/9 rate of his career at 5.63.  This is over a strikeout per nine innings less than his career average.  Now, this also goes hand in hand with nearly the lowest walk rate of his career at 2.90 BB/9.  This is a half a walk less than his career average, which puts him right about his career marks for K/BB ratio (1.94).  When you dig a little deeper is where it get’s troublesome. 

Chen put up a well below average 34.6% groundball rate.  As an extreme flyball pitcher it’s no wonder that Chen has fared well in Kauffman stadium.  With his second consecutive year of 8.1% homerun to flyball ratio, Chen has appeared to have been able to keep those non-groundballs in the ballpark.  His home/away HR/FB splits of 7.8%/8.4% would lend credence to him being helped quite a bit by the friendly confines of Kauffman. 

What’s further disconcerting about Chen is his xFIP of 4.68.  Basically, if the Royals defense wasn’t as good as it was, then he probably wouldn’t have had as good of a season.  Making matters worse is the .278 BABIP that Chen allowed.  The league average BABIP for pitchers is right around .300 so to expect Chen to continue with this number is slightly illogical.  Yet, Chen appears to be a slightly illogical pitcher.  A .278 BABIP is actually higher than his 2010 number and only .001 points below his career average.  Perhaps Chen is a freak of a pitcher when it comes to BABIP.  Stranger things have happened in major league baseball.

Over his career, Chen has been a bit of an enigma.  He’s had 5 seasons in which he’s pitched over 130 innings.  In those five seasons he has had 3 sub 4.00 ERA seasons, including a season of 3.83 ERA over 194 innings.  The other two seasons included ERA’s of 4.83 and 4.17 as well, so even if it’s above 4 it’s not the 5.59 career mark of Kyle Davies or even close to Davies’ worst seasons as a starter.  While his numbers may seem unsustainable, it could just be the magic of Bruce Chen.

But what about Felipe Paulino?  We don’t know much about Paulino and I don’t think that anybody does really.  The Rockies gave up on him after a horrific run of 18 games with a 7.36 ERA.  For those 18 games, Paulino was pitching as a reliever in a well known hitters park.  In contrast to his ridiculous ERA numbers was Paulino’s xFIP which sat 3.58 during his time in Colorado.  He also put up a 8.59 K/9 ratio.  By most standards this is a borderline elite number.  Any time you can get nearly a strikeout per inning, you’re doing something right.  His walk numbers were at 4.30 which is high, but those numbers put him right where Jonathan Sanchez was last year, if not better.  His issue was his ridiculously high 1.84 HR/FB ratio.  Paulino was clearly not a pitcher cutout for the confines of Coors Field.

All of his numbers got better when he came to Kauffman.  He only put up a 4-6 record with the Royals, but his numbers were much better than his record would show.  Paulino maintained the solid 8.59 K/9 ratio, and improved his BB/9 ratio to 3.47.  That’s nearly a whole walk per game improvement and all whilst throwing more innings.  This is a 2.47 K/BB ratio.  Let’s also keep in mind that everyone was excited about Jonathan Sanchez who had a 1.54 K/BB ratio last year and a 1.95 K/BB for his career.

 

Point is, while few were talking about Paulino last year, it should have been more.  His 4.11 ERA was good enough for a Royals pitcher but his 3.74 xFIP with the team was even better.  Playing in the pitcher friendly confines of Kauffman he only netted a 7.9% HR/FB ratio.  Somewhere buried in all these stats is a solid #3 pitcher on a contending team ready to break out.  Paulino has never pitched more than 139 innings in a season (and that was 2011), has been jerked back and forth between the bullpen and being a starter, and has never gone into a season being told “you’re the guy, you’re a starting pitcher, now start pitching.”  

It’s reasonable to assume that given a situation where he would go into 2012 as a starter he could pitch in that 150-200 inning range and put up 2011 Chen like numbers with the peripherals to back it up.  The conclusion of all of this is that I’m going to pencil in Paulino as the #3 starter, hoping and praying the Royals are smart enough to realize that he should be starting.  They may feel obligated to Chen to give him that spot based on the contract they gave him ($9M over 2 years plus incentives), but if the Royals are serious about winning then contracts shouldn’t matter.  Chen will pitch regardless, it just may be the difference between a #3 and #4, which shouldn’t matter.

Ok?  Ok.  We’re all in agreement here, our 1-3 pitchers are (most likely starting in this order) 1) Luke Hochevar, 2) Jonathan Sanchez, and 3) Felipe Paulino.  The whole point of this exercise is trying to figure out if the Royals have the pitching to contend in 2012.  In order to make a determination on this, we will compare the 2011 seasons of our starting 3 with the starting 3 of some of the playoff teams from the same year.  Let’s get one thing out of the way, there is no reason to compare the Royals to the Phillies because the Phillies have an all-time great rotation, let alone one that we would expect to compete with.  Instead of wasting time and words on that futile effort, we’re just going to go ahead and take them out of it.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite: Luke Hochevar.  Hochevar is a model of inconsistency.  He has annoyed fans with his propensity to show flashes of greatness followed by horrific blowups in the face of adversity.  This looked to be the make or break year for Hoch.  He was either going to prove he was worth the #1 pick or bust.  Unfortunately, for the Royals he did just enough for us to think “well…maybe…” but not enough to be fully convinced.

After the All-Star break Hochevar really turned it on putting up a 3.55 ERA and a 6-3 record.  Not only did he give his dominating stretches we’d all seen before, but he maintained a level of consistency we hadn’t seen before.  There weren’t any 5 run blowup innings like in the past, he had a few below average outings, but he looked much stronger than he ever had before.  In his last 20 innings pitched he maintained a 2.18 ERA with a 0.99 WHIP and an elite level K/BB mark of 3.33.  If he can replicate that over the next year he will win a Cy Young hands down.  If he can be 85% of that, nobody will question him as the #1 pitcher of this staff.

Unfortunately, with Hochevar we will have to look at his body of work.  While the former #1 overall pick had his best year as a pro in 2011, it still wasn’t that great.  He finished the year with a 4.68 ERA, 11-11 record, and an xFIP of 4.05.  His K/9 was a Bruce Chen like 5.82 but his BB/9 was also a solid 2.82.  This amounts to a slightly above 2.0 K/BB ratio, which is good enough for this staff.  Where Hochevar gets in trouble is the homerun bug.  He had a 1.05 HR/9 ratio which equated to a 11.5% HR/FB ratio.  Playing in Kansas City that is an impressive number; especially when you look at his splits to see home/away numbers of 7.5%/17.5%.  Those numbers are disastrous on the road.

So how does Hoch compare to the top pitchers in the league?  Greg Layton (@grogg on twitter) was kind enough to do the leg work for me on this.  For 2011 the average #1 starter (based on the top 9 pitchers from teams that made the playoffs last year) had a line with an ERA of 2.72, and an average K/BB ratio of 4.19.^ The average WHIP is 1.060 and an xFIP of 3.14.  Quality starts are debatable how much those stats actually matter, but the top 10 pitchers from the playoffs last year had a quality start 74% of the time.

^To show again how good the Phillies were, they had 3 pitchers that ranked in the top 4 of all playoff starters, which is what those numbers were based on.

Matter of fact, of the top 3 projected starters for 2012 (that I mentioned above), Paulino’s 2011 stats are the closest to a #1 starter, and they’re not even near to that level.  It’s no surprise that the Royals don’t have an ACE that can match up to those stats, but needs to be said all the same.  Now, let’s put it out there how our projected 1-3 starters matchup to the average 1-3 starters from playoff teams last year.^

^Again this is based on rankings, so the average #1 starter is the average of the top 9 pitchers from playoff teams last year not all the #1 pitchers from each team, average #2 is for pitchers 11-19, and average #3 is for pitchers 19-27, so there may be some #1’s who contributed to the #3 numbers, but the standards bear out for who should be included in each category.

Below are the top 27 pitchers from the playoffs in the previous year:

	NAME	TEAM	QS%	ERA	xFIP	WHIP	ERA+	K/BB	BR WAR	Rank
Tier 1	Roy Halladay	Philadelphia Phillies	78%	2.35	2.71	1.040	164	6.29	7.4	1
	Justin Verlander	Detroit Tigers	82%	2.40	3.12	0.920	170	4.39	8.6	2
	Cliff Lee	Philadelphia Phillies	78%	2.40	2.68	1.027	161	5.67	6.9	3
	Cole Hamels	Philadelphia Phillies	77%	2.79	3.02	0.986	138	4.41	5.4	4
	CC Sabathia	New York Yankees	67%	3.00	3.02	1.226	147	3.77	6.9	5
	James Shields	Tampa Bay Rays	76%	2.82	3.25	1.043	132	3.46	6.1	5
	Ian Kennedy	Arizona Diamondbacks	73%	2.88	3.50	1.086	137	3.60	5.5	7
	Josh Beckett	Boston Red Sox	67%	2.89	3.58	1.026	147	3.37	6.2	8
	CJ Wilson	Texas Rangers	68%	2.94	3.41	1.187	152	2.78	5.0	9
	NAME	TEAM	QS%	ERA	xFIP	WHIP	ERA+	K/BB	BR WAR	Rank
Tier 2	David Price	Tampa Bay Rays	62%	3.49	3.32	1.137	107	3.46	3.7	10
	Chris Carpenter	St. Louis Cardinals	62%	3.45	3.31	1.256	105	3.47	3.7	11
	Yovani Gallardo	Milwaukee Brewers	70%	3.52	3.19	1.215	111	3.51	2.7	12
	Zack Greinke	Milwaukee Brewers	64%	3.83	2.56	1.200	102	4.47	1.7	13
	Daniel Hudson	Arizona Diamondbacks	64%	3.49	3.79	1.203	113	3.38	2.6	14
	Jon Lester	Boston Red Sox	61%	3.47	3.62	1.257	122	2.43	4.8	15
	Jeremy Hellickson	Tampa Bay Rays	69%	2.95	4.72	1.153	126	1.63	4.2	16
	Shaun Marcum	Milwaukee Brewers	61%	3.54	3.89	1.156	110	2.77	3.3	17
	Kyle Lohse	St. Louis Cardinals	53%	3.39	4.04	1.168	107	2.64	2.6	18
	NAME	TEAM	QS%	ERA	xFIP	WHIP	ERA+	K/BB	BR WAR	Rank
Tier 3	Jaime Garcia	St. Louis Cardinals	56%	3.56	3.31	1.320	102	3.12	0.9	19
	Derek Holland	Texas Rangers	59%	3.95	3.76	1.354	113	2.42	2.7	20
	Ivan Nova	New York Yankees	59%	3.70	4.16	1.331	119	1.72	3.6	21
	Max Scherzer	Detroit Tigers	48%	4.43	3.70	1.349	92	3.11	2.4	22
	Colby Lewis	Texas Rangers	59%	4.40	4.10	1.213	101	3.02	2.1	22
	Joe Saunders	Arizona Diamondbacks	61%	3.69	4.38	1.307	107	1.61	2.4	24
	Rick Porcello	Detroit Tigers	61%	4.75	4.02	1.407	86	2.26	1.0	25
	AJ Burnett	New York Yankees	31%	5.15	3.86	1.434	86	2.08	1.1	26
	John Lackey	Boston Red Sox	32%	6.41	4.70	1.619	66	1.93	-1.2	27

What follows here is how our projected 1-3 starters matches up against the averages from those three groups:

	QS%	ERA	xFIP	WHIP	ERA+	K/BB	BR WAR
Average #1 Starter	74%	2.72	3.14	1.06	149.78	4.19	6.44
Luke Hochevar	52%	4.68	4.05	1.28	87.00	2.06	1.70
	QS%	ERA	xFIP	WHIP	ERA+	K/BB	BR WAR
Average #2 Starter	63%	3.46	3.60	1.19	111.44	3.08	3.26
Jonathan Sanchez	37%	4.26	4.36	1.44	84.00	1.55	0.10
	QS%	ERA	xFIP	WHIP	ERA+	K/BB	BR WAR
Average #3 Starter	52%	4.45	4.00	1.37	96.89	2.36	1.67
Felipe Paulino	45%	4.11	3.73	1.37	100.00	2.48	1.90

This tells us something we already really know, and it’s more of the same to most Royals fans.  That said it’s still an interesting analysis.  Felipe Paulino and Luke Hochevar have both hit that 3^rd tierjust about right on the nose.  Now, when you look at Hochevar after the All-Star break, his numbers fit more in line with the average #2 starter. 

Looking through these statistics it is apparent that the Royals give up far too many walks.  Such a truth is what got long time pitching coach Bob McClure fired at season’s end.  Perhaps Dave Eiland can work wonders with this staff in that regard.  If he can cut Sanchez’s walk numbers down by 2 BB/9, and maybe 0.8-1 BB/9 improvement for both Paulino and Hochevar, he would be in line for assistant coach of the year.

This also shows us that at their peak performance, both Paulino and Hochevar were #2-#3 level starters.  Everyone knows this fan base has been clamoring for an ACE on this staff, but bear in mind that the St. Louis Cardinals won the world series and didn’t have a single pitcher who ranked in the top tier last year, while the Phillies had three and didn’t even make it to the NLCS.

Point is, this team can not only compete, but win, without that lock down ACE that everyone craves.  While a true ACE can make the difference, it is a luxury more than a necessity to a championship team.  Having solid pitching from 1-3 could possibly be more valuable than just a top level ACE (the Tigers prove that theory correct, and yet the Phillies debunk it, its baseball after all, nothing is absolute).  Like a shut down closer, depth is more important than that top line guy.  At most an ACE can pitch 3 games and if you can’t win another one, then you’re SOL for a championship. 

If Luke Hochevar keeps his second half momentum going through next year, he could jump to that Tier 2 level starter.  If Paulino has a full season with peripherals like last year, he will be in that Tier 2-Tier 3 range.  If Jonathan Sanchez goes back to his 2010 form, he could also reach that Tier 2-Tier 3 level.  If Chen pitches as he has the last two years he is solidly entrenched in the Tier 3 level.  With the Royals missing an ACE, having four pitchers that could be 2-3 level starters basically ensures them of being competitive.  With this weak division, it could mean a division championship.  This is all without factoring in any improvement from Danny Duffy or a comeback year from Mike Montgomery.

There were a lot of “if’s” in the previous paragraph.  This was, of course, intentional.  The Royals will be much improved in 2012, but there is still a lot we don’t know about this team.  If things go the Royals we could be looking at a division championship.  If they go the other way, it could be another 75 win season.

While the information provided here (again, hat tip to Greg) seemingly would go to show that the Royals are far away, it’s a little more encouraging than that.  With this information we see that Justin Verlander is not a necessity to win a championship.  We also can see that having a solid rotation with no weak spots might even be more valuable.  This does not show us that the Royals have such a thing, but it does show that they’re close than perception.

Like anybody else, I’m not sure what’s in store for the Royals in 2012.  Also, like everyone else I know that a lot of it will depend on the pitching.  The pursuit of the mythical ACE though, might not be as important as everyone tries to believe.  The Royals can compete with who they have now.  It will take a lot of “ifs” but if they fall for the Royals, it could lead to a division crown.  I also think that like everybody else, I’m hoping the Royals will be part of setting this bar next year, instead of just being compared to it.