What kinds of starting pitchers do the Jays have? And how does it affect their handling of the left field and shortstop positions?
Like Magpie said a couple days ago, most of the Jays' 2008 lineup is locked in.
Seven guys - Thomas, Overbay, Hill, Rolen, Rios, Wells and Zaun - are
going to be near-everyday players. Five of those guys are good fielders. One is a Respected Veteran catcher, and one is a DH.
And there will probably be two positions where playing time is split: left
field, between Reed Johnson and Matt Stairs, and shortstop, between David Eckstein and John McDonald.
When should each of those guys start? That depends on a number of things...
In a platoon situation, the other team's starting pitcher is usually the biggest factor in deciding who starts. And how good you think the players in question are relative to each other will play a role too. But that's not the end of the story. With the '08 Jays, each platoon also contains one player who's a much better fielder than the other. So the Jays' starting pitcher matters too. With a flyball pitcher on the mound, you might be inclined to start Reed in left field, even against a righty; with a pitcher who gets a lot of ground balls, John McDonald's platinum glove looks a bit shinier.
That last thing is what I'm looking at here. I want to put solid numbers on our intuition about what kinds of pitchers the Jays have, relative to each other.
Particularly, in terms of four 'true' outcomes: strikeouts, walks, groundballs, and other stuff.
To do this, I took each pitcher's major-league stats from 2005 to 2007. I also made the following adjustments:
- Intentional walks don't count;
- Bunts don't count. Unfortunately, this leaves out bunts for hits, but I'd rather do that than reward someone who gets tons of telegraphed sac bunts. I called the resulting total batters faced "Real Batters Faced." Because if the pitcher or batter or both weren't trying, who cares?
- HBPs count as walks;
- Last year's stats were given double weight.
Those adjustments probably had no effect, but they help me sleep at night.
I only looked at pitchers who (a) might plausibly start for the team this year and (b) have a reasonable amount of major-league experience so their stats aren't meaningless. That meant Halladay, Burnett, McGowan, Marcum, Janssen, Chacin and Litsch.
Here is what the starters do:
Strikeout rate
1. A.J. Burnett, 23.8%
2. Dustin McGowan, 19.8%
3. Shaun Marcum, 18.7%
4. Roy Halladay, 16.0%
5. Gustavo Chacin, 13.0%
6. Casey Janssen, 12.4%
7. Jesse Litsch, 10.7%
No surprises here.
Walk rate
1. Halladay, 4.7%
2. Janssen, 6.8%
3. Litsch, 8.8%
4. Marcum, 8.9%
5. Chacin, 9.1%
6. McGowan, 9.7%
7. Burnett, 10.0%
Or here.
Groundball rate (per batter!)
- not per ball in play like usual
1. Halladay, 43.7%
2. Janssen, 40.7% !!
3. Litsch, 38.8%
4. Burnett, 36.4%
5. McGowan, 36.2%
6. Chacin, 29.6%
7. Marcum, 28.5%
This is pretty interesting. Roy Halladay being the biggest beneficiary of infield defense should come as no surprise. But I don't think many people would guess that Janssen actually induces more groundballs per batter than Burnett and McGowan and even Litsch. Yet that's the case because even though he's a bit less of a groundball pitcher, Janssen is more aggressive and puts more balls in play. Chacin and Marcum bringing up the rear, on the other hand, is not a surprise. David Eckstein should always start behind those guys.
If Doc and Marcum both face exactly 850 hitters (unlikely, Doc should face more than Marcum) and those groundball rates are accurate-ish, Doc will induce about 129 more groundballs than Marcum. Defense counts!
Bonus non-sequitur! The more I think about it, the more I see Janssen as Doc lite. He throws a lot of different pitches, including a variety of fastballs, and bombards the strike zone. I would avoid pitching those two back-to-back if I could help it. If Litsch cracks the rotation, I'm fine with having him go before or after Doc, since he's more of a trick pitcher. Nobody throws anything quite like Jesse Litsch's sinker. I wouldn't be surprised to see him overtake Janssen in the groundball department in 2008.
FB + LD - IFFB - HR rate (per batter!)
That's a mouthful. It's my way of saying "non-infield-popup, non-homer balls in the air." Or "balls in the air where defense matters." And "HR" is homers assuming the given flyball rate and 11% of all flyballs being homers. I made that adjustment because many of the samples are pretty small.
1. Burnett, 26.1%
2. McGowan, 30.6%
3. Halladay, 31.0%
4. Janssen, 35.1%
5. Litsch, 36.8%
6. Marcum, 37.5%
7. Chacin, 42.1%
Because A.J. can hang with Doc in groundballishness and keeps the ball out of play way more, he beats the crap out of him in the flyball-avoidance department. So outfield defense can be sacrificed behind him with relatively little loss. McGowan and Halladay are significantly behind A.J., but it's much less damaging to play Matt Stairs behind them than it is to inflict him on Chacin.
What's the moral of the story?
Your call. Your opinion of how much McDonald, Eckstein, Johnson and Stairs should play is colored by how much you like each of them. Maybe you hate one of them enough to want to relegate that guy to full-time benchwarming duty. There might be a solid case for doing that. But if you're like me and you think they should all start a reasonable amount, it's important to make sure that they play when it makes the most sense for them to play.
Unless you favor an extreme solution, I think it's hard to disagree with these basic rules:
Reed Johnson starts:
- Against all LHPs. (In other news, I think it's generally a bad idea to skip Doc's turn in the rotation, and Johnny Mac shouldn't pinch-hit much)
- Most of his starts vs RHPs behind Marcum and Chacin, not Doc and McGowan.
Matt Stairs starts:
- Against all RHPs when Burnett starts, and most when McGowan or Doc starts
David Eckstein starts:
- 100% of Marcum and Chacin starts
John McDonald:
- Assuming he's going to start about 25-30% of the time, ideally, he would start twice behind Halladay and once behind Janssen(!!) every 10 games.
- I also think it makes sense to start him when the starting pitcher is in a control slump and could use a little extra confidence in his defense.
The space between the obvious cases is subjective. It's why we watch.
If I had more time... Groundball, K and BB rates are fairly solid stats that don't tend to swing wildly from year to year as a result of luck, but this is still a pretty simplistic exercise. If I had more time, I'd go through Retrosheet or Gameday or somesuch
and figure out if any of the starters tend to give up balls in
particular directions, too. Unfortunately, I don't have that kind of energy. Maybe someday.
If you only take four things away from this exercise in belaboring the obvious, make them:
1. That Casey Janssen benefits from infield defense more than you think, but not quite as much as Doc does
2. That A.J. Burnett's starts are outfielders' holidays
3. That if, perish the thought, John McDonald ever starts behind Shaun Marcum, it is your civic duty to groan hysterically
4. That the Jays have a diverse group of starters who each place a unique set of demands on their defense, and it should affect their day-to-day management.
And...
Bonus! Data Tables
RBF: Real Batters faced
eHR%: Percent of Real Batters that homer. I gave every pitcher an 11% HR/Fly rate, which may be unfair to some pitchers. Except I have no idea who they'd be. If Josh Towers were still here I might nudge his upward a little bit. But he's not, so no ethical dilemma.
eAir%: Percent of Real Batters that will hit a ball in the air that isn't a homer or an infield fly, given the aforementioned 11% HR/Fly. In my reality, that's 89% of flyballs and 100% of line drives.
Note: Infield flies are separate from flyballs.
BIP%: Percent of Real Batters that put the ball in play. 100 - K% - BB% - eHR%.
| Roy Halladay | RBF | K | UIBB | GB | IFFB | FB | LD | K% | BB% | IFFB% | eHR% | eAir% | GB% | BIP% |
| 2005 | 546 | 108 | 23 | 252 | 5 | 84 | 73 | 19.8 | 4.2 | 0.9 | 1.7 | 27.1 | 46.2 | 74.1 |
| 2006 | 855 | 132 | 34 | 395 | 21 | 131 | 142 | 15.4 | 4.0 | 2.5 | 1.7 | 30.2 | 46.2 | 78.9 |
| 2007 | 920 | 139 | 48 | 385 | 19 | 191 | 130 | 15.1 | 5.2 | 2.1 | 2.3 | 32.6 | 41.8 | 76.5 |
| 2008 | 810 | 130 | 38 | 354 | 16 | 149 | 119 | 16.0 | 4.7 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 31.0 | 43.7 | 76.7 |
| A.J. Burnett | RBF | K | UIBB | GB | IFFB | FB | LD | K% | BB% | IFFB% | eHR% | eAir% | GB% | BIP% |
| 2005 | 858 | 198 | 85 | 336 | 10 | 118 | 111 | 23.1 | 9.9 | 1.2 | 1.5 | 25.2 | 39.2 | 65.5 |
| 2006 | 568 | 118 | 44 | 205 | 14 | 105 | 82 | 20.8 | 7.7 | 2.5 | 2.0 | 30.9 | 36.1 | 69.4 |
| 2007 | 688 | 176 | 76 | 239 | 15 | 115 | 67 | 25.6 | 11.0 | 2.2 | 1.8 | 24.6 | 34.7 | 61.5 |
| 2008 | 701 | 167 | 70 | 255 | 14 | 113 | 82 | 23.8 | 10.0 | 1.9 | 1.8 | 26.1 | 36.4 | 64.4 |
| Dustin McGowan | RBF | K | UIBB | GB | IFFB | FB | LD | K% | BB% | IFFB% | eHR% | eAir% | GB% | BIP% |
| 2005 | 203 | 34 | 24 | 65 | 3 | 49 | 28 | 16.7 | 11.8 | 1.5 | 2.7 | 35.3 | 32.0 | 68.8 |
| 2006 | 140 | 22 | 25 | 40 | 2 | 27 | 24 | 15.7 | 17.9 | 1.4 | 2.1 | 34.3 | 28.6 | 64.3 |
| 2007 | 698 | 144 | 60 | 262 | 10 | 143 | 79 | 20.6 | 8.6 | 1.4 | 2.3 | 29.6 | 37.5 | 68.5 |
| 2008 | 435 | 86 | 42 | 157 | 6 | 91 | 53 | 19.8 | 9.7 | 1.4 | 2.3 | 30.6 | 36.2 | 68.2 |
| Shaun Marcum | RBF | K | UIBB | GB | IFFB | FB | LD | K% | BB% | IFFB% | eHR% | eAir% | GB% | BIP% |
| 2005 | 32 | 4 | 4 | 11 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 12.5 | 12.5 | 6.3 | 2.1 | 32.3 | 34.4 | 72.9 |
| 2006 | 352 | 65 | 39 | 89 | 11 | 104 | 44 | 18.5 | 11.1 | 3.1 | 3.3 | 38.8 | 25.3 | 67.2 |
| 2007 | 644 | 122 | 53 | 188 | 21 | 176 | 83 | 18.9 | 8.2 | 3.3 | 3.0 | 37.2 | 29.2 | 69.7 |
| 2008 | 418 | 78 | 37 | 119 | 14 | 116 | 54 | 18.7 | 8.9 | 3.3 | 3.0 | 37.5 | 28.5 | 69.2 |
| Casey Janssen | RBF | K | UIBB | GB | IFFB | FB | LD | K% | BB% | IFFB% | eHR% | eAir% | GB% | BIP% |
| 2006 | 396 | 44 | 25 | 172 | 12 | 90 | 52 | 11.1 | 6.3 | 3.0 | 2.5 | 33.4 | 43.4 | 79.8 |
| 2007 | 293 | 39 | 21 | 114 | 5 | 71 | 43 | 13.3 | 7.2 | 1.7 | 2.7 | 36.2 | 38.9 | 76.9 |
| 2008 | 327 | 41 | 22 | 133 | 7 | 77 | 46 | 12.4 | 6.8 | 2.2 | 2.6 | 35.1 | 40.7 | 78.1 |
| Jesse Litsch | RBF | K | UIBB | GB | IFFB | FB | LD | K% | BB% | IFFB% | eHR% | eAir% | GB% | BIP% |
| 2007 | 467 | 50 | 41 | 181 | 10 | 119 | 66 | 10.7 | 8.8 | 2.1 | 2.8 | 36.8 | 38.8 | 77.7 |
| 2008 | 467 | 50 | 41 | 181 | 10 | 119 | 66 | 10.7 | 8.8 | 2.1 | 2.8 | 36.8 | 38.8 | 77.7 |
| Gustavo Chacin | RBF | K | UIBB | GB | IFFB | FB | LD | K% | BB% | IFFB% | eHR% | eAir% | GB% | BIP% |
| 2005 | 853 | 121 | 75 | 255 | 28 | 218 | 155 | 14.2 | 8.8 | 3.3 | 2.8 | 40.9 | 29.9 | 74.1 |
| 2006 | 372 | 47 | 42 | 99 | 12 | 112 | 60 | 12.6 | 11.3 | 3.2 | 3.3 | 42.9 | 26.6 | 72.8 |
| 2007 | 117 | 11 | 8 | 39 | 2 | 38 | 19 | 9.4 | 6.8 | 1.7 | 3.6 | 45.1 | 33.3 | 80.2 |
| 2008 | 365 | 48 | 33 | 108 | 11 | 102 | 63 | 13.0 | 9.1 | 3.0 | 3.1 | 42.1 | 29.6 | 74.7 |
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20080119040018575