Rounding Third: Exit, Stage Left!

When Kyle Hendricks signed his four-year, $63 million extension with the Cubs this week, a lot was justifiably made of his ability to induce weak contact. After all, Hendricks has consistently produced good ratios despite an 86.9 mph average fastball and a career 21.7 K%, a rate that fell to 19.8 percent last season. But the last four seasons, the average exit velocity off the bat from his pitches was 85.6 mph, compared to a league average of 87.4 mph. In the four years of data that we have from Baseball Savant, his exit velocity against has been between 83.9 mph and 87.1 mph – below the league average each season.

I thought that this would be a good launching point (sorry, unintentional yet really bad pun) for digging into the Statcast data for pitchers to see what else we can learn about those inducing weak contact. I'll look into the Leaderboards at Baseball Savant to do so. Its default lists set the number of batted ball events (BBE) at 150, which brings in all sorts of relievers in play. Because I'm trying to explore more with starting pitchers, I'm going to limit my scope to 300 BBE, which allows for the likes of Chris Sale and other starters that missed some time to be included. Overall there's a list of 139 pitchers who make the list.

There's also a lot of measures you can use to determine the quality of contact allowed by these pitchers. We'll list a few here, along with positive and negative standouts. I'm hoping to see if there's a pitcher or three whose quality of contact allowed doesn't match up with his output stats (mostly ERA and WHIP), or to see if there's someone we're overlooking.

(Unless noted otherwise, all batted ball data cited is from Baseball Savant's Leaderboards.)

Pitcher Exit Velocity

When we discuss a pitcher's ability to induce weak contact, this is a great measure of that ability. It's especially important for a pitcher to have that skill if they don't have a great strikeout percentage - obviously if there are more balls in play, it behoves a pitcher to not give up a steady stream of rockets. Of the 139 pitchers in this sample, the range of average exit velocities is 83.7 mph (Anibal Sanchez and Brent Suter) and 90.2 mph (Matt Moore).

Here are the top-25 pitchers in exit velocity, with a few comments after the table.

It's not a surprise to see some of the elite starting pitchers in the game on the list. When you can simultaneously miss a lot of bats and induce weak contact when they do happen to make contact, that's the sweet, sweet spot. Of course, we're not trying to reinforce that the elite are the elite. Who else stands out?

Anibal Sanchez improved across the board in 2018. His K% jumped from 21.6 to 24.4, the exit velocity dropped from 87.5 to 83.7, and the hard hit percentage dropped from 37.1 to 25.8. Sanchez started throwing his cutter far more often last season, at the expense of his sinker and slider. He also increased the frequency of his killer changeup, albeit still just to 5.7 percent of the time.

Kyle Hendricks, Miles Mikolas and Kyle Freeland get grouped together here – all had fine seasons but had lower strikeout rates, and their ability to induce weaker contact is a good explanation for their success.

Trevor Williams had the most under appreciated breakout season I've seen this side of Kevin Ritz. The Pirates' righty had a 3.11 ERA and 1.18 WHIP, but because he had a 18.0 K%, in line with his career norms, nobody believed in him this draft season. His NFBC Main Event ADP was 329.79, making him the fourth-most popular pitching "Trevor" in this year's draft pool (Bauer/May/Richards). Steamer projects him for a 4.71 ERA, The Bat is little less pessimistic at 4.20 and most other projection systems have him over 4.00. Williams got by last season by keeping his walks down and inducing weak contact. With a fastball that barely cracks 90.5 mph, it may prove very difficult to repeat that outcome again.

*However* … Williams' 2018 exit velocity of 85.6 mph was actually higher than it was in the crazy 2017 offensive season, when it was 85.0 mph. Like any other measure that we delve into, it's just a small part of the picture, but I think here it might be revealing a skill he possesses. I've heard a lot of discussion regarding Gerrit Cole and Tyler Glasnow and their time with the Pirates, specifically about how pitching coach Ray Searage wanted them to work lower in the zone and induce more weak contact at the expense of missing bats up in the zone. Once they moved elsewhere, their strikeout rates took off along with their overall numbers. My theory is that with Williams, his skill set actually matches Searage's philosophy better, helping explain some of his results.

Maybe it's possible that Williams is a junior member of the Hendricks class, along with Mikolas and Freeland? He shares a couple of "Similar Pitchers Based on Velocity and Movement" with Hendricks – the somewhat yucky comps of Julio Teheran and Bartolo Colon. However, his command isn't quite as on par:

Upon further review, maybe Williams matches up pretty well with Kyle Freeland. I don't if that should mean I'm more willing to endorse Williams or if I should be more worried about Freeland. I also understand that command doesn't always equate to control, so walk rate isn't the only thing that matters here. Williams is more interesting after doing this exercise, not less so.

The Phillies' Zach Eflin debuts Tuesday against the Nats, after he held off Jerad Eickhoff and Vince Velasquez for the Phillies' fourth starter role, with Velasquez not scheduled to make his first start until Monday, April 8. Eflin throws harder than many realize (average four-seam fastball was 94.6 mph last year) and gets more Ks as a result, with a 22.4 K%. Don't sleep on him – there's a lot of potential for upward mobility, especially with the Phillies projected to play better defense behind him.

How about the bottom of the scale? Who allowed the hardest contact on-average?

Amid the dreck like Matt Moore (yeah, yeah, I saw what he did Sunday – I'm going to need more than one good start against the Jays before I start believing again), there's three pitchers who draw a lot of attention in Chris Archer, Shane Bieber and James Paxton. It's not that everyone loves them – but they had their advocates this draft season. In the case of Paxton I wasn't fading him, though I tended to find other options in his tier that I liked better. But I was vehemently not paying the ADP price on both Archer and Bieber, so I'm just going to use this as confirmation bias that I was right (and ignore the presence of Carlos Carrasco sitting at No. 127!).

Hard Hit Percentage

You'd expect that pitchers that do well in average exit velocity also do well in hard hit percentage, and you'd be right. The difference between the two metrics is that hard hit percentage measures how many balls in play are hit over 95 mph against that pitcher, seeing as how that's the rate in which velocity really matters, according to MLB.com.

 There's a lot of repeat names on the list, but I thought I'd point out Ryan Yarbrough shows up on both lists. He was essentially free this year, with an ADP in the NFBC Main Event of 405.42, and only drafted in 30 of the 38 Main Event leagues. In 12-team leagues he might still be out there. Just as nobody wants to believe in Trevor Williams, nobody believes in Yarbrough. He checks the same boxes as Williams, too – 20.4 K%, 8.0 BB%, 89.3 mph. Yet all he does is induce weak contact, especially with his cutter and changeup. I'd like to see him throw his sinker less often in favor of his cutter, if that's possible without the alteration in his pitch mix diluting the results. The Rays' use of the Opener before him, making him the primary pitcher after has worked out quite well for him. If he were in another organization, I'd be less inclined to use him.

And what about the bottom end of this scale? Here are the bottom 10 pitchers in terms of hard hit percentage in 2018.

That's right, nearly half the batted ball events against Matt Moore were rockets last season. That's a hard way to make a living. It's no surprise that many of these on the list are either out of a job right now (Gallardo, Colon, Straily) or toiling for a terrible team, there just to eat innings (Richard, Bailey, Moore). 

But one of these is not like the other – which one could it be?! Oh yeah, it's the guy I've highlighted, Big Maple James Paxton. Honestly, I'm really surprised to see him on the bottom 10 of both lists. But that's only because I was ignorant, and now I can see. In three of the last four seasons, the average exit velocity for Paxton was 89.4 mph or higher. He had a 42.1 hard hit percentage last year, but also had a 40.9 hard hit percentage in 2016. He gets away with it simply because it's hard for batters to make contact against him in the first place – as evidenced by his 32.2 K% in 2018 and 26.8 K% during the Statcast era (the last four years). He also allowed 37 barrels last season, after allowing a combined 35 the previous three years. I don't know about you, but that sort of scares me, especially with him toiling in Yankee Stadium instead of Safeco.

We're just scratching the surface of what's available at our fingertips – it's really remarkable how much data is out there. Hopefully this surface-level look gives you some insight on a few pitchers, and encourages you to do your own research. Dig in – there's so much to explore. And if you're ahead of me on this – great! I'd love to hear about that, and what you find to be probative. Share your thoughts in the comments, and let me know what stands out to you.