Locking Up Polanco

There's a pattern here:

• August 2011: Signed second-year outfielder Jose Tabata, 23, to a six-year contract with three additional team option years. The maximum value, including a $1 million signing bonus, is nine years, $37.3 million. The minimum value, including the signing bonus and buyout, is six years, $15 million. The contract covers his arbitration years and his first one to four years of free agency.
• March 2012: Signed third-year outfielder Andrew McCutchen, 25, to a six-year contract with one additional team option year. The maximum value, including a $1.2 million signing bonus, is seven years, $65 million. The minimum value, including the signing bonus and buyout, is six years, $51.5 million. The contract covers his arbitration years and the his first two to three years of free agency.
• March 2014: Signed third-year outfielder Starling Marte, 25, to a six-year contract with two additional team option years. The maximum value, including a $2 million signing bonus is eight years, $55 million. The minimum value, including the signing bonus and buyout, is six years, $31 million. The contract covers his arbitration years and his first two to four years of free agency.
• April 2016: Signed third-year outfielder Gregory Polanco, 24, to a five-year contract with two additional team option years. According to reports, the maximum value is over $60 million and the minimum value is $35 million. The contract covers his arbitration years and his first one to three years of free agency

The Tabata contract was a bust. He's now in the Dodgers system, though the Pirates are on the hook for his $4.5 million salary in this year, the last of his contract. The McCutchen contract--including $10 million last year, $13 million this year, $14 million next year, and a certain-to-be-exercised $14.5 million option in 2018--is one of the biggest bargains in the game. The Marte deal's looking pretty good for the Pirates as well.

Now they're signing up the third of their current outfielders. Here's the catch, though: Polanco hasn't been all that good. Of the 155 players with at least 900 plate appearances over the past two seasons, he's 130th in batting average (.249), 114th in on base percentage (.316), and 138th in slugging percentage (.369). Keep in mind that those rankings are among all players; Polanco's a corner outfielder who's put up middle infielder-type numbers. 

So why did the Pirates extend him? Two reasons. First, he's young, having turned 24 just last September. He's also large, at 6'5", 230 pounds, and he's arguably still growing into his body. (As someone nowhere near that size, I have no idea whether that last sentence makes any sense at all.) Second, of the 156 batting qualifiers in the second half of 2015, Polanco was 74th in batting average (.276), 89th in on base percentage (.324), and 95th in slugging percentage (.425). Granted, those aren't world-beating numbers, but they're a lot better than his work up to that point. If he continues to improve, he'll be a solid contributor. 

Worst case--call it the Tabata outcome--the Pirates waste $35 million over five years. That's not backbreaking, in the sense that it's not so much money that it'd prevent the team from spending elsewhere. And as was demonstrated with Tabata, the Pirates won't take the self-defeating action of playing a subpar player solely because he's owed a chunk of change. Better case, they've locked in a decent player through at least 2020, or a star through 2022. That's a reasonable risk. 

Awards Rewind - The Pirates Perspective

I nailed them: predicted the winners of the Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year, Cy Young, and MVP correctly. This isn't to say that I'm smart; you may have noticed that my prediction that the Blue Jays would defeat the Dodgers in the World Series didn't quite come true. Rather, it's a reflection of how predictable the awards voting has become. And, I might add, how good it's become--I wouldn't have picked all the same winners as the BBWAA electorate, but I don't have a problem with any of the selections. So, well done, all you electors who will never read this and could care less what I think of your selections.

Incidentally, if you want to read an outstanding discussion of one voter's decision process, read this by FanGraphs' Dave Cameron explaining his National League Cy Young Award vote. 

Pirates were shut out of the awards (unless you count Starling Marte's Gold Glove) but had contenders in every category. They didn't really have a chance, though:

• Jung Ho Kang's season came to an abrupt end on September 17 when a takeout slide by the Cubs' Chris Coghlan tore Kang's knee ligaments and broke his leg. Even before then, he probably wasn't going to beat the Cubs' Kris Bryant for Rookie of the Year. Kang's slash line was .287/.355/.461. Bryant finished at .275/.369/.488 and led all rookies in homers, RBI, and runs scored.
• Clint Hurdle, who was fourth in the voting, has now managed a team with 20 straight losing seasons since its last postseason appearance to three straight postseasons (albeit via the wild card). The Pirates' 98 wins in 2015 ties the 1908, 1979, and 1991 clubs for the third most in franchise history. But Joe Maddon guided the Cubs to nearly as many wins, 97, and the team's 24-win improvement over 2014 was the greatest in the majors, topping the Rangers' 21-game move.
• Gerrit Cole emerged as the Pirates' staff ace and one of the best pitchers in baseball. But he really wasn't in the same class (2.60 ERA, 1.09 WHIP) as the triumvirate of the Cubs' Jake Arrieta and the Dodgers' Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw (combined 1.85 ERA, 0.86 WHIP), who were 1-2-3 in the voting. Cole was fourth.
• Here is the argument for Andrew McCutchen as National League MVP (he finished fifth): He was the best player on a team that made the postseason. Here is the argument for the Nationals' Bryce Harper, the unanimous winner: He was the best player in the National League.

The next vote up is the Hall of Fame. The rhetoric about that will be, as always, over the top. If I could vote, I'd pick the full allotment of ten candidates. Alphabetically:

• Jeff Bagwell
• Barry Bonds
• Roger Clemens
• Ken Griffey, Jr.
• Edgar Martinez
• Mike Mussina
• Mike Piazza
• Tim Raines
• Curt Schilling
• Alan Trammell

A couple quick notes here: Yes, I know that Bonds and Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs. Given that I don't have Mark McGwire or Rafael Palmeiro on my my list, I don't ignore drug use. It's just that it's fairly clear to me when in their careers they started to use them, and it's abundantly clear to me that they were Hall of Fame-worthy prior to their use. And I don't think using drugs should automatically disqualify someone; way too many players used them to make that call. Your mileage may vary on this point, of course. As for some of the others...Martinez was an absolutely devastating hitter, and if he's not a Hall of Famer because he was a designated hitter, neither is David Ortiz, and that seems silly. I think Trammell is an easy call and it's a shame that his double play partner, Lou Whitaker, is no longer eligible to be voted in. Mussina and Schilling are much easier calls for me than for the electorate, which gave them 25% and 37% of the vote, respectively, last year (the requirement for induction is 75%). Lastly, of course, there's Tim Raines...

A Wild Card Game of Inches

This postseason has had no shortage of stories: Utley's slide, Gibbons leaving in Cecil to pitch to Napoli, the Royals' singles vs. the Astros' homers, Price in long relief in a blowout, Molina's thumb...yet to Pirates fans, we're on the outside looking in. We're still stuck on Jake Arrieta's shutout last Wednesday in the wild card game. During last night's Cubs-Cardinals game, a lot of Pirates followers must've said, as my wife did, while watching Arrieta surrender four runs on five hits and two walks in five and two-thirds innings, "Why couldn't he have pitched that way against the Pirates?" After all, he was unhittable against the Bucs: Complete game shutout, five hits and no walks, eleven strikeouts. The Pirates didn't have a chance.

Except...they sort of did. This article by Dave Cameron of FanGraphs is the best post-mortem I've read of the wild card game. It's not long, and it's a good read, but if you want to skip it, Cameron's point is that the Pirates did have a chance against Arrieta. In the sixth inning, Arrieta hit third baseman Josh Harrison. Sandwiched around Harrison's stroll to first, four Pirates batters absolutely smoked four batted balls. Each left their bats traveling over 100 miles per hour. Balls hit that hard are usually base hits, often for extra bases. But instead, the Pirates got:

• Pinch hitter Travis Snider, single
• Right fielder Gregory Polanco, lineout
• Center fielder Andrew McCutchen, reached on error, runners advanced one base
• Left fielder Starling Marte, grounded into double play

Now, this wasn't all bad luck on the Pirates' part. Every one of the batted balls was hit on the ground or on a line drive. None of them were hit in the air, where they would've had a good chance of landing in the outfield for extra bases, or over the fence, and that's due at least in part to Arrieta's skill as a pitcher. But other than Snider, every one of the Pirates' screaming hits went right to a Cubs infielder--Polanco to third baseman Kris Bryant, who made a juggling catch on the fly, and McCutchen and Marte to shortstop Addison Russell, who couldn't handle McCutchen's shot but turned Marte's into an inning-ending twin killing. Let's say those balls were hit just a couple inches to the left or right of where they were. Snider singles up the middle. Polanco's rocket goes down the left field line, resulting in a double, runners on second and third. Harrison's hit, loading the bases. McCutchen singles to center, runners advancing a base, and Marte does the same. Now it's a 4-2 game with one out and the bases loaded. Or maybe Harrison scores on Marte's single, making it 4-3. One out, Cervelli and Walker due up. It would've been a different ballgame, and it turned on a four balls that were nailed, going right into fielders' gloves, instead of just out of their reach. 

Wow, Tough Loss. Now, Please Don't Bounce Back. Give Up.

The Pirates lost to the Cardinals, 3-0, yesterday. It was a tough, tough, loss, as the Pirates had multiple scoring opportunities--they loaded the bases in four different innings--but were unable to push a run across the plate. In all, they left 16 runners on base. That's the most in a nine-inning game in the majors this season, and the most in the majors since the Pirates stranded 16 in a 10-3 win against the Padres in June last year. For Pirates fans, it was reminiscent of the team's early struggles, when it got runners on base but failed to score. 

The National League Central standings are now:

Team        W  L Pct.  GB
St. Louis  99 58 .631  --
Pittsburgh 95 62 .605   4
Chicago    91 65 .583 7.5

The Cardinals and Pirates have five more games to play. The Cubs have six.

• If the Cardinals win two of their last five games--they finish their season this weekend in Atlanta, playing the team with the second-worst record in the majors--they'll clinch the division, regardless of what the Pirates do. 
• If the Cards win just one of their next five, the Pirates will have to win every game remaining this year (two against St. Louis, three against Cincinnati) in order to play a one-game playoff on Monday to determine the division champion. The loser of that game will host the Cubs next Wednesday for the wild card play-in.
• If the Cards go 0-5 for the rest of the season and Pirates win every remaining game, the Pirates will win the Central and skip the Wild Card game. If the Cardinals go 0-5 and the Pirates go 4-1, the teams will tie and play on Monday.

Put another way: For the Pirates to win the division outright, they'll have to go 5-0 and the Cardinals 0-5 the rest of the season. That means the Pirates will have to win the next two days against St. Louis and sweep the season-ending series at home against the Reds, who are 10-6 against Pittsburgh this year. It means the Cardinals will have to drop both games against the Pirates and lose three straight on the road against an Atlanta team that hasn't won three straight against a team with a winning record since June and has easily the worst record in the majors since the All-Star Break. For the Pirates to host the Cardinals Monday to determine the championship, they still have to win both of the remaining St. Louis games, and they can lose one game to the Reds or the Cardinals can win one game against the Braves. They go 5-0 and the Cardinals 1-4, or they go 4-1 and the Cardinals 0-5.

Anything is possible. But the scenarios I described are highly, highly unlikely. They're sufficiently unlikely that we can safely say they're not going to happen.

How about the Cubs, though? Are the Pirates at risk of losing home field advantage in the wild card game next Wednesday? The Cubs will be the home field team if they finish with a better overall record than the Pirates or if the teams are tied, as the first tiebreaker for determining home field advantage is head-to-head record. The Cubs won the season series against Pittsburgh, 11-8. So in order for the Pirates to play the wild card game at home, they need to finish ahead of the Cubs. The Cubs start a three-game series against the Reds tonight and have a three-game set against the Brewers this weekend, all on the road.

• If the Cubs sweep both series, the Pirates will still finish ahead of them in the standings if they go 3-2.
• If the Cubs go 5-1, the Pirates will need to go 2-3.
• If the Cubs go 4-2, the Pirates will need to win just one game.
• If the Cubs don't win four of their remaining six, the Pirates will host the wild card game regardless of what they do in their remaining games. 

Both the Brewers and Reds have been playing pretty bad ball of late. Over the past couple weeks, the Reds have the worst record in baseball, 3-10, and the Brewers are tied for the third worst, 4-9. The Cubs have beaten up on both teams this year, going 11-5 against Milwaukee and 10-6 against Cincinnati. Still, winning all six games is going to be hard, particularly since only one will be started by the unstoppable Jake Arrieta. So let's say the Cubs go 5-1. If the Pirates lose tonight, the Cardinals will clinch the division. It's not hard to see the Pirates winning Wednesday's Gerrit Cole-Tyler Lyons mismatch against a hung over Cardinals team. Then they have to take just one of three over the weekend, against a Reds team that's playing out the string, in order to stay ahead of the Cubs. 

So my hope for the Pirates is that, since winning the division is now effectively out of reach, they lose tonight and start giving players days off. They've played 29 games in the last 30 days. Neil Walker's had one day off. Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte have had two. Jordy Mercer and Gregory Polanco have missed only four. Francisco Cervelli has caught all but six games. Five relievers have appeared in twelve or more games. Give them some time off. Let the bruises heal and sore muscles recover. Let them sleep in and sharpen their mental edge. Accept the inevitability of losing the division title and accept the likelihood of hosting the wild card game. The Cubs will start Arrieta. The Pirates will need all the advantage they can get.

Losing Your Best Player

I touched on this earlier this week. I think that if you'd ask most Pirates fans to name the team's most valuable players, the list would start with Andrew McCutchen, followed by Starling Marte and Francisco Cervelli, then maybe Neil Walker before shortstop/third baseman Jung Ho Kang. Here are the team's hitters (minimum 50 plate appearances), ranked by OPS, since the All-Star break:

Player	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Jung Ho Kang	54	197	33	61	14	0	11	29	0	2	10	48	.310	.364	.548	.913
Andrew McCutchen	55	202	38	61	9	1	10	37	4	2	34	58	.302	.405	.505	.910
Mike Morse	31	47	5	15	3	1	1	4	0	0	6	12	.319	.407	.489	.897
Pedro Alvarez	54	146	21	38	4	0	12	30	1	0	17	54	.260	.339	.534	.874
Francisco Cervelli	48	161	20	49	6	3	2	9	0	0	22	30	.304	.392	.416	.809
Gregory Polanco	55	233	35	66	14	3	6	23	9	3	17	46	.283	.332	.446	.778
Neil Walker	56	186	23	47	9	3	6	27	0	0	18	29	.253	.315	.430	.745
Starling Marte	55	199	31	56	11	2	3	20	11	3	5	31	.281	.330	.402	.732
Sean Rodriguez	51	87	13	25	6	0	1	7	0	2	2	25	.287	.333	.391	.724
Aramis Ramirez	43	154	14	39	10	0	5	28	0	0	10	17	.253	.299	.416	.715
Travis Ishikawa	28	48	4	12	2	0	1	8	0	0	4	16	.250	.308	.354	.662
Josh Harrison	24	68	10	17	3	0	0	3	1	3	5	13	.250	.320	.294	.614
Chris Stewart	25	56	1	14	0	0	0	7	0	0	2	13	.250	.271	.250	.521
Jordy Mercer	23	68	4	14	2	0	0	6	0	1	7	16	.206	.276	.235	.512

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 9/18/2015.

McCutchen's had a big second half, vaulting himself into the MVP discussion. But Kang's been better. He's hit more doubles and more homers in fewer plate appearances. When you combine that with the fact that he plays an adequate shortstop, and McCutchen plays an adequate center field, the defensive importance of shortstop over center field makes Kang, in my book, the team's best player over the second half of the year.

Until yesterday. In the first inning of yesterday afternoon's game against the Cubs, Cub right fielder Chris Coghlan slid hard into Kang, outside of the basepath, in an unsuccessful attempt to break up a double play. What resulted was one of the worst knee injuries in recent memory: torn medial collateral ligament and broken tibial plateau. He won't be playing with the Pirates until next season, probably not until after the season starts.

This is a big blow for the Pirates. As shown above, Kang was the team's best hitter in the second half. OK, let's say he and McCutchen were the two best. With Kang out of the lineup, Jordy Mercer will become the full-time shortstop, backed up by Pedro Florimon. Mercer's .594 OPS this season is the second-worst in the league among the 106 players with at least 350 plate appearances. Mercer was out for a month starting just after the All-Star break, injured by a take-out slide in Milwaukee. He was having a miserable season at the bat up to that point, with a .242 batting average, .289 on base percentage, and .315 slugging percentage at the time of the injury. Since coming back, he's been worse: .239/.289/.304. And that's been way better than Florimon, who in limited play has amassed a single and a triple in 22 at bats (that's a .091 batting average and .182 slugging percentage) and two walks (a .167 on base percentage).

So how big a blow is it? It's easy to overstate the impact of a star player. The Pirates have only 16 games left in the season. Statistically, on paper, Kang would be worth maybe one game over that stretch. That's borne out by the record: The Pirates are 63-40 in games that Kang started, and 24-19 when he didn't. The difference in winning percentage (.612 - .558 = .054), multiplied by 16 remaining games, equals a win. So if the Pirates finish a game behind the Cardinals or Cubs, it won't be a stretch to blame it on Coghlan's slide. Once we get into the postseason, any one-run loss might've been reversed with Kang's booming bat rather than Mercer's, um, less-than-booming one.

As for Coghlan's slide, it seems like it was legal to me. But that doesn't mean I like it. One of the appeals of baseball to me is that it isn't a contact sport. I mean, there's inevitably some contact, like a fielder slapping a tag on a runner attempting to steal, but the game isn't designed to be one of athletes crashing into one another. Sliding into second base on a double play makes sense; if the baserunner doesn't slide, he may catch a baseball on his forehead. If that causes the second baseman or shortstop to miss on his throw to first, all the better. But sliding outside of the basepath, aiming for the fielder, in an attempt to disrupt the throw? I don't see why that should be legal. Baseball made it illegal for catchers to block home plate and for baserunners to crash into the catcher. I'd like to see the same demise for the takeout slide. Baserunners sliding outside of the basepath at the fielder should be ejected, and the attempted double play should be automatically completed. 

Is A.J. Burnett Broken?

In two starts following the All-Star Break, A.J. Burnett has allowed 27 baserunners (16 singles, four doubles, two homers, four hit batters, one walk) in 11.2 innings, giving up 11 runs, all earned, for an 8.49 ERA. Granted, that's only two games, but this appears to be more than disappointment over being named to his first All-Star Game but not appearing; his ERAs have risen every month this season:

Month	ERA	GS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	HBP	BK	WP	BF	WHIP	SO9	SO/W
April	1.80	4	25.0	24	5	5	1	7	20	1	0	0	101	1.240	7.2	2.86
May	1.82	6	39.2	31	10	8	1	13	39	1	0	1	156	1.109	8.8	3.00
June	2.41	5	33.2	40	11	9	1	7	27	0	0	2	143	1.396	7.2	3.86
July	4.68	5	32.2	40	17	17	3	7	24	6	1	2	147	1.439	6.6	3.43

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Generated 7/26/2015.

I think you know most of those column headings. BF is batters faced, WHIP is walks plus hits over innings pitched, SO9 is strikeouts per nine innings, SO/W is strikeout to walk ratio.

Obviously, the ERA's a concern. He's allowed more earned runs so far in July than he did in any two other months combined. His strikeout rate is down, and while he's not walking more hitters, those six hit batters indicate a lack of control. So what's going on?

I'm going to walk through a few steps that I like to check when a pitcher's effectiveness changes.

tl;dr: Burnett's been throwing pretty much the same pitches, at the same velocities, to the same spots of late. However, he's facing tougher opponents than he did earlier in the year, and when batters make contact, they've been hitting the ball harder than in the past. There is also a fair amount of evidence that Burnett's been just unlucky of late, suggesting that he could rebound from his July performance.

Has his repertoire changed? Sometimes a pitcher will change his mix of pitches, changing his overall outcomes. Burnett throws four pitches: A four-seam (straight) fastball, a two-seam (sinking) fastball, a curve, and a changeup. Here are his mix of pitches, by month, from Brooks Baseball:

Month	Fourseam	Sinker	Curve	Change
April	11%	53%	32%	3%
May	11%	57%	29%	3%
June	8%	52%	33%	7%
July	7%	59%	28%	7%

Do you see any big changes there? Me neither. Yes, he's throwing a few more changeups and fewer four-seam fastballs, but we're not talking a big shift.

Has his velocity changed? Burnett is 38 and in (he swears) his last season. There are only three starting pitchers in the majors who are older: San Francisco's Tim Hudson (40), Toronto's R.A. Dickey (40), and the Mets' Bartolo Colon (42). Might he be slowing down? Here are the velocities of his pitches, per month:

Month	Fourseam	Sinker	Curve	Change
April	91.6	91.4	82.4	85.8
May	92.3	92.2	82.7	86.3
June	92.4	91.7	82.7	85.9
July	92.2	91.5	82.4	85.6

There's almost no change there. Decreased velocity is not an issue.

Has his command changed? Velocity's nice, but it's not the whole story. Among National League pitchers, the Pirates' Arquimedes Caminero has the third highest average fastball velocity, 97.9 mph. But among Pirates pitchers with at least 40 innings pitched, he has the highest home rate and second-highest ERA, because major league hitters can hit just amount any pitch if it misses its intended spot. 

Here are his percentage of Burnett's pitches in the strike zone, starting in April: 48.0%, 49.5%, 47.8%, 48.5%. He's been right around the National League average of 47.9% all year. 

Of course, just throwing strikes isn't the story, either. Brooks Baseball tracks what it calls "grooved pitches." Think of the strike zone as a 3x3 grid, with nine identically-sized squares. The one right in the middle of the grid--the "middle middle" pitch, in the middle of the zone horizontally and vertically--routinely gets crushed. Andrew McCutchen is batting .393 with a .699 slugging percentage on middle-middle pitches. Starling Marte is .347/.551. Neil Walker, .313/.567. On the other side of the ball, Burnett has given up a .270 batting average and .358 slugging percentage overall this year, but .347/.569 middle/middle. So has he been grooving his pitches more? Nope. Here are his percentage of grooved pitches against right handed batters: April 6.9%, May 5.8%, June 6.3%, July 5.9%. Against lefties: April 5.0%, May 5.5%, June 4.5%, July 6.1%. It's all pretty consistent.

OK, so he's not missing the strike zone, and when he's in the strike zone, he's not missing his spots. How about when he's outside the strike zone? How is he at getting batters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone, where they're more likely to make weak contact? It turns out he's gotten better as the year's progressed: swings on 28% of pitches outside the strike zone in April, 24% in May, 33% in June, 30% in July. 

Are his pitches getting hit harder? His ground ball rate is down, and Pirates pitchers live on ground balls: 56% in April, 55% in May, 52% in June, 50% in July. Do hitters know what pitch is coming and therefore hit it harder? Well, they're making a little more contact, whiffing on 19% of Burnett's pitches in April, 21% in May, 18% in June, and 17% in July. The National League average is 21%. However, as he's allowed more contact, he's induced more soft contact: 15% of batted balls in April, 16% in May, 17% in June, 21% in July. Yet at the same time, he's allowing more hard contact as well: 27% in April, 33% in May, 27% in June, but (gulp) 43% in July. That's the second highest hard contact rate in the league in July. However, he's middle of the pack in soft contact this month. So batters are making more and harder contact off Burnett, though I'd really like to see another month of data to see whether this is a trend or a blip.

Is he facing tougher opponents? This gets overlooked a lot, but it's important in an era in which starting pitchers get, at most, 35 starts per year. If a starting pitcher goes against the Mets and Phillies (each scoring 3.5 runs per game) a lot more than the Rockies and Diamondbacks (4.4 each), he's likely to have better numbers than a starter who does the opposite. Let's divide each 15-team league into thirds to define good-hitting, average, and weak-hitting teams. During April, Burnett faced two good-hitting teams (Diamondbacks, Tigers), one average (Reds), and one weak (Cubs). In May, he faced three average teams (Cardinals, Reds, Padres) and two weak (Mets, Phillies). In June he faced two good (Giants, Nationals), two average (Brewers, Reds), and one weak (Phillies). In July he faced two good teams (Nationals, Tigers), and two average ones (Cardinals, Royals). He hasn't caught a breather, opponent-wise, since his June 14 start against the Phillies. So some of the deterioration in his performance is probably just a reflection of pitching against better-hitting teams.

Has he been unlucky? This is the trickiest question, because it depends on how one defines luck. Baseball analysts look at three statistics: batting average on balls in play (BABIP), percentage of baserunners left on base (strand rate), and percentage of fly balls going over the fence (HR/FB).

This doesn't mean that these figures are all a product of luck. Let's take two pitchers: Phillies ace/trade bait Cole Hamels, whose career ERA is 3.30, and his teammate Jerome Williams, currently sporting a 6.28 ERA and a career ERA of 4.55. Hamels' career BABIP is .285, Williams' is .290. Hamels' career strand rate is 76.9%, Williams' is 70.5%. Hamels' career HR/FB rate is 11.0%, Williams' is 12.0%. Does that mean Hamels' superior ERA is a product of BABIP, strand rate, and HR/FB luck? Certainly not; he's legitimately a better pitcher, and his numbers reflect it, across the board.

But variations in those figures can reflect luck. BABIP can be helped by scorching line drives hit right at a fielder and hurt by a pop-up that falls just beyond the reach of a retreating infielder. Strand rate is affected by clustering of hits; if a pitcher allows two singles, and no other baserunners, in each of three innings, he'll give up six hits and no runs. If a pitcher gives up no hits in two innings and six singles in his third, he'll also give up six hits, but will probably give up four runs. As for HR/RB, a 400 foot drive to straightaway center is a home run at Angel Stadium of Anaheim (the fence is 396 feet from home) but doesn't even reach the warning track drive at the Marlins Park in Miami (422 feet). So each of those factors can be influenced by circumstances other than the pitcher's skill.

Consider, for example, Hamels' disappointing 2009 season. After going 15-5 with a 3.39 ERA in 2007 and 14-10 with a 3.09 ERA in 2008, he slumped to 10-11, 4.32 in 2009. He was supposed to be the ace of my fantasy team that year, and toward the end of the season, I changed my team's name to Cole Hamels You Suck. But did he really suck? Let's look at those three luck indicators, from 2008 (when he was good), 2009 (the year in question), and 2010 (good again; 12-11, 3.06 ERA):

• BABIP: .259,.317, .289
• Strand rate: 76%, 72%, 83%
• HR/FB: 11%, 11%, 12%

OK, the last one didn't change much. But his 2009 BABIP and strand rate were career worsts for him. More hits dropped in that year (and no, it wasn't because batters were hitting the ball with authority; his hard contact rate of 26% in 2009 was the second best of his career), and they came more often with batters on base. His "peripheral stats"--strikeout, walk, and home run rates--were more suggestive of a pitcher with an ERA in the mid-threes, rather than his career-high 4.32. And, sure enough, he rebounded to a 3.06 ERA the following year.

So let's look at Burnett's BABIP, strand rate, and HR/FB, April-July:

Month	BABIP	Strand	HR/FB
April	.319	88%	5.3%
May	.294	80%	4.3%
June	.361	79%	4.2%
July	.352	74%	10.0%

Every single luck indicator has moved the wrong way over the past couple months, during which his ERA's gone from 1.81 in April-May to 2.41 in June and 4.68 in July. This isn't to say that he's been equally effective; as I've shown, he's allowed more hard contact in July, and he's also facing tougher opponents. (The latter's not going to let up; heading into today's games, the Pirates have the fifth toughest schedule in the league over the rest of the season, with an average opponents' winning percentage of .506.) But there's been enough going against him in those luck indicators to make me think that we haven't seen the last of the good A.J. Burnett.