Of course the concept of someone being "real" vs an illusion is quite prevalant in our world of baseball nerd-dom. Now it's time to segue from mid 90's rap (which is fantastic) to baseball statistic (which is even more fanastic). Alright, today I was thinking about Ian Kennedy, which means I looked at his StatCorner, FanGraphs and B-Ref page for far too long. Anyways, I'm going to show you the career lines of two different pitchers. The first is Ian Kennedy. I'll let you try to guess the 2nd.
| K Rate | BB Rate | HR/9 | BABIP | GB Rate | ERA | FIP | xFIP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ian Kennedy | 19.9% | 8.6% | 0.75 | .265 | 37.0% | 3.74 | 4.06 | 4.10 |
| Pitcher X | 20.1% | 8.4% | 1.02 | .267 | 37.8% | 3.36 | 3.69 | 4.25 |
If you haven't figured it out by now, Pitcher X is Matt Cain (see what I did there with the MC? You're welcome...Stop groaning, I can hear you from here). Obviously there are a few differences here. The biggest and most glaring is probably the home run rate, and the FIP variance is nothing to sneeze at either, but that correlates directly from the home run rate.
I intentionally ommitted a key number from that table: Innings Pitched. As of this writing, Ian Kennedy has amassed 448 big league innings. Matt Cain is at 1291 2/3.
Looking past the sample size comparisons, the similarities are quite striking. Cain has the advantage of a much better home park to supress homeruns, but the defense behind Kennedy is superior. Of course this is just a 2 year blip on the radar of Kennedy, compared to the career BABIP repression for Cain.
A part of Cain's success has been his home park, which averaged since 2005, is an even 100 Pitcher Park Factor, per Baseball-Reference. Cain's defense has helped as well, with a +3.5 UZR/150 since 2005.
Kennedy, logged a few innings at Yankee Stadium and over 400 at Chase Field. In his snippets of 3 years playing for the Yankees, they had a -3.1 UZR/150. Conversely, the past 2 years at Chase Field has been much smoother, with the D-Backs having a league leading +7.8 UZR/150. In his 2 year there, Chase Field has an average of a Pitcher Park Factor of 104, or 4% favoring pitchers. I'm just as surprised as you are. Yankee Stadium was rated at 102.5, again, slightly favoring pitchers.
By now, I hope you have (in my opinion) correctly surmised the following:
-Cain has an uncanny ability to repress BIP falling for hits
-Kennedy also shows that (possible) skill in his short career
-Cain benefits from a slight above average defense in a perfectly neutral park
-Kennedy has the luck of a fantastic defense behind him in a slight pitchers park
At this point, much of the saber community is willing to give Cain a bit of slack, as he's show his BABIP to be a repeatable skill. As for Kennedy, the jury is still out. We all know the unusal creature that is Matt Cain by now. In fact, if you google "FanGraphs, Matt Cain" 6 out of the top 7 results are articles about him, mostly regarding his ability to keep a low BABIP. I wonder now, if this offseason we will see a similar number of posts regarding Ian Kennedy?
Hear me out, I'm not saying that Ian Kennedy is guarenteed to be the next Matt Cain. I need to see about 400 more innings out of him with this surpressed BABIP before I totally buy it, but if you're asking me if I think he could turn into one?
Yes he Cain!
As usual, table compliments of Tableizer!
No comments:
Post a Comment