Did Rick Porcello Have a Breakout Year?

It's been a typical up and down year for Rick Porcello in 2013.  He started the year off horribly, with an ERA of 6.28 and a WHIP of 1.42 through his first 9 games.  Then he had a nice 4-game run of quality starts with an ERA of 1.33 and a WHIP of 0.70.  Then a couple of games where he surrendered 6 and 7 runs each.  Followed by another nice stretch of 8 games, 7 of which were quality starts with a 2.84 ERA and a WHIP of 1.36, only to go into another slump in the next 5 games with a 7.36 ERA and a 1.55 WHIP.  Finally, he's ending the season on a high note with his final 3 games started with a 1.66 ERA and a 0.97 WHIP, which included his first career complete game.  Add everything together and we get a 4.38 ERA and a 1.29 WHIP for the 2013 season.  How does this stack up with his previous years?

Year	IP	ERA	WHIP	AVG	BB%	K%	GB%
2009	170 2/3	3.96	1.34	0.265	7.2%	12.4%	54.2%
2010	162 2/3	4.92	1.39	0.287	5.4%	12.0%	50.3%
2011	182	4.75	1.41	0.288	5.9%	13.3%	51.4%
2012	176 1/3	4.59	1.53	0.308	5.6%	13.7%	53.2%
2013	174 2/3	4.38	1.29	0.268	5.8%	19.1%	55.2%

Porcello has a nice trend going here, lowering his ERA by about 0.20 each year since 2010.  Porcello's WHIP is also at an all-time low, due to having a steady low BB rate while his opponent's batting average hasn't been this low since his rookie year.  His strikeout rate and ground ball rate are career highs, which have also led to career bests in defense independent stats:

Year	FIP	xFIP	tERA	SIERA
2009	4.77	4.27	4.99	4.48
2010	4.31	4.24	4.50	4.37
2011	4.06	4.02	4.49	4.14
2012	3.91	3.89	4.95	4.00
2013	3.56	3.23	4.26	3.43

Porcello's FIP, xFIP, tERA and SIERA are all career bests, which is a great encouragement to his development.  Part of his success could be attributed to a change in repertoire   During the 2012 off-season, it was announced that Porcello would abandon his slider and start throwing his curveball more often.  True his word, Porcello has only thrown his slider 6.5% of the time, the lowest since his rookie season and he has thrown his curveball 16.5% of the time, a new career high.  How effective has his pitches been?  According to Brooks Baseball:

Pitch Type	Count	AB	K	AVG
4-Seamer	556	108	26	0.278
Sinker	1164	317	49	0.293
Changeup	430	124	25	0.234
Slider	182	38	11	0.263
Curveball	460	88	29	0.216

Clearly his go-to pitch is his sinker, and has been ever since he's been in the majors.  It hasn't been a great pitch for him this year as batters are getting hits off of it at a higher rate than any of his other pitches.  His secondary pitches, his changeup and curveball, have been outstanding this year.  He has racked up 54 strikeouts combined on those 2 pitches and he's keeping opponents' batting averages down.  Porcello only struck out 31 batters on his changeup/slider combination in 2012.  His development on his secondary pitches are a big reason why his strikeout rate has risen this year.

Lefty/Righty Splits

Year	Split	PA	K	AVG	OBP	SLG
2013	vs. RHB	350	83	0.238	0.264	0.334
2013	vs. LHB	378	56	0.302	0.362	0.453
Career	vs. RHB	1673	261	0.261	0.302	0.380
Career	vs. LHB	2042	262	0.307	0.358	0.462

One of Porcello's main issues this year has been the inability to get left-handed hitters out, and as shown above, this has been a big problem all through his ML career.  If Porcello is going to take the next big step forward, he's going to have to learn how to get left-handed hitters out better.  

Vs. RHB:

Pitch Type	Count	AB	K	AVG
4-Seamer	212	45	15	0.222
Sinker	732	199	40	0.256
Changeup	115	32	12	0.188
Slider	121	25	7	0.240
Curveball	165	30	9	0.200

Vs. LHB:

Pitch Type	Count	AB	K	AVG
4-Seamer	344	63	11	0.318
Sinker	432	118	9	0.356
Changeup	315	92	13	0.250
Slider	61	13	4	0.308
Curveball	295	58	20	0.224

His sinker and 2-seamer have been major problems for Porcello against left-handed hitters.  However, his changeup and especially his curveball have been great against them.  Maybe throwing those pitches a little more often will put him on the right path.   

Porcello'd Out

  
A meme over at Bless You Boys has been to "Porcello out" anything that may look bad on a player's record.  

Porcello-verb- to eradicate an outlier from a statistical sample of data.

To apply this to Rick Porcello himself, we take out his 4 worst starts of the season, both games against the Angels, and a game each against the Orioles and Red Sox.  Porcello had given up 30 ER in 16 innings in those games.    After we do that, we get a statistical line of:

	IP	ERA	WHIP	K%
2013 Total	174 2/3	4.38	1.29	19.1%
Porcello'd Out	158 2/3	3.12	1.15	20.2%

All of a sudden, Porcello looks like a fantastic starter.  However, this is 12.2% of all the batters he has faced this year thrown out the window.  If we were to do that to any pitcher or hitter, they would also look much better.  

I'm going to apply this philosophy, but I'm only going to focus on Porcello's quality starts.  I'm going to "Porcello out" everything that isn't a quality start for each of Porcello's five years that he's been in the majors and see if there is any sign of improvements.  

A Quality start is one in which the pitcher has:

• Pitched at least 6 innings and 
• Given up 3 or fewer earned runs.  

Year	QS	QS%	IP	IP/QS	ERA	WHIP	K%
2009	11	35.5%	72 1/3	6.58	1.87	0.97	10.3%
2010	13	48.1%	88 2/3	6.82	2.23	1.11	11.3%
2011	19	61.3%	127	6.68	2.76	1.14	15.1%
2012	13	41.9%	87 2/3	6.74	2.36	1.12	15.1%
2013	18	62.1%	120 2/3	6.70	2.39	1.04	21.8%

Another term to describe this is cherry picking.  I'm purposely selecting all the good starts in Porcello's sample size.  Not much can be determined by looking at these stats.  In 2009, 2010 and 2012, Porcello pitched less than half his starts as quality starts.  His 2011 season is comparable to his 2013 season in terms of percentage of quality starts and innings pitched, however his ERA, WHIP and strikeout rate were better in 2013; he was more effective in his quality starts in one less start.

So did Rick Porcello have a breakout year?  No, not really.  What we have here is someone who greatly improved his strikeout rate by having a better changeup and slider.  He's definitely heading in the right direction, but there are still some areas he needs to improve on.  His sinker can be ineffective at times, he still struggles against left-handed batters and he still has the occasional blow out game.  When he corrects these problems, then he'll have a breakout year.  

Alburquerque Struggles With Men on Base

Saturday night the Tigers enter the 9th inning trailing 1-0 when Leyland summons Al Alburquerque out of the bullpen.  Groans ensued throughout Twitter, yet I felt confident.  My "eye test" told me that Alburquerque does alright starting an inning and he didn't disappoint, pitching a clean 1-2-3 inning.  However, using memory as any kind of reliable source is asking for trouble, so onto Baseball-reference.  As it turns out, I was a little bit wrong on Alburquerque; he's not just good with the bases empty - he's great.

Situation	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG
Bases Empty	98	0.152	0.316	0.177
Men on Base	98	0.313	0.408	0.542

Oh, I just love it when the sample size perfectly match.  These numbers obviously show a lot; Alburquerque appears to be one of the best relievers in the game when no one is on base, yet pitches like a AAAA-player as soon as someone is occupying one of his bases.  There are several explanations that range from random variance to pitch usage.  But the one that immediately comes to mind is that his delivery may be off when pitching out of the stretch.  

Going back prior to his 1 full year in the majors in 2011 when he had a 1.87 ERA and a 2.08 FIP, here were his numbers in the same situations:

Situation	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG
Bases Empty	80	0.182	0.325	0.182
Men on Base	102	0.110	0.260	0.122

Alburquerque certainly looked capable of pitching with men on base before.  Again, it could be, random variance, confidence/mental issues, but the "what's wrong with Al Alburquerque" could be as simple as a mechanical adjustment when pitching out of the stretch.  Now I'm not one to post videos comparing how a pitcher looks when pitching out of the wind-up vs. out of the stretch.  Honestly, I wouldn't know what to look for.  I'll leave that up to the bloggers who are smarter than me.  And I really hope someone takes on that project.  

The Game Winning RBI

If you were a fan of baseball during the 1980s, you might remember a statistic that is no longer kept, the game winning RBI, or GW RBI.  GW RBI was an official MLB stat from 1980-1988 that recorded the number of RBI a player had that put his team ahead for good.  For example, say the game is tied 2-2 and a batter received an RBI that made it 3-2.  Then his team scored 2 more runs to make it 5-2 and the final score was 5-4.  The batter that drove in the 3rd run gets credit for the GW RBI even though his team needed all 5 runs to win.  With those rules in mind, I resurected this obsolete stat for the 2013 Tigers:

Player	GW RBI
Miguel Cabrera	15
Torii Hunter	15
Prince Fielder	14
Victor Martinez	9
Omar Infante	8
Alex Avila	5
Andy Dirks	4
Jhonny Peralta	3
Don Kelly	3
Brayan Pena	2
Ramon Santiago	2
Austin Jackson	1
Jose Iglesias	1
Max Scherzer	1

Not surprising, Miguel Cabrera tops the list, but his co-leader, Torii Hunter, might be surprising.  Also, despite having 30 RBI, Matt Tuiasosopo doesn't have a single GW RBI, not even when he was hitting .329/.447/.624 in the first half.  

The problem with this stat is similar with the RBI stat in general.  It depends too much on timing and the teammates getting on base.  Even as a "clutch" stat, it has it's weaknesses.  Most of the time, the player wouldn't know that his RBI was the game winning one until after the game unless he had a walk-off hit.  Oftentimes the first RBI became the game winning one and most people wouldn't associate the first few innings as "clutch" innings.  With this in mind, it's easy to see why Torii Hunter had so many GW RBI, being the 2nd batter in the game and having the opportunity to drive in the first run with Austin Jackson on base.  

You might notice that the Tigers have 84 wins, but only 83 GW RBI have been awarded.  This is because of the game on 9/10, the game winning run wasn't an RBI, but rather scored on the result of an error.  Victor Martinez got the first RBI in that game, but his RBI wasn't the "game winning" run as defined by the rules.  This confused me on how to score it, but I ultimately gave no one the GW RBI in this scenario.  Going back to the earlier example of the 5-4 game, it can be debated that the 5th run should be the GW RBI and not the 3rd.  With these issues, it's easy to see why this stat was discontinued.  

Retired Uniform Numbers

When the Tigers acquired Jose Iglesias on July 30, the debate regarding retired numbers quickly
followed.  Wearing Number 1, Jose fueled a debate and some controversy. Lou Whitaker, of course.
wore that number from 1977 until he retired in 1995.  No Tiger had worn the number since.  Until
now.

The Tigers have an unwritten policy, apparently, that if a player is in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, their number is retired by the team.  With the exception of Willie Horton, whose number was retired due in large part to his extraordinary community service,  all the numbers on the
brick wall in the outfield were worn by Hall of Famers.

Interestingly enough however, these players often shared their numbers for some time after they became Hall of Famers. Charlie Gehringer, who wore Number 2, was elected to the Hall in 1949.  No fewer than 13 players proceeded to wear Charlie's Number 2, including Jake Wood, Frank Bolling, Dalton Jones, John Knox, and Richie Hebner.  Hebner was the last player to wear the number (1982), as the Tigers finally retired Gehringer's number in 1983.

Similarly, Hank Greenberg entered the Hall of Fame in 1956, but his Number 5 was not retired by the Tigers until 1983.  Hank played with the Tigers until 1946, after which he left Detroit for one final season in Pittsburgh.  After his 1956 induction,  eight players, including Vic Wertz, Mark Wagner,
and most notably, Jim Northrup, wore Number 5.

In 1992, Tigers pitching great Hal Newhouser was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee.  Two players, David Haas, and the flamboyant David Wells, wore Number 16 from 1991-1995.  The Tigers retired Newhouser's number in 1997.  (Current Tigers' 3rd base coach Tom Brookens, who wore Number 16 from 1979-1988, now wears number 61.)

Al Kaline, arguably the most popular Tiger in history, retired in 1974.  His Number 6 was retired in 1980, the same year he became a member of the Hall of Fame.  No player wore his number after he
retired. (Kaline wore Number 25 during 1953-54 seasons).

Ty Cobb is honored by the Tigers with the name "Cobb" and an empty space above his name.  Cobb of course, played in an era where players did not wear numbers.

Jackie Robinson, who wore Number 42, was honored by the Tigers, as he was by every other major league team, in 1997, for being the first African American man to play in the Major Leagues.
Interestingly, Alan Trammell, one of the greatest Tigers, wore Number 42 briefly when he first came
up to the Tigers in 1977.  Of course, he wore Number 3 for the rest of 20 year career.

Trammell, along with Whitaker, do not have their numbers retired by the Tigers.  Although there is precedent in retiring players' numbers long after they entered the Hall of Fame, Alan and Lou have been excluded from the Hall (another story), making it unlikely the Tigers will ever retire their numbers.  (Gary Sheffield even wore Number 3 for a couple years in 2007-08).

Personally, I would like to see Iglesias switch to Number 7 in 2014.  It would be a classy gesture, and could be part of a plan to finally properly honor Whitaker and Trammell.  They deserve the honor, and should not be denied  because the Hall of Fame has unfairly turned their backs on these two great Tigers.  Tigers management, who wisely finally honored long time Tiger stars, have shown that they can be flexible.  Hopefully Tram and Lou will have their day.

Using RE24 to Evaluate Relievers

Run expectation is one way to measure a player's effectiveness, either on offense or pitching.  In every 24-out situation, there's a different run expectation depending on the the baserunners and outs (the inning and score is irrelevant in RE24).  The difference between the run expectation at the start of a PA and the end of the PA gets charged to both the hitter and pitcher.  FanGraphs provides an example using the Red Sox and Rockies 2007 World Series game.  At the start of an inning the run expectation was .52 (this is just the league runs/league innings), then Ellsbury doubled that changed the run expectation to 1.15.  The difference between 1.15 and .52 is 0.63.  Therefore Ellsbury gets charged with +0.63 and Cook gets charged with -0.63.  

During the course of the season, these run expectation differences get added and subtracted to the player's total and at the end of the season they get a cumulative total that shows how much better they've been than league average.  Run expectation is extremely useful in generating linear weights which then can be applied to stats such as wOBA.  However, many analysts agree that RE24 can be very useful in proving relief pitcher value because they often come in and leave in the middle of an inning.  Say a starter loads the bases in the 7th inning and a reliever comes in and gives up a 3-run double and then a strikeout.  All 3 runs get charged to the starter while the reliever gets a scoreless 1/3 of an inning.  ERA doesn't properly show what happened, but RE24 does. 

The table below shows the Tigers relievers' RE24 as of games played through 8/31 provided by FanGraphs:

Player	IP	RE24
Joaquin Benoit	54 2/3	19.91
Drew Smyly	69	16.70
Jeremy Bonderman	14 1/3	3.50
Jose Veras	14 1/3	1.57
Jose Ortega	11 2/3	0.93
Rick Porcello	2	0.84
Bruce Rondon	26	-0.11
Evan Reed	18	-0.35
Luke Putkonen	22 2/3	-2.18
Jose Valverde	19 1/3	-2.38
Al Alburquerque	39	-3.27
Darin Downs	33	-3.73
Jose Alvarez	4	-4.78
Octavio Dotel	4 2/3	-6.02
Phil Coke	36	-6.46
Brayan Villarreal	4 1/3	-8.73

Tangotiger recently showed us how we can put RE24 on a RA9 or ERA scale:

If it helps, we can recast RE24 into an RA9 scale (i.e., similar to ERA) as follows.  Say the league average is .48 runs per inning.  Say you have a pitcher that has an RE24 of +40 runs and has pitched 200 innings.  That means the league average is .48 x 200 = 96 runs, and our pitcher here is 40 runs better than that, or 56 runs allowed.  So, his (RE24-based) RA9 is simply 56/200*9 = 2.52.

So far there have been 16,965 runs allowed in 36,380 1/3 IP for a league run/inning of 0.47 so far in 2013.  Using Joaquin Benoit as an example, he has pitched 54 2/3 innings; the league average would allow 0.47 * 54 2/3 = 25.49 runs.  Benoit has been 19.91 runs better or (25.49-19.91) 5.58 runs.  5.58 divided by 54 2/3 times 9 = 0.92.  The table below shows all of the Tigers relievers using this new metric (which I'm calling reRA9):

Player	IP	reRA9
Rick Porcello	2	0.42
Joaquin Benoit	54 2/3	0.92
Jeremy Bonderman	14 1/3	2.00
Drew Smyly	69	2.02
Jose Veras	14 1/3	3.21
Jose Ortega	11 2/3	3.48
Bruce Rondon	26	4.23
Evan Reed	18	4.37
Al Alburquerque	39	4.95
Luke Putkonen	22 2/3	5.06
Darin Downs	33	5.21
Jose Valverde	19 1/3	5.30
Phil Coke	36	5.81
Jose Alvarez	4	14.95
Octavio Dotel	4 2/3	15.81
Brayan Villarreal	4 1/3	22.33

We could then compare the pitcher's reRA9 to his ERA to see if he's been overvalued or undervalued:

Player	IP	reRA9	ERA	Difference
Octavio Dotel	4 2/3	15.81	13.50	2.31
Luke Putkonen	22 2/3	5.06	2.78	2.28
Brayan Villarreal	4 1/3	22.33	20.77	1.56
Evan Reed	18	4.37	3.00	1.37
Phil Coke	36	5.81	5.00	0.81
Bruce Rondon	26	4.23	3.81	0.43
Rick Porcello	2	0.42	0.00	0.42
Al Alburquerque	39	4.95	4.85	0.11
Jose Veras	14 1/3	3.21	3.14	0.07
Darin Downs	33	5.21	5.18	0.03
Drew Smyly	69	2.02	2.22	-0.20
Jose Valverde	19 1/3	5.30	5.59	-0.28
Jose Ortega	11 2/3	3.48	3.86	-0.38
Jeremy Bonderman	14 1/3	2.00	2.51	-0.51
Joaquin Benoit	54 2/3	0.92	1.48	-0.56
Jose Alvarez	4	14.95	15.75	-0.80

Villarreal and Valverde are no longer with us.  Other pitchers like Dotel, Porcello and Alvarez have too small of a sample size to tell us much.  It looks like Putkonen, who has a nice ERA, has been overvalued according to his RE24.  And Benoit, who has been extremely good in his role this year, looks to be even better by looking at RE24.