Is Cappy's year similar to Turnbow's last year?

[TuesdaysWithRillo]

When you guys were refering to the "luck stats", did you really think it is luck? I argue that he just can't make big pitches when he is behind in the count because he doesn't have the velocity to throw the fastball in the zone or the accuracy to throw his off speed stuff for a strike. He simply has to hope the batter swings at his junk pitches. Pujols doesn't swing at junk pitches hence his 500+ batting avg against Cappy.

[Ennder]

When you guys were refering to the "luck stats", did you really think it is luck? I argue that he just can't make big pitches when he is behind in the count because he doesn't have the velocity to throw the fastball in the zone or the accuracy to throw his off speed stuff for a strike. He simply has to hope the batter swings at his junk pitches. Pujols doesn't swing at junk pitches hence his 500+ batting avg against Cappy.

If you don't believe luck/varience/defense drives ERA there is no hope for us to discuss pitching together. Its a team stat with extremely high varience which is why you shouldn't be using it to judge pitchers unless you have a good 3 years data. Three years of stats on Capuano suggests he's a pretty mediocre pitcher add in an injury and bad defense and you get a 4.50ish ERA guy most likely.

 

A pitcher can pitch more or less exactly the same back to back years and have a 3.50 ERA one year and a 5.00 ERA the next.

[twobrewers]

The Brewers are a remarkable 0-15 in Chris Capuano's past 15 starts. Which is about as bad as you can do. Word is they're considering removing him from the rotation. Perhaps they should have thought of that five starts ago.

From Jon Heyman of SI.

[Patrick425]

Maybe somebody already mentioned this, but when I first read the title to this thread I thought "No, Cappy's year is similar to Cappy's last year" http://static.yuku.com//domainskins/bypass/img/smileys/grin.gif

[HebrewHammer]

The problem with Capuano this year is he doesn't get guys out when he's even or behind in the count or when they're on base. OPS's against him are just terrible when he doesn't throw strikes. Get this, he has walked every single batter he has gotten a 3-0 count on this year. Every single one.1-0 and 2-0 counts give OPS's about 1.0. His first pitch OPS is 1.0. So, on 0-0, 1-0, 2-0 and 3-0 a guy is either getting on base via walk or driving the ball. He doesn't do anything to a guy the second he gets behind and sometimes when even. Even a 3-1 count gives a 1.5 OPS! He does fine when he gets a guy 0-1 or 0-2, but almost every pitcher does. But you're not going to get a lot of guys there. And since he has to work to get to 0-1 (remember guys are crushing him at 0-0 in the first place) it's even more rare.

 

With no outs his BABIP is .366. That can't all be luck, can it? Maybe he's throwing meatballs down there. With 1 outs he's right on average, a .290. With 2 outs though he falls to .342! Probably because there are more likely to be base runners at this time?

 

As he faces batters more his BABIP goes up and up and up. From .317 to .323 to .375! Consider the defense is responsible for it being around .310. You have to assume the defense is a constant and the fact it rises to .375 means he's getting rocked hard the third time through. This makes sense because from pitches 75+ he gets rocked. The SLG% rises with the BAbip. Although typical for most players, his is really, really bad..

 

What does this mean? His BAbip is a function of bad defense but also the fact that he gets balls driven really hard. Why so bad? Because he can't pitch when he gets behind in counts or when he gets a couple guys on base. This is a deadly cocktail. He falls behind in a count and guys get on. then it doesn't matter if he falls behind because he doesn't pitch well and guys get hits.

 

He simply can't afford to fall behind in a count almost ever. He needs his control to be perfect because it's obvious his power isn't. So when his command is off he's throwing meatballs over the plate these guys are rocking.

 

Lots of talk about luck and Cappy in this thread so far. The only luck I see is he's throwing the dice trying to get lucky with meatball pitches and guys are rocking him.

 

Endeer is mainly right. Cappy wasn't too different in the past. Before he did better with men on base. But his OPS's after pitch counts and situations were about the same (a little worse this year). He just got pretty lucky before.

 

Although 2 years ago he was a stud when guys were on base and that's what saved him.

[Ennder]

The whole 15 game losing streak thing is just silly media crap.

 

During Capuano's streak of the team going 0-15 in his starts he's had 4 of the best starts by a Brewer pitcher this season. Using the GMSCR stat here are the numbers of good starts for each pitcher, with a good start being 60+ points.

 

Sheets - 7

Capuano - 4

Gallardo - 3

Vargas - 5

Bush - 4

Suppan - 2

 

3 of Capuano's 4 good starts have been during the losing streak. He has gone 7+ IP with 2 or fewer ER's four times during it, those are simply not bad starts. Yeah he's had more than his fair share of miserable starts too but its not like he hasn't pitched good games and lost too.

 

With no outs his BABIP is .366. That can't all be luck, can it? Maybe he's throwing meatballs down there. With 1 outs he's right on average, a .290. With 2 outs though he falls to .342! Probably because there are more likely to be base runners at this time?

 

I'd dig deeper and look into more than just BABIP here. You don't generally just have a bad BABIP and thats it. If you are throwing meatballs your ISO would go up with it for sure because they'd be hitting more HR's and doubles too for example. The smaller sample you look at the more likely its just bad luck involved, so when you start to look at something like BABIP in different counts you get less and less reliable data in general.

[HebrewHammer]

I don't have access to ISO but measuring the SLG% with BAbip shows a correlation. In short, as his BAbip rises so does his SLG% against. Assume a bit less because I don't think BAbip counts HR's and SLG& does...

[rluzinski]

There's no sense in calling for Cappy's head when there's no realistic alternative. As Ennder is saying, Cappy is a mediocre pitcher who's pitching a little worse than usual and has a bad defense behind him. People can use the winless record to suggest he's the worst pitcher ever but it just isn't true. If the Brewers had even a league average starting pitcher ready to jump in, I'd appreciate people wanting him replaced but they don't. Parra could take a few starts but Cappy would have to be put back in the rotation anyway.

[rluzinski]

Opps. Wrong thread.

[TuesdaysWithRillo]

HebrewHammer, great analysis. That is what I suspected. Cappy does not have the stuff to make pitches when he's behind in the count. Thank you for eliminating this BABIP/Luck crap.

[tigerbrew]

Parra has better stuff than Cappy, he could give us a better chance of winning.

[rluzinski]

HebrewHammer, great analysis. That is what I suspected. Cappy does not have the stuff to make pitches when he's behind in the count. Thank you for eliminating this BABIP/Luck crap.

 

He proved that BABIP is controled by both the pitcher, batter and defense. Of course, you got out of it exactly what you wanted to, which is rather disturbing.

[recte44]

Parra has better stuff than Cappy, he could give us a better chance of winning.

http://www.theguba.net/forums/style_emoticons/default/bing.jpg

[Ennder]

HebrewHammer, great analysis. That is what I suspected. Cappy does not have the stuff to make pitches when he's behind in the count. Thank you for eliminating this BABIP/Luck crap.

Wow, nice abuse of logic there. You can disbelieve in BABIP and varience over a small sample until you are blue in the face, they still both exist and have been proven to be real.

[HebrewHammer]

BAbip is a very real statistic that has been backed up through plenty of regression analysis and such so it's worth believing in. The one caveat in it is when a pitcher just loses it, his BAbip should rise because he's become a meatball pitcher. Especially when a SLG% is rising with it.

 

I love stats as much as anyone but anecdotal evidence is valuable as well. He was definitely a bit lucky in the past (remember all the run support he got? That might take something out of the opposing offense) but his number also show he's not pitching when guys are on base or when he's behind in the count. What I'm saying is he's not just giving up a few more bloop single or infield hits. He's positively getting rocked hard. And when that happens (guys are driving the ball hard) your BAbip will go up.

 

Which means he's probably out of his league right now and simply not competitive at the MLB level.

 

this of course is based entirely on this years stats, a small sample, but they're the most relevant to Cappy's struggles this year. I mean, his 3-0 and 3-1 counts show this easily enough. He has walked every guy that was 3-0 on him. He knows he can't make the pitch. Last year OPS against him was 2.0 in those situations. So when he gets 3-1 (presumable the fourth pitch was a ball) and he knows he has to throw a strike or at least challenge the batter, he's giving up an OPS of 1.5.

 

So it's a combination of Cappuano being a bit lucky in the past and simply not being able to make pitches presently. I see no reason why Cappy will ever be an above average starter in MLB for any reasonable period of time. Anyone yahoo on the radio who claimed he should be the "ace" was crazy from the beginning and should never be trusted again.

[Ennder]

The league has 1832 PA's with a 3-0 count that have resulted in 1720 BB's. This is not some magical problem that only Capuano has, when you go 3-0 you walk 93.9% of the time in the NL.

 

The league has a .800 SLG on 3-0 counts compared to a .418 as a whole. They have a .535 SLG in 2-1 counts, a .583 SLG on 2-0 counts a .610 SLG on 3-1 counts. What you are seeing in Capuano's stats are mostly normal especially looking at how small the samples are. BABIP does vary with pitch count from a .308 to a .290 (it does get to .337 with 3-0 count but thats an extremely small sample of balls in play) which is still a pretty darn tight range even though SLG and OPS are all over the place.

 

BABIP does not vary a lot with how hard you are getting hit, ISO, AVG and SLG jump all over but BABIP still has a pretty tight range no matter what. If you have a jump of more than .010 or so compared to your expected BABIP it is going to be luck or defense at fault and in our pitchers cases my money is on defense.

 

30920 PA's have gone 1-0 this season out of 75, 513 total or 41%

15% have gone 2-0

5% have gone 3-0

20% have gone 2-1

9% have gone 3-1

 

1166 PA's of Capuano's 2942 have gone 1-0 or 40%

15% have gone 2-0

5% have gone 3-0

19% have gone 2-1

9% have gone 3-1

 

He's not pitching from behind any more than an average NL pitcher, he's not pitching much differently based on counts. The only thing 'wrong' with his stats are a big jump in BABIP, a LOB% that is low (this is pretty much just bad timing as it jumps around every year for every pitcher) and the fact his BB's are back to 2004/2005 levels and not 2006 levels.

[HebrewHammer]

Then there's only one rational conclusion: Chris Capuano isn't MLB caliber. Assuming MLB pitchers have little power over BAbip, we can assume Cappy isn't a MLB pitcher. Or he's injured.

 

Or he's the unluckiest guy on Earth. His BAbip has been amazingly high lately. Can that really be bad luck? Can you be that unlucky?