Otto Greule Jr - Getty Images
Angels lefty Joe Saunders turned 29 ten days ago and is pitching more like a 39-year-old of late. He has appeared dominant in a few games, pitching 2 CGs, one of which was a shutout. But after 15 games he basically rivals Scott Kazmir for the gutter of the team's starting pitching.
What is so different? Hokie Joe pitched 31 games in each of the past two seasons, so let's use this acceptable sample size to look at the numbers.
87 IP... Double this and you get 174. He had 186 IP in '09 and 198 IP in '08. Considering he only pitched one CG in each of those seasons, we can tell he is getting yanked from some blowup turkey starts. Of course, he lost 7 games in each of the past two seasons and has already lost 8 this year, so... yeah... Scioscia's hook has been because Joe takes a gascan out to the mound with him on two occasions: early and often.
39 BB ... (64/'09 ... 53/'08) ... He is walking way too many batters. Seems guys wait for his breaking stuff to hit the zone before they hack and there are plenty of ABs where that just does not happen. Hitters listen to advance scouts who, like us, have probably noticed that there is less late zip-n-twist to Joe's once legendary curve.
40 K ... (101/'09 ... 103/'08) ... 80 strikeouts this season would be a big drop, like his curve used to drop in there for strike three, which just seems to happen less and less. He cannot hit the zone and his nibbling for it that used to pay off with grounders and dramatic strikeouts now just contribute to that walk total.
Colonel Saunders has gone from a finger lickin' good 1.94 K/BB in his All Star 2008, to a respectable 1.54 K/BB in 2009 to his now hovering near 1.0 ... and throughout his career Saunders has not been a hot/cold pitcher (alá Ervin Santana). His good games and bad games were never too far apart in performance, and so there is little credibility to imagining that this rate will fluctuate up radically in his favor.
For a pitch-to-contact arm like Saundo, the lack of strikeouts meeting up with and inability to find the strike zone has given Angels fans something to groan about. He does not seem to be fighting through injury like last season and he has had glimmers of brilliance against mediocre teams that remind us he still knows the nuts and bolts of mixing pitches and hitting spots. But for all the grief that big ticket Scott Kazmir gets from the fan base, it is our own homegrown Hokie who is stuck wearing the inglorious badge of fifth starter.
0 recs | 19 comments
Maybe Joe has the nibbles too..........just like Kaz
norcaliangelsfan - June 26, 2010
It's really frustrating knowing Joe can Perot
halofan4life - June 26, 2010 via mobile
based on your quote below
I am assuming this is not a comparison of Joe Saunders mediocre 2010 season and Ross Perot’s failed 1992 presidential campaign.
Rev Halofan - June 26, 2010
hahah
man. You might be funnier than me.
Operative word is ‘might.’
RexTookMyStash - June 26, 2010
Still getting used to mobile posting from the iTouch.
Sometimes my fingers don’t push what I want them to push.
halofan4life - June 26, 2010
Great new nickname!
Watch out Hokie Joe, Colonel Saunders, VT VD (what, never heard that one?)…here comes Joe Perot!
Slasher52 - June 26, 2010
It's really frustrating knowing Joe can perform better.
halofan4life - June 26, 2010 via mobile
He has good stuff, but
he just walks too many guys and the fact he’s a groundout pitcher doesn’t help. Those ground balls or bloopers sometimes fall in leading to runs.
phoenix15 - June 26, 2010
Where's the stat geeks?
How badly has Joe been hurt by poor infield play?
Slasher52 - June 26, 2010
Insert Halowood transformation post here
RexTookMyStash - June 26, 2010
Paging Halowood.
Slasher52 - June 26, 2010
This is the first year I've been tempted to believe the anti-Saunderites
Been thrown off by the whole “regressing to the mean” meme, and instead should have focused on this way of looking at it — a successful guy who doesn’t strike people out just doesn’t have much margin for error. If he loses a few feet off the fastball, or command of his knee-bender, no amount of pitching guile (and Joe always had lots) can get him over. He’s gonna get thumped.
This is a depressing conclusion to come to. And a reminder that I need to extend my comps exercise to the rotation….
mattwelch - June 26, 2010
You know who Saunders is an excellent comp for? Buddy Black
Link. Lefty pitcher, big age-27 year with 17 wins, sandwiched by credible innings-eating work, never really striking anybody out. Both stumbled out of the age in their age-29 years, to the point that Black went to the bullpen for the rest of the season, and parts of the next two.
mattwelch - June 26, 2010
More to the story
There’s a lot more just a little deeper under the surface here. Why are things go so poorly for Saunders this season? I don’t really think they are. I’d argue that his pitching hasn’t been nearly as bad as our expectations for him. Consider the following.
Myth #1: Joe Saunders throws strikes
Joe has consistently been among the most strike-zone phobic pitchers in all of baseball ever since he was first called up. His career zone rate is 45.4%. For comparison, his highest season zone rate was 48.4% in 2008, but that went for fifth lowest among all MLB starters with over 180 innings pitched. Last year it was 44.1%, the absolute lowest among all MLB starters with over 180 innings pitched. This year it is almost unchanged: 44.2%.
Now, having a low zone rate is not necessarily a bad thing. If your stuff is good enough to fool hitters to swing outside the zone, then you can get strikes in other ways. Unfortunately, Joe has never been among the best at inducing swings out of the zone. He was 20th out of 59 last year with a 27.3% rate and 44th of 66 in 2008 with a 25.5% rate (minimum 180 IP). This year he is the fifth worst at it in baseball, getting swings outside the zone just 23.8% of the time.
When you add it all up, you have a guy who has got strikes on 61% of the pitches he’s ever thrown, below the typical league average and even lower than Scott Kazmir’s career number. This year he’s at 58%. So why hasn’t he had serious issues with walks before?
The answer is that he is just too hittable. With a career contact rate of 84% and an average of 3.75 pitcher per plate appearance, opposing hitters have frequently put the ball in play early in the count. This year Joe’s opponents are waiting him out, as shown by the fact that they swing 41.2% of the time now versus 44.5% of the time over his career. Joe isn’t doing anything differently, but the rest of the league is.
Myth #2: Joe Saunders gets ground balls
This is partly true. He does get a few more ground balls than average, but not so many that he can be considered seriously as a ground-ball specialist. Derek Lowe gets a lot of ground balls: 3.31 grounders for every fly ball in his career. Brandon Webb gets a lot of ground balls: 3.56 to 1. So does Roy Halladay: 2.23 to 1. Joe has a rather pedestrian 1.26 GB/FB rate in his career, and even in his All-Star 2008 season, a 1.23 GB/FB rate was only good enough for 36th out of 66 starters with 180+ innings. This year it’s only 1.05.
We also see counter evidence for this myth in Joe’s home run rates. In his best season he was still below average. Last year only Braden Looper and Jeremy Guthrie surrendered home runs more frequently than Joe Saunders, and this in spite of the fact that both those pitchers played in smaller parks. Joe is again on pace to be among the league’s leaders in home runs allowed, not something accomplished frequently by a ground ball pitcher aided by a home-run suppressing stadium.
This is also not likely caused by Joe doing anything differently: his pitch selection has not changed significantly, his pitch velocity is in line with his previous seasons, and his fastball and curveball both have the same amount of horizontal movement as they did before. In fact, Joe’s curve actually moves even more these days than it did back in 2008 and earlier. No, the balls coming hard off the bat this year aren’t because Joe has forgotten how to pitch. They’re because his opponents have better figured out how to hit him. His current 18.3% line-drive rate is almost assuredly a product of better plate discipline by the opposition.
Myth #3: Joe Saunders knows how to win
The Angels are 71-39 when Joe starts, a .645 winning percentage. However, the Angels have a .578 winning percentage overall since he first pitched for them, so Joe is just 7 wins better than would be expected from the “average” Angels pitcher over that span. When you consider that the Angels have scored 5.4 runs in the average Saunders start versus 4.9 runs overall, it’s clear that Joe is getting more than his fair share of run support. Perhaps even more importantly, the Angels average 5.2 runs of offense when Saunders is actually in the game—they give him early leads. This has further inflated his winning percentage, and also keep in mind that pitchers tend to perform better when pitching with a lead.
As for clutchiness, Joe has done slightly better than break even in his career, i.e. his performance in high-pressure situations has been better than in low-pressure situations. However, his 2008 campaign is a serious outlier in this regard. His clutch score of 1.03 in that single season accounts for most of his 1.73 career clutch rating. That one season also accounts for all of his excess win-probability added, and then some (+3.1 career vs. +3.5 in 2008). There’s not much here to suggest that Joe possesses a special “winning” ability that he can consistently reproduce.
Myth #4: Joe Saunders eats innings
Over his career, Joe has averaged 6.0 innings and 96 pitches per start. The MLB average for a starter over that time is 5.9 innings and 95 pitches per start. He’s also never thrown more than 200 innings in a season, although he did come close with 198 in 2008. There’s not much else to say about that, he’s done what the average starter has done. He should deserve some credit for only being placed on the DL once, and even that was possibly one of those fake DL stints intended to take a struggling pitcher out of the rotation for a few starts.
Myth #5: Joe Saunders is an ace
At the end of the day, we’re talking about a guy with a 103 career ERA+, where 100 is average. He’s needed a good defense, a slight pitcher’s park, and a little bit of good fortune in order to achieve what has been just about the definition of a mediocre career. This is, again, heavily weighted by one heavily outlying season that was aided by a stupid low .267 BABIP. Aside from the 3.44 ERA in 2008, his next best ERA over a season with at least 100 innings was 4.44 in 2007. None of these facts are characteristic of an above-average starter, let alone an ace. Oh yeah, he has only 368 strikeouts to 223 walks in 658 1/3 career innings.
I still think that Joe Saunders is a valuable player. He’s proved to be very sturdy in his career, which, although not a “talent” in the same way that keeping guys off base is, is still a positive characteristic. I will take an average pitcher who makes his starts over an awesome pitcher who gets hurt and leaves the rest to replacement players (I’m looking at you, Rich Harden). A guy like Saunders still gives his team a better-than-even chance to win every time he takes the mound, and that adds up over time. You can’t ask more from a #5 starter. You can ask more from a #2 starter, however, so once again, the problem isn’t with Joe. It’s with what we expect from him. I’d look for his numbers to level off near their career averages as the Angels’ strength of schedule returns from the stratosphere.
Suboptimal - June 26, 2010
I agree I think some people have unrealistic expectations of Joe.......
he is what he is………a solidly unspectatular starter……..good enough to get you a W on most nights.
norcaliangelsfan - June 26, 2010
Who ever said Saunders was an ace?
Don’t think I’ve ever heard that one.
mattwelch - June 27, 2010
Not to name names
But the claim is out there, as Google will show. It did lose considerable luster after Joe’s last season. However, it’s still popular among those who give primacy to win-loss records (33-14 in his last two seasons). You can probably count Scioscia among them, since Joe is currently the team’s #2 starter, and he started in the #2 spot during the ALCS last year.
There’s also the issue that he’s being paid rather well for a pitcher in his first year of arbitration: $3.7 million. That’s 50% more than the Rays are paying James Shields and just 10% less than what the Angels paid for Weaver. Clearly someone in the front office thinks he’s better than he is.
Suboptimal - June 27, 2010
Good info Sub.
Thanks.
WiHaloFan - June 27, 2010
Thanks for the info. Nice post.
Wally's World - June 26, 2010
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