Six numbers that tell the story of the Royals starting pitching in 2021
Do you feel like the starting pitching for the Royals hasn't been good? You would be correct in your feelings.
In Tuesday’s edition, I highlighted some numbers from the offense that told the story of the Royals season. Today, it’s the starting pitchers turn in the spotlight.
While there were a few positive numbers and individual bright spots from the bats, it’s much more difficult to find anything good to say about the starting pitching through the first half of the 2021 season. They have collectively struggled to get deep into games. They have collectively struggled with run prevention. Only Danny Duffy has consistently distinguished himself, yet has once again lost time to the IL.
It’s been a rough first half for the rotation.
5.38
This is the collective ERA for Royals’ starting pitchers.
That’s bad. Real bad. It’s the third-worst in baseball, ahead of only the Diamondbacks and Orioles, both teams I’ve invoked far too much in these mid-season recaps.
An interesting fact about the starting pitchers for the Royals who have thrown a majority of the innings in 2021, nearly all of them have performed worse this season than compared to their career averages.
Only Duffy has outperformed his career ERA in 2021 and he’s thrown the fewest number of innings as a starting pitcher of the five listed in the table above. Only Brady Singer has moderately declined. The rest? Woof.
Granted, it’s an imperfect table. There are better measurements out there for a pitcher’s performance than ERA and in the case of Singer and Kris Bubic, you’re using 64.1 innings and 50 innings respectively for the “Career” category. Yet the point remains: Every starting pitcher, save Duffy, has taken a step back in 2021 and seen their performance decline.
It kind of makes you think…
63.2%
This is the strand rate for Mike Minor.
If you play fantasy baseball, perhaps you’re familiar with this metric (also defined as LOB%) on the Fangraphs pitching leader dashboard. Like BABIP, there’s a rate that is considered “normal,” which is generally thought to be around 75 percent. A pitcher who strays from that rate (and his career rate) is due for some sort of correction. Minor’s career LOB% entering the 2021 season was a little north of 73 percent. The Royals felt they were probably going to find some immediate benefit in signing Minor given that he posted a career-worst 62.9 percent LOB% in 2020. Caveat emptor, I suppose.
Minor’s current LOB% of 63.2 percent is the lowest in the majors among qualified starters. Another way to look at it is that almost 37 percent of the runners on base when he’s pitching come around to score. That’s an incredibly high number.
While we can look at metrics like xFIP and SIERA to see that, yes, perhaps Minor has been a bit unlucky in 2021, like BABIP, there’s no guarantee that a number off the baseline will normalize in the course of a season.
135
That is the ERA- for Brad Keller, the worst in baseball among qualified starters. Not only has this been a dreadful summer for Royals starters in general, but it’s also been particularly onerous for Keller.
A guy who was an outlier in that he was an effective starting pitcher who didn’t miss a ton of bats, he’s added just a little more swing and miss on his sinker and slider this year, but his four-seamer and change have just been punished by opposing hitters. (Actually, his sinker has been too.)
So while he’s added a little more whiff, it’s come at a cost.
All of his key Statcast metrics—while not notable or outstanding previously—have seriously declined. Most notable, his barrel rate. It’s gone from 3.7 percent and the 90th percentile all the way up to 10 percent and the 20th percentile. His Hard-Hit% has similarly increased about seven percent.
He’s just serving far too many meatballs.
It’s been a rough year for a guy the Royals were counting on to bring some stability to a rotation.
56.2%
That’s the rate at which Singer is throwing first-pitch strikes.
This probably hasn’t gotten enough attention. His percentage of first-pitch strikes is down 4.3 percent from where he was as a rookie.Among starters who have thrown at least 80 innings this year, Singer’s 56.2 percent first strike rate is third-worst in the majors. When Singer misses on his first pitch, it has a definite impact on the rest of the plate appearance.
Obviously, when a pitcher fails to deliver a strike on the first pitch, the advantage tilts in favor of the hitter. In Singer’s case, he’s also much less likely to recover and strike out that batter. And the vast majority of the free passes he issues are when he falls behind on the first pitch. On the flip side, his walk rate when throwing a first-pitch strike is far below his full-season rate. He’s much more likely to maintain that advantage and punch out the batter.
According to Brooks Baseball, Singer is throwing more sinkers on the first pitch in 2021, especially to right-handed batters.
Is this why his first pitch strike rate has tumbled? We can’t draw any conclusions from his pitch selection alone. But his difficulties consistently throwing a strike with his first pitch of a plate appearance is likely one of the reasons he has yet to take a step forward from what we saw in 2020.
57
This is the total number of innings Danny Duffy has thrown so far in 2021.
Duffy, of course, jumped out to a fantastic start to open the year. Through his first seven starts, he was averaging almost six innings with a 4:1 SO:BB ratio and a 1.94 ERA. Since returning from his forearm strain, Duffy has made five appearances (four starts) totaling 15.1 innings with a 4.11 ERA and 14 whiffs against nine walks.
The Royals brought him back without any rehab time in the minors and with some sort of half-baked notion that he would be used in a “hybrid” role, splitting his time between starting and the bullpen in order to maximize his innings while maintaining his health. He made one relief appearance between his first two starts when coming off the IL. That’s it.
I’m not so sure the Royals were ever serious about that “hybrid” role.
A bright spot for Duffy this year: recording his 1,000 career strikeout.
55.15%
This is the percentage of innings thrown by the Royals starters.
They currently get the sixth-fewest innings from their starters as a percentage of total innings thrown.
You may remember a similar table I published about a week ago. So if you’ll click the link, you’ll see there’s been some improvement on this front from the rotation. But even with a decent run of starts from the Royals staff, they consistently put themselves in a position where Mike Matheny has had no choice but to lean heavily on his bullpen. And that’s where we saw the latest stumble. It’s as if one issue gets fixed and another one suddenly appears. It’s the pitching version of Whack-A-Mole.
Random notes from All-Star Week
Maybe I have some scarring from watching ESPN’s production of Home Run Derbies of the past, but I was considering punting Monday night. I’m glad I didn’t. ESPN2’s Statcast broadcast with Jason Benitti, Mike Petriello and Jessica Mendoza was great. While it was difficult to keep up with the action due to the format where the pitcher was rapid-firing baseballs to the batter, they found a rhythm and had a lot of fun while keeping the focus on the action. I understand some of you were watching ESPN’s production and missed most of Salvador Perez’s turn due to an extended interview of Pete Alonso. My advice: When ESPN presents an alternative to their main broadcast, always go for the alternative.
The uniforms the teams wore for Tuesday’s game were dreadful. Horrific, actually. A massive part of the charm of All-Star Games of the past was the collection of different uniforms all coming together on the same team. It was a jumble, but a glorious jumble that celebrated not just the player, but the team and the city they represent. There was a little sense of pride seeing a local jersey or two mixed in with the best players of the game. Not this year. MLB’s consistent money grab is painfully obvious, but they keep forcing this garbage on its fans, so it must be working? Good grief. Stop buying bad merchandise!
Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the 1971 All-Star Game, played at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. It’s most famous for being the game where Reggie Jackson launched a shot to the roof in right field. It’s also the only game the Americal League won in a 20 year span. If you have a couple hours to spend, I highly recommend checking out the NBC broadcast of the game.