Dee Gordon's Plate Discipline

2012 has been nothing but trouble for Dee Gordon. Sure, he is leading the majors in stolen bases, but that is about the only bright spot. He is currently sporting an OBP of .278 and a wRC+ of 61. His fielding, in addition, has been atrocious. I usually do not pay much attention to traditional fielding statistics, but at the extremes they usually give you valuable information. In this case, Gordon is at the extreme in a bad way, posting a fielding percentage of just .947. That is 17 errors. I can assume that this will only get better with time as he is still raw with regards to defense. But what about offense?

In his 56 games last season, Gordon put up a respectable 99 wRC+. It's not amazing, but remember that SS is not exactly known for offensive production. So what has caused the tremendous drop in runs created for Gordon? The first target is always BABIP. It is at .282. With a career average BABIP, his wRC+ for this year goes up to 69. It's a nice bump, but he still has problems. As usual, it comes down to plate discipline. Last year, he struck out about 11 percent of the time, but this year it is all the way up to 19 percent. That number can be mitigated with a high walk rate (ala A.J. Ellis), but a 5.7% walk rate is not going to do it. What's interesting is that this walk rate is actually higher than last year.

So how to improve? Gordon needs to focus on strikeouts and BABIP. He should be hitting more balls on the ground, which is where his speed will allow him to get on base where most others would not. He can't take advantage of his speed with a ball hit up in the air. Gordon right now is sporting the 5th highest GB/FB ratio in the majors. It's high, but with his speed, it is not high enough. Next is the problem of K%. Gordon is swinging at just 34% of balls outside of the zone, and 60% of balls inside the zone. His swinging strike percentage is at 6.3%. The average hitter swings at less balls out of the zone, more balls in the zone, but swings and misses much more. If Gordon wants to get his peripherals higher, he needs to swing more. This may sound counter-intuitive, but it seems as though Gordon is allowing to many strikes to go over the plate without being challenged. He could get more balls in play if he's swinging more and this would result in less strikeouts. He may walk a little less, though, but the gain would be worth it. If he strikes out just 15% of the time, but walks 5% of the time, he would have a wRC+ of 75.

What will get Gordon to an average wRC+ is bringing up the BABIP, striking out way less, and with time if he's striking out less, he may end up getting more walks. Gordon needs to be a little more aggressive on balls in the strike zone. His speed will get him on base more often than most if he just gets the ball in play.

ShouldHit predicts that with a BABIP of .330, a BB% of 9, K% of 12, and his current homerun rate, Gordon will be an average hitter. Get at it Gordon, stop letting those balls go over the plate without challenging them.

OpenSecrets Campaign Contributions

Quick, name the top industry donors for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama!

Barack Obama:
Retired
Lawyers
Education
Health Professionals

Mitt Romney:
Retired
Securities/Investments
Lawyers
Real Estate

So besides retired people, Obama gets supports from law, teaching, and medicine. Romney gets his support from law and finance. I thought that medicine was supposed to be against Obamacare? Do you think that Obama is going to do anything about education problems when the teachers have given his performance a huge thumbs up? Lawyers like both of these guys, because they are the status quo. Romney's other big supporter is finance, essentially the enemy of consumers. Tell me again why you have faith in either of these puppets?

The Chad Billingsley versus Chris Capuano Deathmatch

Image courtesy: http://www.fangraphs.com/not/index.php/chad-billingsley-has-the-heater-you-can-live-with/

The big debate has been about how much better Chris Capuano has been versus Billingsley, the worst pitcher to ever play the game. At least, this is the way it usually goes with casual Dodgers fans. And it is not as if they do not have an argument. Look at the list of Dodgers starters by ERA:

Billingsley: 4.15
Capuano: 2.60
Eovaldi: 4.04
Harang: 3.81
Kershaw: 2.74
Lilly: 3.14

I guess that this is the source of the argument that I've heard that Capuano has been pitching better than Kershaw. It seems absurd, but the ERA numbers are right there. Billingsley looks to be the worst pitcher on the staff. But let's go one step further. Let's look at ERA- which corrects for park and league.

Billingsley: 108
Capuano: 68
Eovaldi: 105
Harang: 99
Kershaw: 72
Lilly: 82

Aha! Even by more advanced statistics Capuano is leading the pack. Billingsley is still the worst. Lilly is surprisingly good. However, ERA is subject to some dangerous lurking variables, namely BABIP, LOB%, and the whim of the scorekeeper (what counts as an earned run and what does not). So what if we look at xFIP-? This is an advanced statistic that only looks at strikeouts, walks, and flyball rates. So any issues from defense, scorekeeper, etc., are not factored in.

Billingsley: 100
Capuano: 99
Eovaldi: 110
Harang: 116
Kershaw: 85
Lilly: 120

Now we're starting to see something change. Kershaw now becomes the best pitcher on the team, while Billingsley and Capuano are about the same, and Harang and Lilly are just awful. This agrees more with our expectations.

So now I will add in my final statistic. This looks at SIERA, which is easily the best ERA predictor that is publicly available. From that, comparing to a SIERA of 5 as being the worst possible, I can look at how many runs each pitcher has prevented, and since not all of these pitchers have pitched the same amount, can look at SIERA runs prevented per game played. This way, I can account for how well they pitched, and how deep into the game they went. Here are those numbers. SIERA/GS stands for SIERA per game started while also considering how deep a player went into the game (any inning not pitched in a game is given a value of 5 SIERA). SIRP is Skill Independent Runs Prevented which compares to a SIERA of 5. It is a counting statistic and not a rate statistic, so keep that in mind when comparing players.

SIERA/GS, SIRP
Billingsley: 4.16, 12.55
Capuano: 4.07, 13.97
Eovaldi: 4.65, 2.11
Harang: 4.60, 6.00
Kershaw: 3.64, 21.74
Lilly: 4.75, 2.04

Some interesting facts come out of this analysis. First of all, Kershaw has easily been the best pitcher in the group this year. He's almost equal to the production of Billingsley and Capuano combined. Lilly and Eovaldi have basically been the same pitcher. Harang is bad. Capuano has been better than Billingsley, but they are not miles apart. They're fairly similar pitchers.

In the end, everything is just as we expected. Kershaw is great, Billinglsey and Capuano are about the same and good, Harang is not so good, and Eovaldi has been matching Lilly's production (which apparently isn't much). I guess, then, that I could see getting another starting pitcher, but the offense just seems so much worse right now. More importantly for right now, though, can we stop the Billingsley hate and Capuano praise? If you want more out of Billingsley that's fine, but don't act as if Capuano is suddenly the second coming of Koufax.