It’s hard to watch every MLB game. Often times we have to rely on highlight reels and box scores to tell us what happened. But by now we know that traditional results are sometimes skewed and don’t always give us the true measure of a pitcher’s performance. It’s not always perfect, but one of the things I like to do every week is compare a pitcher’s ERA for the last 7 day period with his SIERA to see who might have deserved a better fate or who might have gotten away with a few. Then of course, there are those who got exactly what they deserved.

Previously, this had been a weekly feature, but after 14 weeks I’d come to the realization that it probably works better as a monthly piece. SIERA mostly ignores things like line drive rates and tries to normalize HR rates (mostly) These are things that take time to stabilize (sometimes years) and don’t really work as well from start to start or week to week. That’s why I now realize SIERA probably works better over a longer period of time where we can allow for adjustments to be made and see a larger picture of 5 or 6 starts for most qualified pitchers.

Obviously, the gaps are going to be much smaller. It will be rare that we’ll see gaps much larger than 4 runs as we’re working with a larger sample size. Over the course of a full season, you’ll rarely see more than a handful of pitchers with a gap of more than a run between their SIERA and ERA.  

Stats are from 7/1 through 7/31. The format remains the same as it was for the weekly articles. The qualifying cutoff was 23 IP (Scott Feldman). That means Matt Harvey, we’ll see you next month.

I didn’t even have to change the name as Chen appeared in this category in our last weekly article for the 1^st week of July. Chen had the highest ERA among qualified pitchers for the month (beating Ricky Romero by 0.27), but SIERA thinks that nearly 1/3 of 109 pitchers who threw at least 23 innings last month performed worse than him. He started 6 games in which he only completed 6 innings once, including 9 HR’s allowed in his first 4 starts of the month, while cutting that down to just 1 HR over his last 2 with no more than 3 ER’s allowed. Chen had an exactly 3.0 K/BB (27/9) over his 30.1 IP which is right in line with his season rate (3.14) and above that of his career. His .344 BABIP was the highest of any month this season (although it was .342 in May) and .029 higher than his yearly average and much higher than his .283 career rate. His batted ball profile has been inconsistent all season, but there was nothing that really stood out all that poorly in July except for the 23.3 HR/FB rate. This is Chen’s 4^th season pitching for the Royals and he’s never had a HR/FB rate higher than 12%. So there you have it. Chen has already showed signs of normalizing the HR rate and should be able to get back to being a slightly below average pitcher, rather than a terrible one.

No other major league pitcher had an ERA more than 4 runs greater than their SIERA this month. Jordan Lyles’s 3.90 gap between his 7.22 ERA and 3.32 SIERA was the 2^nd largest. Lyles struck out 22 and walked only 3 in 28.2 July innings, but, again, HR’s. He allowed 8 of them last month, and at least 1 in all 5 starts, despite pitching games in Pittsburgh and San Diego. He might want to get used this though as his home park is not very forgiving to hard hit fly balls, although he may have suffered a bit from a .365 BABIP on just a 16.7 LD%. Look for the BABIP to come down and it’s good that Lyles had his strongest GB/FB of the season (2.04) last month (1.68 overall in 2012), but he has now had a HR/FB over 20% in every month except for June without an incredibly high IFFB% this season, so the long ball may remain a problem going forward.

Floyd, in 25.2 IP, had the highest SIERA by far last month. You just can’t walk 18 and strike out 8 in 25.2 innings and hope to survive very long. Somehow, it worked because he didn’t allow a HR over his last 3 July starts and didn’t get hit all that hard on batters who did make contact (.267 BABIP), but mostly because he stranded 85% of runners who reached base. His batted ball profile was definitely a positive (2.09 GB/FB, 17.4 LD%), but he’s already seen the negatives of that walk rate in his lone August start, allowing 5 ER’s and which probably would have been more if he wasn’t able to strike Vernon Wells out after walking the bases loaded in a key early inning spot. The better news is that he did strike out 6 to go along with 3 walks in his last start. Floyd has definitely been a strange pitcher this year as he’s gone through different periods where he’s struggled with HR’s and control now, while having his lowest K% (18.7) since 2008. I’d be cautious with him for the next few starts and maybe the rest of the season.

No other pitcher had an ERA 3 runs below their SIERA this week. Jason Vargas (2.87 gap) came closest with his 4.51 SIERA and 1.64 ERA, but his home park has helped him to an ERA lower than his SIERA in each of the last 3 seasons and significantly better both this year and in 2010. What happened was that Vargas pitched road games in Tampa Bay, Oakland, and Kansas City (3 large parks), along with 3 at home and converted that into a season low 4 HR’s allowed in July, his 2^nd lowest HR/FB (9.8%) of the season, and 2^nd  lowest BABIP (.224), along with an absurd 91.4 LOB%. Consider that his SIERA and xFIP have been between 4.37 and 4.66 in each of his 4 seasons in Seattle, while his FIP (not HR normalizing) has jumped around a bit, and we know who Jason Vargas is: fine in big parks, scary in smaller ones. Seattle would have been smart to find a GM who might not have realized how friendly the circumstances were in July and sold as high as they probably ever would get a chance to on Vargas. However, there are very few, if any oblivious GM’s left in baseball at this point. They have teams of smart people working for them who know much more than some guy writing for a daily fantasy site.

This is the first time this has happened, but it’s unsurprising that 2 pitchers would be dead on given the larger sample size of a month. So I’ll just quote the numbers and let you see how they got there.

Unfortunately, moving to a monthly feature means we lose the pitchers who go through an entire period without allowing a HR or it will be a special month indeed. Jordan Zimmermann’s 0.97 ERA was July’s best and it came with a solid, but not dominating 3.22 SIERA. Zim had his lowest GB/FB (1.09) month of the season, his highest LOB% (87.8), and an ugly 28.4 LD% that doesn’t fit his .255 BABIP. He did have an incredibly impressive 7.75 K/BB with only 1 HR allowed though.

David Price had the lowest SIERA of July (2.53). His ERA was even better at 1.78. What wasn’t awesome about Price’s month? At least 7 IP in each of his 5 starts, a 32.6 K%, 4.4 K/BB, a low, but not obscene .267 BABIP on a 1.63 GB/FB and 21.3 LD%. He struck out so many batters that only 24 of the 135 batters he faced got the ball in the air resulting in a 12.5 HR/FB that is actually slightly high despite the fact the he only allowed 3 HR’s!!! The 87.3 LOB% is very high, but it’s been over 80% in all except 1 month and when you strike out so many, you aren’t giving batters chances to drive runners in due to things beyond your control. Price’s 3.22 SIERA for the season is 2^nd in the AL only to….Max Scherzer (3.18). Can you say Cy Young?

We already spoke about Gavin Floyd and his 6.42 SIERA in July. Next in line was Carlos Zambrano, whose 5.74 SIERA was matched by his 5.67 ERA as he walked everyone in the park and some people sitting at home too. He has since been removed from the Miami rotation. That’s such a shame because so many people believed all he needed was that “change of scenery” to magically make him into a good pitcher again this year.