Naming the top three pitching assets in baseball

Katie Gonzales

Shane Williams

Austin Overmann

Nick Klein

Megan Tews

NAMING THE TOP THREE PITCHING ASSETS IN BASEBALL

OUR TOP THREE

1 2 3

OVERVIEW

• Process of Selection

• Projection Model

• Performance Forecast

• Valuation Methodology

• Assessment of Risk

PROCESS OF SELECTION

STARTING THE EVALUATION

• What we initially looked at:

• Past statistics and trends

• Concerns with player makeup

• How it was narrowed down:

• Players 30+ years old were cut

• Players with high dollar contracts were cut

• Players with little to no team control were cut

• Players recently sustaining major injuries were cut

CONTINUING THE EVALUATION

FIP- ERA- WAR QS% Avg. IP IP per Start

Jose Fernandez 72 58 4.878 71% 172.2 6.1

Chris Sale 76 71 4.838 71% 203 7.0

Madison Bumgarner 87 84 3.848 66% 205 6.1

PROJECTION MODEL

APPROACH TO DEVELOPING PROJECTIONS

• Determined what metrics were most important in evaluating pitching talent

• Including: FBv, K/9, BB/9, HR/9, FIP, SwStr%, BABIP

• Then create a metric valuing the above metrics to compare players’ “talent”

• Then applied the age curve to measure how the “talent” would change during their control years

PERFORMANCE PROJECTION

• Make a “comparison” statistic similar to Bill James’ similarity score to determine similar players

• Ran through players from 2002-2013 using a metric that valued these pitching qualities: K/9, BB/9, GB%/FB%, FIP and BABIP

• This metric was on a scale of about 120 – 220 with some outliers

• Then use those players and average their change over six years and apply to the player that they were similar to

FIRST RESULTS

Name Age FIP WAR SPR* Rank (79) Comparison*

Clayton Kershaw 25 2.39 6.5 100.00 2 180.16

Chris Sale 24 3.17 5.1 88.014 16 183.56

Jose Fernandez 20 2.73 4.2 98.699 3 173.40

Madison Bumgarner 23 3.05 3.7 92.968 5 170.88

LOOKING AT WAR

PERFORMANCE FORECAST

JOSE FERNANDEZ

Age ERA G IP FBv FIP WAR SwStr% F-Strike% BABIP S% SPR* Comparison

20 2.19 28 172 94.90 2.73 4.20 0.10 0.62 0.24 0.66 98.70 173.40

21 2.10 28 183 94.70 2.73 4.50 0.10 0.62 0.24 0.66 98.76 169.05

22 2.14 28 184 94.65 2.63 5.08 0.10 0.62 0.24 0.67 100.45 165.84

23 2.46 28 172 94.45 2.48 4.59 0.09 0.61 0.34 0.68 87.41 169.13

24 2.11 26 172 94.35 2.53 4.49 0.09 0.63 0.34 0.68 86.13 163.92

25 2.15 27 174 94.30 2.53 4.24 0.08 0.63 0.29 0.68 91.75 173.84

JOSE FERNANDEZ

CHRIS SALE

Age ERA G IP FBv FIP WAR SwStr% F-Strike% BABIP S% SPR* Comparison

24 3.07 30 214 93.10 3.17 5.10 0.11 0.63 0.29 0.67 88.01 183.56

25 2.92 29 223 92.50 2.97 5.90 0.09 0.63 0.34 0.67 85.11 177.60

26 2.76 29 222 92.35 3.07 6.10 0.09 0.63 0.34 0.67 83.99 185.25

27 3.06 29 209 92.10 3.17 5.55 0.09 0.64 0.34 0.68 83.32 180.91

28 3.01 29 217 91.70 3.27 5.38 0.08 0.64 0.34 0.68 82.47 180.74

29 3.14 29 219 91.30 3.57 4.99 0.08 0.65 0.39 0.68 76.70 180.20

CHRIS SALE

COMPARING #1 AND #2

• Minuscule difference

• Basic and advanced statistics

• Present value versus future value

MADISON BUMGARNER

Age ERA G IP FBv FIP WAR SwStr% F-Strike% BABIP S% SPR* Comparison

23 2.77 31 201 91.4 3.05 3.70 0.11 0.60 0.25 0.64 92.97 170.88

24 2.68 31 211 91.18 2.99 4.00 0.11 0.60 0.25 0.64 93.1 166.79

25 2.72 31 213 90.98 2.82 4.58 0.11 0.61 0.27 0.65 92.84 163.7

26 3.04 31 201 90.38 2.94 4.09 0.10 0.60 0.27 0.65 90.88 166.78

27 2.69 29 201 89.36 2.78 3.99 0.09 0.62 0.26 0.65 93.4 161.86

28 2.73 30 203 89.41 2.8 3.74 0.09 0.62 0.27 0.65 93.05 171.14

MADISON BUMGARNER

COMPARING #2 AND #3

• Significant gap

• Present value is the downfall

• Substantial difference in WAR

TRANSLATING PERFORMANCE INTO DOLLARS

SALARY

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Jose Fernandez 635,000 635,000 ARB ARB ARB

Chris Sale 3,500,000 6,000,000 9,150,000 12,000,000 (12,500,000)

Madison Bumgarner 3,750,000 6,750,000 9,750,000 11,500,000 (12,000,000)

Clayton Kershaw 4,000,000 30,000,000 32,000,000 33,000,000 33,000,00

SURPLUS VALUE

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Jose Fernandez 26,365,000 27,887,500 19,898,750 20,290,000 20,670,000

Chris Sale 26,850,000 25,620,000 24,450,000 24,365,000 25,477,500

Madison Bumgarner 20,500,000 19,372,500 17,448,750 15,795,000 16,416,250

Clayton Kershaw 35,900,000 11,838,000 11,698,000 12,261,000 13,728,000

VALUATION METHODOLOGY

SALARY PREDICTION

• Impossible to estimate arbitration salary

• Similar pitchers receiving extensions

• Fernandez salary projection: 3 year 33 Million

• 2016: $10M

• 2017: $11M

• 2018: $12M

ASSESSMENT OF RISK

JOSE FERNANDEZ• Risk Factor: High

• Why it’s risky:

• He only has one year of service in the MLB

• There is a high flame out rate for pitchers

• What we believe:

• Jose Fernandez will have a very successful career

• Rebuttal:

• Jose had one of the best rookie pitching seasons of all-time

CHRIS SALE• Risk Factor: Moderate

• Why it’s risky:

• Chris Sale’s arm action and body type could lead to injuries in the future

• What we believe:

• Chris Sale is going to continue to be the #2 LHP in baseball behind Clayton Kershaw

• Rebuttal:

• Sale hasn’t had any injury problems since breaking into the majors

MADISON BUMGARNER• Risk Factor: Low

• Why it’s risky:

• He’s thrown a high number of innings (614.1 IP) at a very young age (21 through 23) in his 3 full Major League seasons

• What we believe:

• Bumgarner, much like Sale will continue to be one of the best lefties in the game

• Rebuttal:

• Bumgarner has improved in each of his MLB seasons and hasn’t shown any signs of wear and tear

PLAYER MAKEUP

JOSE FERNANDEZ

• Vocally intense

• Fiery

• “Mound presence and makeup are off the charts”

– Juan Rodriguez, Miami-Sun Sentinel

CHRIS SALE

• Stays calm while pitching

• Left Handed

• “Strong mental makeup”

– Rick Hahn, Chicago White Sox General Manager

MADISON BUMGARNER

• Competitive

• Even-Tempered

• Left Handed

• “His makeup is off the charts”

– Bruce Bochy, San Francisco Giants Manager

CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION

• Starting Pitcher Rating

• Surplus value

• Sustainability

REFERENCES• Fangraphs. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.fangraphs.com/

• Petti, B. (2012, May 2). Pitcher aging curves: Starters and relievers. Retrieved from http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/pitcher-aging-curves-starters-and-relievers/

• Baseball reference. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.baseball-reference.com/

• Silver, N. (2007). Pecota under the hood. Nate Silver, Baseball Prospectus, Retrieved from https://www.google.com/search?q=Nate Silver ppt&oq=Nate Sil&aqs=chrome.0.69i59l2j69i57j0l3.3411j0j4&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

OBJECTION

• Starting Pitcher Rating dropped over years of contact.

• Ended at 69.38 in 2018

OBJECTION – PART 2

Player IP ERA K WHIP

Yu Darvish (25) 190 3.9 221 1.28

Yu Darvish (26) 210 2.83 277 1.07

Justin Verlander (25) 201 4.84 163 1.4

Justin Verlander (26) 240 3.45 269 1.17

Both have roughly a 28% increase in ERA and 17% increase in WHIP from age 25 to 26

OBJECTION

• 6 Million Per Marginal Win (WAR)

• 5% Inflation from previous year

• Example-(4*6,000,000)*.05+Previous Year Surplus Value

OBJECTION

• Justin Verlander 5 year $80 Million

• Age 27

• Felix Hernandez 5 year $78 Million

• Age 24

• Larger markets than Miami

OBJECTION

OBJECTION

• Likely not playing in 2014 season

• Unknown recovery

• Kris Medlen 2nd surgery

• Brian Wilson

• Adam Wainwright

• Jordan Zimmerman

• Limiting risk