The recent observation that Luke's problem is pitching from the stretch seems plausible. Being curious, I compiled some data related to this notion to see how closely the numbers supported this.
2012 |
Empty |
MenOn |
Delta |
Zack Greinke |
.251 |
.257 |
.006 |
Justin Verlander |
.212 |
.222 |
.010 |
Luis Mendoza |
.273 |
.301 |
.028 |
Luke Hochevar |
.254 |
.299 |
.045 |
Bruce Chen |
.255 |
.313 |
.058 |
This table suggests that the best pitchers are roughly the same in wind-up and stretch situations, and if Luke has a stretch problem, you have to say the same for Bruce.
The next step (suggested in yesterday's thread) was to see how the wind-up versus stretch data showed in Good Luke/Bad Luke games.
Using Play Data from FanGraphs, I created two csv files that can be downloaded (below) for use in Excel. Feel free to change the ‘filter' field to run your own analysis. Below is a quick table using the data.
To keep things simple, I split the games into three groups using Game Score, and summed outs versus reached based (ie. not batting average or on-base percentage). The numbers show that Hoch is worse with men on based in each filter grouping, but suggests the problem is related more to having a bad game since he has a 45.9 Percent Reached with bases empty in bad games.
So Hochevar does have a wind-up versus stretch problem, but that doesn't seem to drive the Good Luke/Bad Luke bus.