The Saber's Edge: Reality Check

Most fantasy analysts should be preaching patience this time of year since we are just over two weeks into the season. No one is going to care a few months from now about these two weeks' worth data. Quick or slow starts are being analyzed to death because it is the only new information. Anyone can have a good couple of weeks or even a good month. Remember Chris Colabello and his .346 AVG and 3 HRs to start off last year? Hopefully not. A player can break out and keep the momentum going for the whole year, but most of the time not. I will step you through how to do a reality check on the two most mentioned and overblown early season stats, batting average (AVG) and earned run average (ERA).

Batting Average
Batting average is everywhere in baseball. It is probably the most referenced stat for hitters and maybe one of the worst for determining a hitter's true value. Batting average is usually being taken out of context on the high end early on. Currently, Adrian Gonzalez and Adam Jones lead the majors with a .442 AVG. There is no chance they can keep it up. Zero. Let's look back at the five qualified hitters with the highest AVG values from March and April in 2014 and where they ended up at the end of the season.

Name: 2014 Mar/Apr AVG, 2014 Full season AVG
Charlie Blackmon: .374, .288
Troy Tulowitzki: .364, .340
Chase Utley: .355, .270
Alexei Ramirez: .351, .273
Yadier Molina: .350, .282

The first item which sticks out is Blackmon's .374 value. It was the top AVG at the end of April in 2014. Right now in 2015, 12 qualified hitters have an AVG over .374. In just another week or so, we can expect these high batting averages to drop significantly.

It is not surprising that all five of the values went down. All the hitters, except Tulowitzki, experienced an approximate 70 point drop in batting average by the season's end. To put into another perspective, here are the recent full season batting average highs. Right now, 22 hitters are hitting over .350.

2014: .341
2013: .348
2012: .336
2011: .344
2010: .359

One hitter each season seems to get around a .340 to .350 AVG. Not 22 of them. So generally, hitters with AVG over .350 are expected to regress to a lower batting average.

Here are couple of players I expect to see their batting average fall further than others at the top of the list.

D.J. LeMahieu (.417 AVG)
The 26-year-old has not hit over .300 in the majors, but came close in 2012 with a .297 AVG. He doesn't hit the ball hard enough like Adrian Gonzlaez and Adam Jones to continually hit his way on base. Instead he needs to rely on his speed to raise his average. He is just getting older and slower so his legs may not keep the rate up.

Adam Jones (.442 AVG)
Nothing points to Jones keeping up the high AVG. We have long history with Jones and why should that change with a couple weeks of information. Here are Jones's AVG, K%, and BABIP over the last six seasons

Season: AVG, K%, BABIP
2010: .284, 19%, .328
2011: .280, 18%, .304
2012: .287, 18%, .313
2013: .285, 20%, .314
2014: .281, 20%, .311
2015: .442, 9%, .419

I would bet on his long multi-year history and go with a .285 AVG, 19% K% and a .315 BABIP.

ERA
I don't think people get too excited over an early season low ERA. Most owners expect their pitchers to perform well. Instead, it is the pitchers on the other end of the spectrum owners worry about. The pitchers with an ERA over 5.00. In today's low run scoring environment, an ERA of more than 4.00 is undesirable. When looking at pitchers with a high ERA, a process needs to be followed to see if the ERA is from a couple unlucky starts or from a change in talent level.
The first item to check is the pitcher's velocity. A starter will likely see a .28 increase in their ERA for each mph loss in fastball speed. For a reliever the value is .54. For some pitchers the value will be more and for others less. We just don't know where each pitcher's talent will exactly end up. It may take a couple of months for a pitcher's talent level to be truly known at new velocity.
The first items after velocity I look at this early in the season is left of base rate (LOB%), batted ball in play (BABIP) or home runs per game (HR/9). If one of these values is completely out of place then we can expect improvement as the season goes on. In 2014, here are the end-of-season ranges in the mentioned values from all qualified starters:

Stat: Low, High
LOB%: 62%, 83%
BABIP: .238, .339
HR/9: 0.3, 1.5

Current, four qualified starters fall on the wrong side of each of those ranges. Also not surprising to see each with a nice big ERA.

Name: LOB%, BABIP, HR/9, ERA
Kyle Lohse: 45%, .357, 1.8, 10.34
Mike Fiers: 51%, .386, 1.8, 6.75
Jose Quintana: 55%, .365, 1.8, 8.40
Jason Marquis: 61%, .439, 1.8, 7.20

(It is not a mistake that all five are at 1.8 HR/9, but it is a little weird)
We should expect each of the preceding pitchers' ERAs to improve as the season goes on, but to what value. To find pitchers large improvements, I like to look at this leaderboard. It has ERA, three ERA estimators (FIP, xFIP and SIERA) and three stats which can cause an inflated FIP (LOB%, BABIP and HR/9). The ERA estimators show the normal ERA values for a given pitcher with a similar talent level with a heavy weight towards strikeouts and walks.

One name which really sticks out is Jon Lester and his 6.89 ERA. His ERA estimators are clustered around 3.00. He has been a little unlucky with runners on base (60% LOB%), but the big issue has been his .434 BABIP. He is just getting knocked around in his first three games. He may end up with a high BABIP at the end of the season, but not .434 high. If an owner is worried about Lester, don't be right now.

Here are my thoughts on couple of other pitchers with high ERAs

Jordan Zimmermann (6.14 ERA)
Not a lot of good news to report here. His ERA estimators have his ERA over 5.00. The biggest issue with him is a decline in strikeouts (8.2 K/9 to 4.3 K/9) and increase in walks (1.3 BB/9 to 3.1 BB/9). I think he may be hurt because his average fastball velocity is down from 93.8 mph to 92.1 mph and pitches in the strike zone is down from 54% to 51%. I am little worried he is past the honeymoon period with his Tommy John surgery and may need a second. In a Hardball Times article I found:

"The newest cool trend is a second Tommy John surgery. This area is ripe for some research. In the 2013 THT Annual, we found pitchers had about 650 innings between their first and second procedure, though the sample size was miniscule. Recently, I ran a brief study using the up-to-date TJS database and found those pitchers who had their first TJS from before 2011 averaged 4.5 years until they needed to go under the knife again, with a median time of 4.0 years. These numbers are in the ballpark of the 650 innings value we originally found."

Well, Zimmermann is at 813 innings and has been pitching for just over four seasons. Right now it may be time to sell low on Zimmermann because his price may go even lower.

Michael Pineda (5.00 ERA)
He has all the signs of a turn around. His ERA estimators are around 2.50. A .392 BABIP which has helped lead to a 66% LOB%. His strikeouts and walks are fine right now. He has been productive when he has been healthy. But is he? A 2 mph drop velocity. A 2.5% point drop in Zone%. A history with injuries. He is a changing pitcher right now and we have no clue where is talent will end up at.