Quantifying Yu Darvish's Injury

There are a lot of poorly constructed narratives and talking points when it comes to Yu Darvish, and I have no interest in deconstructing or rebutting any of them. However, from watching nearly every single Darvish start since he came to the United States (mainly because of geography), I found it interesting, though perhaps not surprising, that Darvish was struggling with an injury, in this case, a nerve problem causing him to lose feeling in his leg.

For this post, I wanted to see if there was something in the Pitch F/X data that showed if/how the injury was hampering Darvish, and to look at his season as a whole. I decided, since I am looking at each outing individually, that I would only to look at his 2013 home outings. This way we won't be subject to any biases in Pitch F/X data from park to park (this is especially important when looking at release point and movement data).

Darvish made 19 home starts in 2013, and just to use a random sample size, his last 7 starts had a higher game score on average than his first 7 starts. He also averaged over a strikeout more and about a half a walk less per outing in those last 7 starts. His ERAs and FIPs of those starts were better in the last 7 than the first 7, so it is impossible to make the argument that Darvish faded down the stretch when it comes to effectiveness. However, it does seem that Darvish wasn't able to go as deep into games, as he averaged 2 less batters and 6 less pitches in his last 7 outings. Whether this was quicker hooks, general fatigue, or the nerve issue (or the back or neck issues which bothered him in Japan and off and on in Texas) isn't worth speculating about unless you've stolen Darvish's medical records or given him a physical. So instead, let's look at the data and see if there is any evidence that his injury was affecting how he was pitching.

First let's see where he has located the ball, on average, per start:

You probably wouldn't think it considering that Darvish was a high strikeout, high home run pitcher in 2013, but he is a pretty extreme low ball pitcher. He throws a lot of sliders, so perhaps it isn't too surprising, but he does stay arm side on average (he does change his slider location based on platoon split a little more than average). In September, you will notice that he was throwing the ball lower than he usually does, and two of those starts were more glove side than usual. His April 7th was his most glove side start. August, perhaps his best month (by wOBA against it was), was the month he consistently threw higher. He wasn't as effective in September (May was still probably worse), and it is easy to see the differences between the two months. Here we can see how Darvish's release point changed from start to start at home:

August shows up as the highest release point, something that makes sense with the highest average locations. Higher release points are usually better, and the statistics don't suggest anything different here. Darvish went on the DL for a short time in early July, and we saw that one of his late June starts had an average location stand out for being pretty heavily glove side. That particular start (the 18th) has a pretty normal release point compared to his others, but June 30th stands out for being closer to the center of the rubber, as does an early July start. Late April and early May is when his release point got the furthest from the center of the rubber and the lowest. His September starts don't stand out here, but his August starts do again.

The article linked to above does show that his fastball lost a little velocity at the end of the year. How about fastball movement?

The June 13th start stands out on the graph, but I believe this is due to an error. One of the fastballs had negative vertical movement, which doesn't make a lot of sense (though it was 91.5 MPH so I don't think it was a classification error, just a Pitch F/X error). Other than that, it appears that to be hard to find real trends. In September, he didn't have the lowest vertical movement starts, but he lacked the elite ones he got throughout the season. However, his September 14th start had the 2nd most horizontal movement of the home part of the season. I don't think this is particularly helpful.

It seems that the data doesn't explicitly show an injury late in the season for Darvish, as we don't see in either the release point or location data a clear difference in September from the rest of the months. That doesn't mean that the injury was not there, it just didn't show up in an obvious way in the Pitch F/X data. The biggest difference was actually August, a month where he was dominant. One can easily see the difference between August and September, but August seems to be the outlier, and would be the red flag month if you didn't know that he was struggling to finish games in September.

Is the Radar Gun in Japan "Cold"?

In my article on Masahiro Tanaka, I speculated that Tanaka could see an average fastball velocity increase in the Majors because of some slow pitches that were tagged as fastballs by Yahoo!. The point was that the MLBAM tags seem to be superior to Yahoo! tags, so the fastball wouldn't actually be better, it would just look harder thanks to better labels, even if it is a slight increase. However, I have had a couple of readers on Twitter argue that pitchers who go from the NPB to the Majors have an increase in fastballs for whatever reason, unrelated to Yahoo's taggings. With Patrick Newman getting his NPB pitch data back online, this is something we can test. The data starts in 2009 and (currently) ends at 2012, so I looked through the player index, and looked for pitchers that pitched in the Majors as well as the NPB. I then removed every player that didn't play in the Majors and the NPB in consecutive years, because if there is a gap in years, then of course there will be drastic velocity changes. I only inputted the fastball velocities of the consecutive years. To use Yu Darvish as an example, I used just his 2011 NPB fastball velocity and just his 2012 MLB fastball velocity (there were a few pitchers that pitched in the MLB, then Japan, then the MLB again. For those pitchers, I used the first year of the second stint of the MLB as the velocity, along with the last year of the NPB stint). For the MLB velocity, I just used FanGraphs' Pitch F/X section for ease. I got 44 pitchers in my sample, not a large one, but one that should at least give us an idea of whether or not the hypothesis is correct.

The pitchers' average fastball velocity in the NPB was 89.04 MPH, while their average velocity was 91.22 MPH in the Majors, a gigantic 2.18 MPH difference. Of course, it isn't that easy. Many times, pitchers that were used as fringe relievers in the MLB were/are signed to NPB teams to be used as starters. If a pitcher pitches in relief in the Majors, and then as a starter in the NPB, then their average fastball velocity will be artificially down in Japan. For instance, in the Majors, the average velocity for starters is 91.4 MPH in 2013, and 92.9 MPH for relievers. This doesn't make up the whole difference, but it does possibly explain at least some of this. So I looked at the 44 pitchers again, and noted whether or not they changed from a starter to reliever or vise versa (if the majority of their outings were as a starter, I considered them a starter, etc.). Only 19 of them actually had role changes, with the other 25 staying the same.

Out of the 25 that stayed in the same role, their average NPB velocity was 90.02, while their average MLB velocity was 91.66 MPH. So there still seems to be a difference of about 1.5 MPH in velocity between the NPB and the Majors. The actual reason for this is unclear, and any theories put forth by me would all be speculation. Also, I should note that I didn't look at 2013 data, so there is always the chance that this has changed in someway, but for now, it appears that Yahoo's radar gun readings for the NPB are about 1.5 MPH slow compared to those of MLBAM's 50 foot release point designation.

There should be some caution exercised however, with a sample size this small, because there could be other factors driving the velocity changes. For example, two of the biggest velocity climbers from the NPB to the Majors were Hisashi Iwakuma and Chang-yong Lim, whose velocity increases could be explained, at least partially, from better health in the Majors (Iwakuma has batted shoulder problems in his career and was scarcely used in the first half of the season with Seattle, only to emerge in the rotation in the second half, Lim had Tommy John surgery in 2012, and his 2013 season is him coming off that. These injuries could have slowed down their fastballs in their last year of the NPB, while the MLB version of the pitcher is the healthy version). Pitchers like Yoshinori Tateyama, Colby Lewis and Yu Darvish actually saw a small decrease in velocity from the NPB to the Majors (all of them going to Texas), and Kam Mickolio has actually gained about a MPH in Japan after leaving the Majors.

Slow Pitches in the Major Leagues

I have always been fascinated by the slow pitch in baseball, especially the Major Leagues. In a league where 95 MPH fastballs are not unusual, and velocity is important, some pitchers throw pitches in the 60s to unsuspecting batters. I wanted to look at why pitchers might do so and whether or not this is an effective strategy.

Not counting intentional balls or pitchouts, there have been 32323 pitches since 2008 tracked by Pitch F/X thrown under 70 MPH. The clear leader in slow pitches thrown is Tim Wakefield, as over 85 % of the pitches he threw from 2008 to the end of his career were below 70 MPH. Wakefield was well below average in effectiveness over that stretch, but was still an above replacement pitcher.

By far the most common pitch thrown under 70 MPH is the curveball. About 68 percent of pitches thrown under 70 MPH are curveballs (21982 times) and this doesn't include the 509 eephuses or the 231 knuckle curves.

The eephuses are slower at 59.27 MPH on average, while the knuckle curves under 70 average about 67.89 MPH and the curveballs 67.8 MPH. Strangely, there isn't much of a difference between the way the average eephus and slow knuckle curve is located, but the average slow curve is thrown much lower (the entire graph is the strike zone).

When you break the curveballs down by 5 MPH velocity ranges, we see that the slowest ones are located higher while the "harder" ones are located lower:

This explains the difference in eephus and slow curve locations, but not really the high knuckle curves. 8432 of the pitches under 70 MPH are knuckleballs, mostly from Wakefield. I won't look further at them because I plan on looking at knuckleball locations a little bit more in a future post.

So is the slow pitch more effective than a normal pitch? Here are how the slow pitches break down:

2980 whiffs 9.2 %

5954 contact plays 18.4 %

204 home runs .63 %

Compared to league average (just using 2013 for league average for our purposes), the slow pitches actually have a slightly smaller home run rate (by about .03 %) and a league average whiff rate. They also had a .2 % smaller contact rate. So the slow pitches seem to be slightly better than a league average pitch, but probably not significantly. The only thing you can complain about them is that they are harder to throw strikes. The slow pitches have been strikes 61.33 % of the time, while 2013 league average is 63.53 % (63.38 % for relievers, 63.61 % for starters).

What about pitchers that throw a lot of slow pitches? After all, throwing a slow pitch seems to be about deception and tricking the batter. If a pitcher throws a lot of slow pitches, then wouldn't the effect wear off?

This is where looking at Wakefield and others can be helpful. Unfortunately, Wakefield is the only one with a significant amount of pitches with over 50% slow pitches. In fact, only Daniel Herrera and Charlie Haeger are over 20 % with a significant amount of pitches.

With Wakefield, you knew what was coming. He was going to throw the knuckleball, and then another knuckleball, and then a few more. Here are his pitches under 70 MPH broken down by result:

8158 pitches

1771 contact plays (21.7 %)

73 home runs (.89 %)

718 whiffs (8.8 %)

Wakefield was below average across the board with his slow pitches, not surprising considering that he was a below average pitcher and featured the slow pitch heavily. Looking at the two most prominent non-knuckleball examples may be more helpful though.

Herrera:

418 pitches

107 contact plays (25.6 %)

2 home runs (.47 %)

62 whiffs (14.8 %)

I guess since it was a screwball, it isn't surprising to see weird results. He gave up a lot of contact, but at the same time got a lot of whiffs and still didn't give up home runs with it.

Justin Duchscherer:

420 pitches

70 contact plays (16.67 %)

52 whiffs (12.38 %)

3 home runs (.71 %)

The results here are almost as weird as Herrera's. Duchsherer gave up less contact than average with his slow pitches, getting more whiffs, but also giving up more homers (even though he pitched for Oakland, who plays in a pitcher friendly park).

Randy Wolf and Dave Bush are two more pitchers who featured slow curves more than 15 % of the time. Wolf had a well below average whiff rate with it, and a slightly lower than league average home run rate. Bush had an above average whiff rate and a slightly above average home run rate.

What I was really interested in was guys who have good stuff, but still throw the occasional slow pitch. Yu Darvish is probably the best example, getting up to 97 MPH with a fastball with one of the top sliders in baseball, and also throwing an occasional curveball in the 60s.

On a whole, Darvish is better than league average at limiting homers (.57 %), much better at getting whiffs (12.2 %), and gives up less contact than average (15 %). He has thrown 198 pitches under 70 MPH, all curves, about 3.55 % of pitches thrown. They still have an above average whiff rate (10.1 %), but is below his average. He has given up 3 homers with them, a well above league average rate, but gives up contact with it just 11.1 %, much less than league average or his average rate. So for him, it isn't a pitch he misses a lot of bats with, and he has gotten burned with it, but it is thrown mainly as a shock pitch, an attempt to get a called strike. It is a pitch on average, he throws arm side, and about equally high and low. He is trying to throw it for a strike intentionally, just to steal an occasional strike. Considering the rest of his pitches, it is risky.

Vicente Padilla is another example of a guy who throws hard but also occasionally throws a really slow pitch (and ironically, he went from the MLB to the NPB, where he still throws the slow pitch). Sometimes labelled as an eephus and sometimes labelled as a curve, it is more of an aggressively slow pitch than Darvish's, averaging 58.3 MPH versus Darvish's 67.1 MPH. The pitch had a laughable whiff rate, short of 3 percent, but he gave up contact with it two percent less than average and only gave up 1 homer in over 400 pitches with it. Perhaps even more dramatically than Darvish's Padilla's slow pitch was designed as a take pitch for a strike. Padilla locates his slow curve equally arm side as Darvish, but a little higher. It isn't supposed to generate swings, it is supposed to just fall into the strike zone while the hitter stares at it.

Zack Greinke's slow curve is a little different, as his home run rate with it is low, but his whiff and contact rates are high. It is designed to be swung at, and not surprisingly, it is thrown glove side and arm side about equally, and in the low part of the strike zone on average. It is thrown about .3 MPH harder than Darvish's, so it is a slow curve, but he throws it like a classic curve.

There are also some unique pitches such as Yoshi Tateyama and Herrera's screwball/changeups. Herrera located low in the zone on average about equally glove and arm side. Tateyama on the other hand, has both a screwball and a curveball that he throws under 70 MPH. His curve is located arm side and a little lower than the middle of the zone on average. It is clearly a take pitch, with well below average contact and whiff rates. His average screwball on the other hand, is located slightly lower, and so far arm side on average that it isn't in the strike zone. It is more of a contact pitch, getting hardly any whiffs, and a slightly higher than average contact rate.

I count seven other pitchers with two different pitch types thrown under 70 MPH at a significant amount. R.J. Swindle a slider in the high 60s with a curve in the 50s. Mike Mussina change and knuckle curve both in the high 60s. Donovan Hand has a few changeups in the high 60s to go with his high 60s curveball.
Charlie Haeger has a few high 60s curves to go with his knuckleball. R.A. Dickey is a similar story (he has three if you include the eephus and curve differential in the tags). Wakefield had a few 4-seam fastball tags under 70 MPH, along with his curveball and knuckleballs. Dallas Braden threw an occasional slow curve to go with his unusually slow change.

There were also some obvious errors, such as a 4-seam fastball by Frank Francisco and a moving fastball by John Danks. Some of the really slow changeups, including some thrown in the 40s, are really hard to believe (especially one thrown by Radhames Liz, someone who can throw 100 MPH with his fastball). 

So the slow pitch can be effective, and it can be used in different ways by different pitchers. It can be an interesting tool to have, but it doesn't guarantee whiffs. Personally, I thought the home run rates and the whiff rates would be higher than they were. 

Yoshihisa Hirano Scouting Report

Yoshihisa Hirano is a 29 year old right-handed closer for the Orix Buffaloes. Once a reasonably effective but uninspiring starter (105 ERA - in 2006 and 104 ERA - in 2007, not park adjusted), Hirano has become one of the more effective relievers in the NPB, with a 2.53 kwERA over the last 4 years. In 2012, he walked just 5 batters in about 80 innings, while still striking out a batter per inning. I haven't heard rumors of him coming to United States, but the numbers are interesting, even if they don't quite match those of Kyuji Fujikawa's, who is 4 years older.

Hirano has okay size, listed at 6-1 185, and has an interesting delivery, mainly when he comes set with a pause that looks like this:

It isn't a long pause, but he brings his hands up high almost above his head.
The rest of his delivery is pretty standard other than his wrist, something he bends backward, like he is curling it or rolling it:

 This seemed quite unusual to me, something I wasn't really used to seeing.

However, Masahiro Tanaka also has the wrist bend:

Tanaka and Hirano's deliveries are strikingly similar overall, though Tanaka has less of a pause. Hirano has a better body as well, looking leaner and more athletic. I looked at some other notable pitchers, and they didn't seem to have quite the same wrist bend as Tanaka and Hirano.

Clayton Kershaw:

Fellow Japanese natives Yu Darvish and Hiroki Kuroda:

 I don't pretend to know anything about the pitch by pitch mechanics of pitching, but from what I understand, usually pitchers cock their wrists on sliders. However, the Hirano screenshot above is not on a slider, and it seems that he does this wrist curl with every pitch. I don't know what it means exactly, but he has always had good control (or low walk rates), so it is not like he is struggling to command everything he is throwing like a slider, but it may give him (and Tanaka) more movement on his pitches.

I took the Yahoo data from Hirano's last two outings to get a better idea of what he throws, which turned out to be one good outing and one bad outing. 28 of the 36 pitches he threw turned out to be fastballs, averaging 92 MPH and getting up to 94 MPH. So it is a decent and a big league capable fastball, but isn't a plus MLB fastball.

Hirano also threw a few forkballs at 82-84 MPH and 79-82 MPH slider.

Here is what Hirano's forkball grip looks like

The pitch doesn't break as much as it just never seems to get there. Anecdotally, he buried it well (occasionally he would spike it), and would throw it to fellow righties.

It seems that he has only the 4-seam fastball and not a moving fastball, but it does have a little run and he located it glove side a lot, coming into lefties on occasion, but also getting a little arm side tail away from lefties.

In other video I've seen of Hirano, he has broken out a curveball at about 66-68 MPH, but the movement and location of it showed why it isn't a pitch he features.

Overall, I think Hirano has pitches that will at least work in the big leagues. He is a reliever because that is what the numbers show he is, but the previous ability to throw a lot of innings at a time has some value and can give MLB teams some flexibility if they are interested. If he comes to the States, it won't be as an elite back of the bullpen pitcher, but as a piece of a bullpen that can go long or pitch in short spurts. Since he is a guy that has become accustomed pitching at the end of the game and being elite, he may have no motivation to come to the United States (basically, it is usually unhelpful to predict what a play does want or doesn't want to do), and the Buffaloes will definitely want to keep him, but he does seem like a guy that is worth keeping an eye on. Guys that throw strikes and don't walk people with fastballs over 90 MPH and an off-speed pitch that they can throw to left-handed hitters have value on MLB teams.

Are Harder Curves or Slower Curves Better?

Mainly as a point of curiosity, I wanted to see if slow curves or hard curves worked better in the Majors. I expected to find, if there is any correlation between velocity and effectiveness in curves, that the harder and the slower curves prefered the best, while the ones closest to the mean were probably the worst. 

Brooks Baseball/Baseball Prospectus counts 254 pitchers who have thrown at least 200 curveballs since 2007. I looked at whiff/swing and GB/FB and split the curveballs down into different sections. The top 24 of the curves averaged 80 MPH or harder. Those curves averaged a 31.53 Whiff/Swing % and had a GB/FB of 2.61.
 
78-80 MPH: 28.29 Whiff/Swing %, 2.36 GB/FB
76-77.99 MPH: 25.98 Whiff/Swing %, 2.51 GB/FB
74-75.99 MPH: 24.51 Whiff/Swing %, 1.94 GB/FB
72-73.99 MPH: 25.35 Whiff/Swing %, 2.29 GB/FB
70-71.99 MPH: 24.14 Whiff/Swing %, 1.68 GB/FB
Under 70 MPH: 26.08 Whiff/Swing %, 1.75 GB/FB
So, at least by GB/FB, there is a pretty clear regression (other than the blip of 72-73.99 MPH) as the curves get slower. It isn't a leap to say that the harder the curve is, the more likely it is to cause ground-balls. When it comes to whiffs, the data seemed to somewhat support my original guess, the harder curves were the best, while the slowest curves were better than ones closest to the mean. However, it is pretty clear that the harder the curve, the more whiffs it got. 

Fangraphs allows us to easily break down pitchers into 30 pitcher chunks. I just looked at 2012. I looked wCU and wCU/C, and then went to each player's page to see their career wRC + against their curveballs were. I used a sample size of at least 80 for the wRC +.

Hardest 30: 82-86.2 MPH range, 13.4 wCU (.45 wCU per pitcher), 87.01 wCU/C (2.9 wCU/C per pitcher), 36.75 wRC +

Next 30: 81-82 MPH, 44.5 wCU (1.48 per pitcher), 27.37 wCU/C (.91 wCU/C per pitcher), 68.83 wRC +

Next 30: 79.9-81 MPH, 15.4 wCU (.51 per pitcher), -16.45 wCU/C (-.55 wCU/C), 64.8 wRC +

Next 30: 79.1-79.8 MPH, -12.3 wCU (-.41 per pitcher), -10.31 wCU/C (-.34 wCU/C per pitcher), 62 wRC +

Next 30: 78.5-79.1 MPH, 4.7 wCU (.16 per pitcher), -76.25 wCU/C (-2.54 wCU/C) 85.29 wRC +

Next 30: 77.9-78.5 MPH, -17.4 wCU (-.58 per pitcher), -20.81 wCU/C (-.69 wCU/C per pitcher) 68.44 wRC +

Next 30: 77.3-77.9 MPH, -1.3 wCU (-.04 per pitcher), -18.01 wCU/C (-.6 wCU/C) 73.04 wRC +

Next 30: 76.6-77.2 MPH, 4.97 wCU (.17 wCU), -13.92 wCU/C (-.464 wCU/C), 70.13 wRC +

Next 30: 75.8-76.6 MPH, -10.4 wCU (-.35 wCU), -22.02 (-.734 wCU/C), 71.43 wRC +

Next 30: 75.2-75.6 MPH,  -14.9 wCU (-.5 wCU per pitcher), -18.87 wCU/C (-.629 wCU/C), 70.41 wRC +

Next 30: 74.1-75.1 MPH, 27.2 wCU (.91 wCU per pitcher), 4.7 wCU/C (.16 wCU/C per pitcher), 67.68 wRC +

Next 30: 72.7-74.1 MPH, -6.6 wCU (-.22 wCU per pitcher), -25.34 wCU/C (-.84 wCU/C), 75.67 wRC +

Next 30: 70.6-72.7 MPH, 6.4 wCU (.21 wCU per pitcher), -40.22 wCU/C (-1.34 wCU/C), 67.89 wRC +

Last/Slowest 21: 63.2-70.6 MPH, -13.2 wCU (-.63 wCU per pitcher), -11.17 wCU/C (-.53 wCU/C), 72.05 wRC +

By wCU:
81-82 MPH
74.1-75.1 
79.9-81
82-86.2
70.6-72.7
76.6-77.2
78.5-79.1
77.3-77.9
72.7-74.1
75.8-76.6
79.1-79.9
75.2-75.6
77.9-78.5
63.2-70.6

By wCU/C:
82-86.2
81-82
74.1-75.1

79.1-79.8
76.6-77.2
63.2-70.6
79.9-81
77.3-77.9
75.2-75.6
77.9-78.5
75.8-76.5
72.7-74.1
70.6-72.7
78.5-79.1

By wRC +:
82-86.2
79.1-79.8
79.9-81
74.1-75.1
70.6-72.7
77.9-78.5
81-82
76.6-77.2
75.2-75.8
75.8-76.6
63.2-70.6
77.3-77.9
72.7-74.1
78.5-79.1

The correlation here is not as strong, but it does seem like the harder curves fared better than the rest. Overall, this data somewhat surprised me. I didn't think having a "hard" curve was a plus, in fact, I have been long been fascinated by the slow curves of Jered Weaver, Yu Darvish, and many others you see on the other side of the Pacific. This data suggests that it is better to have a hard curve, like King Felix, Matt Moore, or Stephen Strasburg. As long as these aren't classification errors (such as sliders being called curves), this has some big implications for scouting.

I did want to look at knuckle curves too, but according to Fangraphs, in the Pitch F/X era (2007-2012) only A.J. Burnett, Vin Mazzero, and Nathan Adcock (and maybe Chad Gaudin once) have thrown knuckle curves. So obviously there isn't enough data to look at.

How our Japanese Projections did

So as the season in Japan and America is about to wrap up, it is time to look back at the projections I used to evaluate players coming from the NPB to the MLB and vise versa. Here is the major pitcher projection I used, and here is the major pitching projection.

As Jeff Sullivan points out, success in Japan to America isn't always linear. These projections basically assumed they were. The off-season was a long time ago, and regular readers will notice that their has been some revolution of thought on this blog. Now, instead of using the projections, I would scout more (video of most players are online) and use NPB Tracker's pitch data to evaluate pitchers. I've done this in other posts when looking at players in the two major leagues in East Asia. I just wanted to see how the projections did for fun and of course, to see if they had any predictive value.

From Japan to U.S:

Tsuyoshi Wada: After a spring where it was apparent he wasn't healthy, he had Tommy John Surgery and he didn't pitch in the regular season.

Yu Darvish:
Projection: 2.42 ERA, .995 WHIP, 192 strikeouts, ~6.5 WAR, worth 20-24 million.
Actual: 3.90 ERA, 3.30 FIP, 1.27 WHIP, 221 strikeouts, 4.9 WAR, 22 War Dollars (according to Fangraphs). I basically projected him to be around Cliff Lee statistically, and in FIP and FIP -, he was right around Cliff Lee.

Norichika Aoki

Projection: .388 OBP, .95 PPG, 2.97 PAPP, ~ 3.64 WAR, worth ~ 5-11 Million

Actual: .355 OBP, 3.2 rWAR, 3.1 fWAR, 13.7 WAR Dollars (according to Fangraphs)

Wei-Yin Chen
Projection:  1.162 WHIP 3.02 ERA, 6.072 K/9IP, ~5 million
Actual: 1.27 WHIP, 4.11 ERA, 4.43 FIP, 7.26 K/9IP, 9.5 WAR Dollars (according to Fangraphs)

Hisashi Iwakuma
Projection: 1.29 WHIP, 3.86 ERA, 77 strikeouts, ~5-10 million
Actual:  1.28 WHIP, 3.32 ERA, 4.51 FIP, 94 strikeouts, 2.1 WAR dollars (according to Fangraphs)


Munenori Kawasaki
Projection: .311 OBP, .61 PPG, 3.5 PAPP, and -1.15 WAR
Actual: .255 OBP, -.4 rWAR

From U.S. to Japan:

John Bowker
Projection: .316 OBP, .06 WAR
Actual: .261 OBP

Lastings Milledge
Projection: .361 OBP, .789 OPS, 1.43 PPG, 2.22 PAPP, 2.13 WAR
Actual: .379 OBP, .865 OPS

Jorge Sosa:
Projection (I didn't do a projection at the time, this is a back dated using the same transfer rate): 4.11 ERA, 1.396 WHIP, 7.69 K/9IP
Actual: 1.91 ERA, 1.174 WHIP, 7.0 K/9IP

Kam Micolio:
Projection (back dated again): 4.22 ERA, 1.525 WHIP, 13.01 K/9IP
Actual: 2.89 ERA, .964 WHIP, 8.7 K/9IP

Esteban German:
Projection (back dated): .392 OBP
Actual: .347 OBP

Wily Mo Pena:
Projection (back dated): .336 OBP
Actual: .333 OBP

(Victor Diaz did horrible in a short stint in Japan this year, but had been in the Mexican League for the past two seasons after stints in the KBO and Independent ball. He hasn't been in the Majors since 2007, so those statistics seem pretty irrelevant. Brad Penny made one bad start before hurting his elbow and coming back to the States where he has been pitching terrible for the Giants.)

I think a big finding is that the projections really underestimated how friendly the league is for pitchers and how devastating it is for hitters (the exception is obviously Lastings Milledge, who outperformed the projection by a lot). This has really changed over the past two seasons, as I understand it, a baseball change has made the league even more pitcher friendly. Any future projection system (not that I will design one), has to take this into serious account. However, this only applies to runs, as the projections overestimated how prevelant strikeouts are in the NPB, as the ones that came to America usually had more strikeouts and the ones that went to Japan had less strikeouts than the projections said they would. Of course, none of this adjusts for parks and that makes it at least somewhat inadequate. My metric on the relation between WAR and salary is much different than Fangraphs' (it is much more conservative, as mine is about 3 million per win, while Fangrahps is about 5 million per win).

Free Agent Watch: Wei-Ying Chen

Japanese pitcher Wei-Ying Chen pitched just 16 innings in 2011 due to injury. So we will instead look at his 2008-2010 statistics. In that time, he had a -2.14 PE.
Through the metric we used in the original Yu Darvish article, we can project Wei-Ying Chen to have these Major League numbers: 1.162 WHIP 3.02 ERA and 6.072 K/9IP. This would be roughly a .32 PE. To give you an idea of starting pitchers with these kind of numbers, this would be in the territory of Jeremy Hellickson, C.C. Sabathia, and Hiroki Kuroda's 2011 campaigns. Perhaps this is why teams like the Orioles, Yankees, and Cubs are foaming at the mouth to bring in Chen. Perhaps the best news is that the expected contract would be about $20MM over four years. Getting a very quality starting pitcher for 5 million dollars a year (look at how much the Yankees are paying Sabathia) is quite a bargain. I would sign him for that, and probably even go a little more if the bidding goes up.

Newest Seattle Mariner? Hisashi Iwakuma

For over a year now, it has been rumored that the Rakuten Golden Eagle's pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma is going to sign with the Seattle Mariners. Iwakuma is an innings eater, throwing 48 complete games (6 shutouts) in 226 starts (that is complete games in 21% of his starts). That is a higher percentage than Cliff Lee completed (18.4%, James Shields completed 33% of his starts, but has a much lower rate for his career). In his career in Japan, he has a PE of -.04 and had a PE of -1.09 in 2011. Once going through the Japanese pitching metric (a metric I calculated in the Yu Darvish article, trying to measure how pitchers from Japan did in the Majors), his (using his career numbers) WHIP is 1.29, ERA of 3.86, and just 77 strikeouts a year. This is what he could be expected to do for the Mariners. In Japan, his K/BB ratio is a very solid 3.43, and gave up just .64 HR/9IP. One concern that may be nothing but should be taken seriously (because moving from Japan to America or vise versa can be a culture shock and stressful, remember all the preparation Ichiro put himself through.), is when he changed from Kintetsu to Rakuten. His first year for the new team was a disaster, putting up a 4.99 ERA with a career high 7 wild pitches. It is hard to tell what kind of adjustment the move to Seattle (if it happens) Iwakuma would have to make, and whether he would struggle to adapt. It is also hard to gauge how much he might be worth. My guess would be somewhere between the 5-10 million dollar a year range. I certainly wouldn't pay more for him.

The guy who is better than Yu Darvish

There has been plenty of talk about Japanese phenom Yu Darvish, and it seems for good reason, his numbers are very good. However, what if I were to tell you that there was a better pitcher in Japan? Meet Masahiro Tanaka. Tanaka is the only pitcher in Japanese baseball (out of pitchers that have enough innings to qualify) with a lower ERA than Darvish. In 208 innings, Tanaka has a 1.38 ERA. His WHIP is a microscopic .89, and he strikes out 9.63 hitters per 9 innings. After calculating his BAA, which is around .208, this is a PE of -5.28. After hustling him through the Japanese pitching metric we calculated in the Yu Darvish article, he would still have an ERA of 1.99, a WHIP of .976, and a 8.27 K/9. This year in Japan, he has only given up .35 HR/9 innings, an amazing 8.57 K/BB ratio, 12 complete games (4 of them shutouts, Darvish has just 9 complete games), and he is only 22! There are many things to really like about Tanaka. All the talk is about Darvish and Wada in Japan, but if Tanaka ever becomes available to the U.S., I would take him over the other two.

Another Japanese Pitcher coming to the majors? Tsuyoshi Wada

With all the hype around Yu Darvish, another Japanese pitcher that has announced he may come to the States is being overlooked. Tsuyoshi Wada is a left-handed pitcher with a funky long delivery that hides the ball well. According to my Japanese baseball scout (okay, he is a twitter friend that is very knowledgeable about Japanese baseball, you can follow him @inter_ueno), he throws a fastball, curve, slider, forkball (been a while since I have seen one of those), and change-up and can control all his pitches. He is 30 years old, and in his career in Japan, he has a 1.17 WHIP, 3.37 ERA, 8.29K's per 9 innings, averages about 7 innings a start, and 3.5BB per 9 innings. This is certainly not Yu Darvish numbers, but solid numbers nevertheless. If you remember my article on Yu Darvish, and the Japanese metric we came up with by comparing Japanese pitchers' stats in Japan and the Majors, you remember that we subtract 30 strikeouts for a season's totals, add .086 to the WHIP, and .61 to the ERA. If he comes over to the States and is a starter, you can expect 184 strikeouts, (and regardless of starter or bullpen assignment) 1.256 WHIP, and 3.98 ERA. Max Scherzer is having a season slightly worse than that, and has a WAR of 2.2. A 2.2 WAR with a "Halladay Standard" WASP (see my page on WASP above) would be about 6.6 million a year. This is small enough that a lower tier team (as far as budget goes) can take a chance on him and try him as a number 2 starter. With Darvish and Wada, we will have more data for comparative metrics between Japanball and MLB.

Japanese Players don't Always work out: Tsuyoshi Nishioka

The Minnesota Twins have announced that they are shutting down middle infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka for the rest of the season due to injury. Over the offseason, the Japanese player came over for a 3 year, 9.25 million dollar deal. He has rewarded the Twins with a -1.8 WAR, a .278 OBP, 0 homers, and a .527 OPS. His WASP?  11716. As bad as his offensive numbers are, his defensive numbers are worse (-1.4 WAR defensively, -.4 WAR offensively) with a miserable .961 fielding percentage. When discussing why the Twins were bad this year, the obvious reasons getting nothing from their two top sluggers in Mauer and Morneau, but Nishioka doing nothing didn't help either. And perhaps this is a reminder to teams looking at Japanese pitching phenom Yu Darvish, yes some Japanese players have come over and played great, but there have also been a few that have really really scuffled.

How Much is Yu Darvish Worth? Comparative Statistics.

It appears that after Rangers' lefty C.J. Wilson, who I have already written about, will be the most sought after starting pitcher in free agency this year. Second place goes to Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish, who has all the hype Daisuke Matsuzaka had. Darvish is just 25 years old, and going into this season had a career ERA of 1.81 in Japanball. His WHIP is .909, averages 10 strikeouts per 9 innings, and he is a starter! Its not hard to contend that Japanball is at a lower level of play than the Major Leagues (mainly because the United States is a bigger country, and players from Japan, the Dominican and Venezuela come to play as well), but the question is by how much. So i want to look at a few pitchers that pitched in both Japan and America and see how Darvish compares. First, Dice-K (Matsuzaka). In Japan, Dice-K registered a 2.95 ERA and averaged 169 strikeouts a season (Darvish has averaged around 200), with a WHIP of 1.12. For the Red Sox, his ERA has been 4.18, and he has averaged 108 strikeouts a season (he has missed quite a bit of time with injuries), and a WHIP of 1.40. This is 61 less strikeouts per season, .28 extra in WHIP, and 1.23 extra in ERA. Hiroki Kuroda, the second starter for the LA Dodgers, is an anomaly for sure. His Major League stats are better than his Japan ball stats. In Japan, he had a 3.69 career ERA with 1257 strikeouts, with a WHIP of 1.35 in 10 seasons. In the Majors, his ERA is 3.43 with 488 strikeouts, and a WHIP of 1.19 in 4 seasons. It is hard to determine whether one should dismiss him as an outlier or keep his statistics in the mix as well, but I will keep him in the mix (for no real reason, except to have more pitchers to compare to). Rangers reliever Yoshi Tateyama had an ERA of about 3.79 with 488 strikeouts (41 a year) and a WHIP of .999, and in the Majors he has a 4.71 ERA with 40 strikeouts (in 1 season) and a WHIP of 1.10. Koji Uehara (also currently with the Rangers, was actually a high school teammate of Tateyama's, came to the majors as an Oriole) has very similar statistics in both countries. In Japan, he had a 3.01 ERA with 137.6 strikeouts a year and a WHIP of .992, while he has an ERA of 3.03 with 55 strikeouts a year, with a WHIP of 1.00 in America. There are a couple of other Japanese players that we could look at too, but I want to look at a player that is not Japanese but played in Japan. Colby Lewis is a key starter for the Texas Rangers, but had previously struggled so bad that he went to Japan to see if he could figure it out. And figure it out he did, as he had an ERA of 2.82 and 369 strikeouts in two years (184.5 a year) and a WHIP of 1.00. Since coming back to the states, he has an ERA of 4.00 with 173 strikeouts per year, with a WHIP of 1.21. This means on average, that the Majors add .086 to the WHIP, add .61 to the ERA, and subtract 30 strikeouts from the Japanese numbers. If we do this to Yu Darvish's numbers, he would have an ERA of 2.42, WHIP of .995, and about 192 strikeouts per season. This is really close to Cliff Lee's season (his ERA would be slightly above, his WHIP slightly below, and his strikeout total would be a little lower)! Lee has a WAR of 6.7, and is making about 24 million dollars a year. Comparative statistics across leagues is not a science, but we have enough evidence that shows that Japanese pitchers can come over here and dominate. One has to believe that Darvish is worth/will make at least 20 million dollars a year. Teams that want to bring him in better expect to pay this much.