Rick Porcello Spotlight Edition

The pitchforks are out and the nihilists are all doing their best Tony Mazz take-down of one Rick Porcello: He of the $20M contract and woebegone 6.08 ERA.  In light of this I decided to get back on the horse and look closer at what has befallen this former 'just on the cusp of stardom' whipper of the pale orb.  In other words, is he unlucky or just plain bad?

A very big thank you to Baseball HQ for the stats. (W)ins, (L)osses, ERA and WHIP are familiar to most readers but I wanted to dig deeper to see if I could find something beyond the 'he's going to ruin any chance for a winning streak' panic button being pressed into submission lately.

Let's start with his luck.  H%, S% and xERA are all a function of luck where H% stands for batted balls landing as hits, S% on the number of runners a pitcher strands on base per outing and xERA incorporating those into is ERA.  His average H% before this year was 31.3 and his average S% was 70.  In other words, more hits are falling and particularly baserunners are scoring this year than he's ever experienced before.

Now lets look at things more in his control: The amount of ground balls, line drives, and fly balls he's been watching over his shoulder, the number of walks per 9 (Ctl), the number of strikeouts to walks (Cmd), his (V)elocity.  It jumps off the page how far his ground ball rate has fallen, and the corresponding rise in fly balls.  This means his career high home run per fly ball (HRF) is hurting him more than ever.  However, his Ctl is right in line with his better years and continuing maturation as a pitcher in terms of limiting walks.  Furthermore his Cmd is even better, a gaudy 3.4, further following a slow and steady rise in his ability to strike guys out.  He's also showing no slippage in his V, another check mark on this half year prelim.

It appears as though those reports of him leaning too hard on his four seam (or straight) fastball are true.  Guys are squaring up that pitch and launching balls into the stratosphere.  But his surface stats are a poor representation of him.  If he can find his two seam (sinking) fastball again and have a little more luck the second half he has a strong possibility of surprising the haters and rising to the occasion.

Until next time,

The SAHD