Vogelsong's Song: Will He Sing or the Fat Lady?

A couple of the reasons I used to hit just about every Giants blog way back when are that 1) I like to find solutions to questions, and 2) it's a waste if I find something interesting, good or bad, and don't share it with other Giants fans (that's probably why I've made a career in research).  Back then, the idiot quotient was still relatively low and I didn't have to go through 999 columns of dreck before I get to some interesting and serious Giants discussion, where interesting questions get asked and I would answer.  That's why I used to come in second in polls on MCC when asked who was the most informative poster there (I always came in second to Steve Shelby, which is no shame, he's really good).  So I kind of miss that, but I don't miss getting totally aggravated by all the nonsense I see out there.

Long time reader Allfrank just recently made my day by asking me a question on my blog (Thanks! BTW) about Vogelsong's chances of repeating in 2012.  Or more specifically, he noted that his performance was great then seemed to come back to Earth after the All-Star game, and is worried about whether he can repeat or if the league has caught up with him.

Giants Thoughts
I have addressed this issue previously here by taking another tack, which is what performance does he and the 5th starter, who I presume is Barry Zito, have to collectively do in order to match what we got from the 4th and 5th starters in 2011.

I'll do that again here, as a starting point, and go from there (as I am wont to do :^). As great as Ryan Vogelsong did in 2011, we got a lot of poorer performances from the other starters in the rotation, outside the top 3: Runzler, Dirty, Zito, and Surkamp. They collectively had a 3.91 ERA in 354.1 IP in 63 starts. So the 2012 #4 and #5 starters only need to duplicate that for the Giants to do similarly well in terms of starter's performance relative to 2011.

Looking at Vogelsong, I think we can expect 32 starts from him in 2012.  That leaves 31 for the #5 starter (Zito).  Zito, as badly has he has pitched for us in the minds of Giants fans, has pitched well enough when not injured, physically or mentally (as he was his first two seasons).

Vogelsong averaged 6.25 IP per start, and actually boosted that up later in the season vs. earlier.  That works out to 200 IP in 32 starts, which leaves roughly 160 IP for Zito to achieve in 2012.  Assuming that Zito can at least get a 4.50 ERA, something he has basically achieved in 3 of his 4 healthy seasons, that would mean that Vogelsong would need to achieve a 3.60 ERA in 2012 for the 4/5 starters to achieve a collective 4.00 ERA (close enough to the 3.91 from 2011)

For continuity, I would note that previously I had assumed that Zito could repeat his 2009-2010 performance, and while I still think he can do it, I think most do not share that viewpoint so I decided to tackle the tougher scenario of Zito doing a bit worse, but still within his Giants career performances so far, so I chose his 2007 4.53 ERA, rounded for mathematical simplicity.  That also makes the bar a little higher for Vogelsong, and I thought it would be interesting to see how the possibility for a repeat frays given a worse performance out of Zito, particularly since he didn't pitch much in 2011.

About Zito, I thought it was fortunate that he did work his way back to return to the team in September (unlike Sanchez), I will give him that.  And I was heartened as well that he had a great two starts upon his return from his first DL.  So I still think he can repeat (which only requires Vogelsong to have a 3.90-ish ERA in 2012, which I think he can make in a heart-beat, and Bill James projection has him at 4.09).

So how good did Vogelsong do in 2011, particularly early vs. late?  I think that is good news, mostly.  First half, he had a 2.17 ERA in 16 games, 14 starts, 6.19 IP per start, 6.9 K/9, 2.19 K/BB.  Second half, 3.26 ERA in 14 starts, 6.29 IP per start, 7.0 K/9, 2.38 K/BB.  So, while his ERA went up a lot, that was the more fluky part, as his peripherals actually went up a bit in the second half.

And it even looks better by month.  I don't include April because he only got one start there, but here are his stats from May to Sept:

May  1.78 ERA  2.18 K/BB  6.1 K/9 6 starts
June  2.53 ERA  2.80 K/BB  7.9 K/9 5 starts
July   2.59 ERA  1.14 K/BB  4.6 K/9 5 starts
Aug  3.79 ERA  1.94 K/BB  7.8 K/9 6 starts
Sept  3.03 ERA 3.86 K/BB  7.4 K/9 5 starts

As you can see, he was really lucky with his ERA in July, as his strikeout rate went way down, and, I didn't capture it here, but his walk rate went up high, reciprically, which logically it should if you are not throwing as many strikes.  But then he recovered in August, then adjusted further and had a great September.

So instead of the steep fall that his performance gave an impression of, he actually had more of a U-curve, falling from his great early season success to the nadir in July/August until he returned back even better in September.  Looking at his game peformances, he had a 3 starts of 4 bump from July 8th to July 29th, where he found it hard to throw strikes, then another 3 start bump from August 19th to 30th. 

And, actually, looking further, he actually was starting to wobble by his June 28th start, where while he had 6 strikeouts, it was his first start with 4 walks since his second start of the season (that was his 12th start).  Prior to that start, he had 1 start out of 11 with 4 walks, but starting with that start, he had 3 consecutive starts with 4 walks and 6 starts out of 17 with 4 or more.  So one could point to that 3 start sequence as the nadir as well.

And that makes sense.  For the prior 5 seasons, he averaged only 75.1 IP per season in the minors.  His body was not ready for a full major league season and so his body hit the wall.  And, wow, don't you just love it when it works out perfectly, he went past the 75.1 IP mark in that July 28th start, as he had 72.2 IP prior to that. 

So once that happened, Ryan had to figure out how to adjust to his new situation with his body.  He was pretty much up and down for the rest of the season.  But the good news is that he ended on a pretty good up in September with a 3.86 K/BB, which is great for any pitcher.

Now this is where I go to Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster's Pitchers Toolkit.  Pitchers with good command (K/BB) tend to do the best, though as we all know, ERA goes all over the place, generally, within a one season context.  Unfortunately, it has not come out with their 2012 version with updated stats, but in 2010, which is a clear down year in terms of ERAs, pitchers with K/BB from 2.1 to 2.5 collectively had a 3.95 ERA.  From 2.6 to 3.0, a 3.71 ERA.  And 3.1 and above, a 3.25 ERA. 

Looking at Vogie's starts, basically, after a wobbly 2 starts as he got acclimated to the majors, he had a great 9 start sequence, followed by 12 starts of ups and downs where he battled to get control of his pitches, then a 5 start sequence in September where he was back on track.  It is actually amazing how similar the 9 starts and 5 starts are in terms of peripherals:

9 starts:   58.1 IP - 2.0 BB/9 - 6.8 K/9 - 3.4 K/BB - 0.3 HR/9 - .269 BABIP - 1.23 ERA
12 starts: 74.1 IP - 4.2 BB/9 - 6.7 K/9 - 1.6 K/BB - 1.0 HR/9 - .295 BABIP - 3.39 ERA
5 starts:   32.2 IP - 1.9 BB/9 - 7.4 K/9 - 3.9 K/BB - 0.8 HR/9 - .304 BABIP - 3.03 ERA
14 starts: 91.0 IP - 2.0 BB/9 - 7.0 K/9 - 3.6 K/BB - 0.5 HR/9 (adding together the times when he was on track)

Now that clarifies more why he did so well initially.  Not only was his BABIP abnormally low, so was his HR/9, which like his BABIP, bounced back up after that great start. 

Now back to Shandler.  They also analyzed how often a pitcher within a range either has an ERA under 3.50 or above 4.50:

K/BB
2.1-2.5:  19% under 3.50; 35% over 4.50
2.6-3.0:  26%; 25%
3.1+:      53%; 5%

Now add in K/9 (or Dominance in Shandler's parlance; don't know why he used different ranges) and see the difference in ERA:

K/BB   <5.6 K/9  >5.6 K/9
2.0-2.4   4.32      4.08
2.5-2.9   4.21      3.88
3.0-3.9   4.04      3.46
4.0+       4.12      2.96

As I've been trying to make clear here on my blog, the strikeout provides a lot of great benefits to preventing runs that don't always show up as a direct link, but this one I think makes it very clear.  From Baseball Forecaster:  "This helps to highlight the limited upside potential of soft-tossers with pinpoint control.  The extra dominance makes a huge difference."  As well as the K/BB, I would additionally note. 

So, if Vogie can continue pitching like he did for half the season, with a K/BB comfortably over 3.0, and continue to strike out a lot (and 5.6 K/9 is not that high a threshold), historically (or at least for Shandler's set of data), pitchers like that averaged a 3.46 ERA and 53% of the time had an ERA under 3.50, while only 5% of the time going above 4.50, though I would note that this means that 42% of the time the pitcher was between 3.50 and 4.50 ERA.

Using PQS, he had a 61% DOM last season vs. only 7% DIS.  So even when he was struggling, he had enough control to avoid Disaster starts, which is the bane of any pitcher's ERA.  Mediocre pitchers can survive in the majors by avoiding Disaster starts as those start really kills the ERA.  And he ended the last month, September, with a flourish, 4 DOM starts out of 5, no DIS start, which is another sign that his earlier success is more indicative of his future than his middle, not as good, part of the season.

And from my studying of PQS, good pitchers have DOM% over 40%, the best have over 50%, and the elite have over 70% (FYI, Cain had 76%, Lincecum 73%, and Bumgarner 70% in 2011).  So Vogelsong was in rareified company in 2011.

I don't have the stats for 2011 season yet, but from my following of this, I know that 61% is pretty rare.  Heck, I think I can demonstrate this with data from the 2010 book, here are pitchers current for 2010 season who had 60%+ DOM% with at least 28 starts and 9%- DIS% sometime in the past five seasons:  Josh Beckett, Chad Billingsley, Matt Cain, Chris Carpenter, John Danks, Ryan Dempster, Yovani Gallardo, Zack Greinke, Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels, Aaron Harang, Dan Haren, Felix Hernandez, Ubaldo Jimenez, Josh Johnson, Scott Kazmir, John Lackey, Cliff Lee, Jon Lester, Colby Lewis, Tim Lincecum, Derek Lowe, Dice Matsuzaka, Gil Meche, Brett Myers, Roy Oswalt, Jake Peavy, David Price, C.C. Sabathia, Ervin Santana, Johan Santana, Ben Sheets, James Shields, Javier Lopez, Justin Verlander, Edinson Volquez, Adam Wainwright, Jered Weaver, Todd Wellemeyer, Randy Wolf.  (OK, that was harder to compile than I thought...)

As you can see, there are a lot of good pitchers in there, interspersed with a few random names that were flukes (like Wellemeyer).  But the vast majority, while they may not have repeatedly done as well as this, were generally good from season to season. 

There was a table matching up DOM% with DIS% and pitchers with over 60% DOM and under 10% DIS averaged an ERA of 3.09 (and this was back in 2003, when the offensive era reigned).  Even at over 50% DOM, the ERA was 3.47, while keeping DIS% under 10%.  For DIS% between 10-20% but DOM% over 60%, the ERA was 3.71.  FYI, they call this qERA, or ERA based solely on PQS.

So, will Vogelsong repeat?  My premise all along is that he can't repeat, that is just homerism talking, most pitchers do not come out of nowhere and do that well.  So I've focused more on what the Giants need from him in 2012 in order to repeat the great 2011 season (which is much like 2009 and 2010 for that matter, in terms of the pitching staff dominance) and now tackled analyzing his season in this post.

While he clearly had a down period in the middle of the season, I think it is very plausible that he just hit the wall and lost a lot of his control, because he had not gone that deep into a season in a long while.  While a big jump in IP like that is troubling for a much younger pitcher, at his age, he had done it before, so I think it is just a matter of him conditioning himself during this off-season to handle a longer season in 2012.  And the way he came back, as shown by his PQS, heck, looking at his season, his PQS was actually pretty good in August too, I guess a bad game here and there brought the month down a lot.  It is a great sign to me about his future that he came back to early season form that last month, perhaps even better.

I know people say I cherry-pick data, but it is not like I pick willy-nilly.  There are clear reasons for opting to select only certain data over others, or to at least point out differences that contextually explains things, like his lack of conditioning, then his period of dominance at the end of the season, that demonstrates that after he hit his bad spot, he righted himself, somehow, whether by "adjusting" as some people will say he did, after the league "adjusted" to him.  It is a matter of understanding the context within which you make that decision to take out data that does not represent reality, in your opinion. 

And I don't see the down period as one of adjustment.  He was still striking out batters at almost the same rate but he just was walking double what he was before, and that to me is on him, it is within his control there.  If the hitters really adjusted, they would have not struck out as much as they did in that period of a lot of walking, the strikeout rate should have took as big a hit as his walk rate, just in the opposite direction.  That to me meant that this was something within his control, not the batter's control.  And he just physically couldn't do it anymore, for a while, then was able to get himself back into good enough shape to end with a flourish good enough that it matched his peripherals that he had earlier in the season.

That to me bodes well for the 2012 season, whether for repeating himself or just simply ensuring the Giants pitching staff repeats what they did in 2011.  I think there are very good odds that he will pitch well enough so that he and Zito can help the starting rotation repeat what they did in 2011.  Given how well he pitched, plus how well I think Zito can pitch, but even if Zito falters, I think Vogelsong can do enough to counter that, plus I think there is huge potential for Bumgarner to join Cain and Lincecum as a serious contender for Cy Young Award, as his K/BB was regularly extraordinary, he just is young and would let mistakes compound into disaster starts, his DIS% was 15% in 2011, if he gets it under 10%, he'll easily be in the 2's in ERA, and that would ease the need for Vogelsong to be great versus merely being good in 2012.

I also think that there are good odds, just not as good, that he repeats what he did in 2011.  While he was very lucky early on, in terms of BABIP and HR/9 (ideally I would use HR/FB here but that stat is not available), his peripherals were very good in any case, and he was able to repeat that late in the season, suggesting that he had some sort of physical condition (like lack of stamina) that prevented him from pitching like he could.   Unlike Dirty, who once he hit his wall, his ERA soared, Vogelsong is a pitcher, not a thrower, and was able to dance away from trouble even when he didn't have his best control, keeping his ERA still low during that period, as well as avoiding disaster starts, which Dirty couldn't do after he hit the wall.  Not only that, he soon recovered and was able to deliver a lot of DOM starts at the end of the season, also unlike Dirty.

Of course, unlike what most sabers say (I really hate when people use projections as reality), there are no absolutes here, only probabilities and chances.  I think there is a very good chance that he will pitch well in 2012.  I don't think that he can repeat his 2011, but that is generally just true for anybody doing it for the first time, particularly with his history.  However, I think that there are enough signs and indications that I would not be surprised if he repeats being a very good pitcher in 2012 and contribute to the Giants again being one of the Top 2-3 teams in the majors in the least runs allowed per game. 

But ace-like performance again?  At his age and history, I'll just be happy with a good performance again, we just need a reliable pitcher who can go out and give us 32 relatively good starts, because that is where the Giants have a huge advantage over other teams, our 4/5 starters can usually kick the butts of the other teams, even their top starters.  We can discuss ace-like performance next off-season if he can repeat it in 2012.