Ok so this is the last of the 3 teams I'm running the half way evals on, sorry for the lateness of them though, I have been a bit sick as of late, but anyhow lets delve into the stats. And just a heads up, since both Jaimie Garcia those who filled in for him haven't had 10 starts I'm only going to be covering the regular 4 (Wainwright, Lynn, Miller and Westbrook)
Adam Wainwright:
Here we have the proverbial ACE of the Cardinals starting rotation and boy has he taken that to heart this year, which is impressive since it's not long since he was still rehabbing that injury a couple years ago. As of now Wainwright has a K/9 of 8, a little below the past few years, BB/9 of 1 and HR/9 of 0.39. Now all of these of these are great indicators of how amazing Wainwright has been and theres more if we look at his ERA, FIP and xFIP (2.51, 2.24 and 2.68), which shows that for the most part this performance is real and it's not likely to see any sort of major down turn in the second half. I say for the most part because there are a couple small things in his advance stat line that might suggest some regression, the first of those things being his HR/FB ratio, now first let's look at his FB% first, it sits at 25.8% and he has a HR/FB ratio of 6%. So 6% of that 25.8% of fly balls are leaving the park, not the first thing to recognize is that 6% is EXTREMELY low placing him 7th in terms of lowest HR/FB ratio. Now while this is all well and good he has this in combination with having only 11.1% infield fly balls and his combination of FB% and HR/FB ratio being the lowest in the league, now what we can gather from this is that of the 25.8% fly balls that are hit off of Wainwright 6% leave the yard and 11.1% are hit high but stay in the infield. So that means of course 82.9% of his fly balls are in the outfield, which alone seems like a lot to not have become home runs, now usually the next best indicator is to check how else he's getting his outs (ie. strike outs). Wainwright as I said before sports an 8.07 K/9 so he strikes out 8 batters per 9 innings but unfortunately this doesn't really take our gaze away from those fly balls as he is well outside of the top 30 in terms of K/9 meaning of course he's not one of those big strike out guys like Max Scherzer, Matt Harvey or Yu Darvish. So what we can gather form this is that his HR/FB ratio is likely not sustainable at least if he keeps giving up the number of fly balls into the outfield that he has been. So expect the potential for more home runs allowed by Wainwright in the future, however don't expect much more down turn as this just seems to be a career year, hell could set him up for a Cy Young.
Lance Lynn: The second in the rotation for the Cardinals is a rather new pitcher as Lynn has only pitched one full season, last year, prior to this year, though he had a part season in the bullpen the year before. Now whats funny is that he has the same fly ball situation that Wainwright currently has going, similar numbers, situation and everything, so again expect an increase in the number of home runs allowed over the remaining season. On the other hand he sports a 3.89 ERA, 3.09 FIP and 3.75 xFIP, so there is a bit of improvement to come his way in the future. Since he has only had 1 full season just like all rookies I can't make a speculative statement on where his stats might be based on his averages but what I can tell you is that he had a fairly steep decline after the half way point, obviously because of the stark increase in his number of innings pitched and given that he is likely to exceed that number of innings this year as well expect another drop off (last year he hit 176 innings and he's currently at 135).
Shelby Miller: Now get this Shelby Miller....has the same fly ball situation as Lynn and Wainwright so expect an increase in home runs and just like Lynn last year, this is his first full season so again expect a decrease in performance as the year goes on and the innings increase. His ERA, FIP and xFIP also indicate that there should be a correction back to the average since the numbers are as follows, 2.79, 3.04, and 3.38. This of course means that his defence is helping him keep hits from actually turning into base hits. Now unlike Lynn and Wainwright, Miller is a huge strikeout guy as he has a K/9 of nearly 10, which puts him on the same level as guys like Scherzer, Harvey and Darvish however with rookie pitchers with this level of strike outs we have to take into account that batters will eventually make an adjustment to his pitches and start being able to hit them and when we look at his repertoire Miller has 4 pitches (Fastball, Curve, Cutter and Change up). Now this isn't bad because having more weapons in your arsenal is better, however he throws his fastball nearly 75% of the time meaning that if hitters can catch up to his fastball that could be bad news for him. So expect the same changes as with Lynn.
Jake Westbrook: Now heres the only guy on the Cardinals rotation that I cringe just thinking about. Westbrook is not the pitcher he was, not to mention he seems to have gotten worse since coming back from injury. He' sporting a fairly nasty K/9 of 3.28, BB/9 of 3.47 both of which are not good, he's striking out a fairly low number of batters and on top of that he's walking a lot of batters as well. In addition to these nasty stats theres the ERA/FIP/xFIP set 3.18, 4.25 and 4.72. So this means that there is a severe drop in ability that is coming Westbrook's way, not to mention that he's a second rate starting pitcher and has the same fly ball situation as Wainwright and the rest but even crazier (he has a higher % of fly balls and a lower HR/FB ratio). Overall this is the best you should expect from Westbrook and don't be terribly surprised when his performance takes a significant dip.
Alrighty so thats that for the Cardinals starting pitchers, should have the hitters up by the end of the weekend at the latest, so look forward to it. After that I plan on posting a small 'Guide To Evaluating Players' post after it so hopefully it'll be a good read for you all.
-Eric
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