The 3rd and final metric I will be taking a weekly look at for pitchers is LOB%, which stands for Left On Base Percentage. Some sites call this number Strand Rate, or S%. This rate measures the percentage of base runners a pitcher allows that are ultimately stranded. If you missed my first 2 articles on pitcher luck metrics, check out the first one looking at Pitcher BABIP here, and the second one looking at Pitcher HR/F here.

The bullpen could have a big impact on the metric since any inherited runners they allow to score end up lowering the previous pitcher’s LOB%, and raises his ERA of course. Baseball HQ has found that pitchers generally regress toward a league average of about 71%-72%, however, better pitchers should have slightly higher rates and worse pitchers slightly lower. Now let’s take a look at the Top 10 leaders and laggards:

 
As a Greinke owner in 2 leagues, it pains me to see his name 2nd on this list. Although, with a 0.75 ERA, you knew he had to be benefiting from some luck. A 97% strand rate means virtually every base runner he has allowed has not come around to score. We know he isn’t a strikeout pitcher, but a 3.4 K/9, which equates to 9 K’s in 24 innings? Hopefully it’s just a small sample size, but his K rate is way down from his career 6.3 per 9, and the 6.7 per 9 he posted last year as a starter. This is certainly something to monitor, although when watching his start against the Yankees, his stuff and velocity looked fine. On the positive side, besides the excellent BB/9, he has managed to dramatically improve his GB% to 47% this year, after being consistently in the mid-30%’s. I might still shop him around to see if someone thinks he’s a $15 pitcher in a 12-team mixed league, but if no one bites, holding onto him is quite ok as the sub-4.00 breakout year many were predicting looks to be a lock.

Congratulations to Edwin Jackson who has made it onto all 3 luck leaders lists. Well, it would have been 3 if I listed all the pitchers who have a 0% HR/F so far, meaning they haven’t allowed a HR. If anyone still believes that his current 0.64 ERA portends the breakout we’ve been waiting for for like 5 years now, sell immediately if you’re an owner, or stop yourself from picking him up in your league. I already talked about him in the first article looking at the BABIP leaders, so nothing new to see here.

I’m a huge, huge fan of Felix, but yet again was unable to draft him in any of my leagues. It seems like no matter what stats he puts up the prior year, there is always an owner who looks at the name and is willing to draft him too early hoping this is the year his surface stats catch up with his peripherals. The early returns are not encouraging as the K rate is down, the BB rate up, and even his always fantastic GB% is down to 55% from 61% last year. There is always the worry of injury with him, but I haven’t heard anything, so the skills decline is probably just a small sample size issue. This very well could be the year his ERA matches his peripherals, but the start he’s had is not an indication that it will be so.

 
Wow, a 35% LOB% for Verlander?! That is laughably low. Normally I’d advise aggressively making offers for him from a hopefully panicking owner, but that is not the case right now. First, I’ve said in previous articles that I considered him extremely overrated going into the season, as I’ve seen forecasts of low 3 ERAs and predictions of a Cy Young all over the place. Clearly these are people who are simply enamored with his stuff, which I admit is obviously very, very good. But his peripherals just don’t support an ERA better than last year, and certainly nothing under even the mid-3’s. The 2nd reason not to be knocking down the door of his owner, and most importantly, is that his average fastball velocity is down about 3 MPH from last year. David Cameron over at FanGraphs wrote a nice blog post about it that could be found here. So maybe Verlander is hiding an injury, leading to his poor results. Until we know more about his health, or his velocity creeps back up, I’d stay away.

I also said Lilly was overrated coming into the season, and he’s making me look good. But in reality, he’s really just suffering from some terrible luck. Along with the low LOB%, his BABIP is .366. However, his skills are down from where they were last year, and it looks like his average fastball velocity is also slightly down. But, assuming he’s healthy, he should still be good for a low-4 ERA, and I’d pick him up if he was dropped in your league.  

I wrote an article about Sabathia after his 1st 2 starts, and so far, he’s given me no reason to rethink what I said. If you missed my original article, check it out here. He obviously isn’t 11.57 ERA bad, and is suffering from some bad luck, but I wouldn’t be trying to buy low just yet, unless you could get him real low.

Ahhh, Andrew Sonnanstine, another favorite sleeper of many a fantasy baseball website/blog/message board. As seems par for the course for him, he’s yet again being killed by terrible luck. The 2 positives are that surprisingly he has induced 56% groundballs, compared to just 39% last year. I doubt he keeps that up, or even higher than like 45% given his minor league and major league GB rates, but it would be good news if he maintained a much higher rate than last year. The other bit of good news is that The Hardball Times shows his Expected FIP at just 4.25, supporting the notion that his skills are fine, and the luck should turn around. I know it’s tempting to drop him, but I’m still holding him in my 3 leagues until someone clearly better shows up on free agency.

Jonathan Sanchez has become another proud member of 2 laggard lists, including the BABIP one. You could read what I wrote about him there, or as part of the Five Players series I linked to in the BABIP article as well. Unfortunately if the bad luck continues, he’ll probably be the odd man out once Lowry returns.

A 2nd congratulations goes out to Roy Oswalt who has made it onto all 3 lists like Edwin Jackson, but it’s the good 3 lists this time, the bad luck lists. Oswalt was quoted on Sunday insisting that he’s healthy and pleased with his velocity, [sarcasm] which probably means he’ll be DL’ed later today [/sarcasm]. His average fastball velocity is about 1 MPH less than last year, which probably isn’t enough to worry about. Interestingly, he’s throwing his slider a lot more often and fastball a little less this year. That alone could signify that he actually isn’t as comfortable as usual throwing his fastball. Other than that, I have nothing else to add to what I said the other day in my BABIP article.

Well that concludes the first round of pitcher luck metrics. I’ll be taking a look at the hitter metrics next. 

Questions, comments, criticisms, praise, expert league invitations? Email me at FBGeneralsMike@gmail.com.