Verlander’s…Struggles?

Posted by Jeff Lubbers on Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 2:37 am

Perhaps more than any other player on the team, the Detroit Tigers’ fortunes in the last few years have seemed to rise and fall with Justin Verlander. In 2006 and 2007 his ERA from March to July was a stellar 3.10, followed by a jump all the way to 5.24 from August through October. This drop-off corresponded with a team winning percentage split of .621 (March-July) compared to .460 (August-October). Therefore it was not surprising that as the second overall pick of the ’04 draft struggled to start 2008, the Tigers’ season quickly tanked as well. Verlander’s habit of getting in trouble later in games seemed the perfect metaphor for the highest-paid last place team, which seemed to always find new ways to let games slip away in the later innings.

As was recently pointed out by Tom Gage of The Detroit News Verlander’s struggles last year were particularly pronounced once he surpassed the magical 100 pitch count. Opposing batters posted a ghastly .958 OPS against him from the 101^st pitch on. Gage suggested that it may be wise for Verlander to be pulled from games earlier than he has in the past.

Looking at Verlander’s numbers after the 101^st pitch a little closer also reveals that batters posted a Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) of .400 in those same situations, far above the league average of roughly .300 in all situations. Baseball fans much smarter than I have shown that pitchers generally can not control whether or not balls put in play against them will fall for hits. Given that Verlander faced only 90 batters while having surpassed the 100 pitch mark I’d like to throw out as many *small sample size* warnings as possible. But is there something to these numbers? Did Verlander truly tire after 100 pitches or was it a statistical fluke?

Intuitively it makes sense that a pitcher’s BABIP would rise as he reaches a certain number of pitches. Wouldn’t a tiring starter be more likely to unintentionally leave a pitch a little higher in the strike zone than intended or be less able to throw it with as much velocity as he desires? In 2008 A.L. pitchers had a BABIP against of .309 compared to.300 overall. This small difference of 9 points was the largest difference going back to 2000. Over that same time span the difference was never more than a few percentage points, and BABIP when over 100 pitches was actually lower than the overall average in some years. Generally speaking it doesn’t seem that pitchers are giving up many more hits when reaching higher pitch counts.

Of course, it is also possible that there is a selection issue at hand. It stands to reason that the best pitchers in the league will be more likely to surpass 100 pitches in a given start. Perhaps they are more likely to have lower BABIP overall yet post average numbers when reaching that mark.

Below is a table showing the top ten leaders in ERA+ in the A.L. in 2008 and their BABIP during their first 100 pitches compared to when they surpassed the 100 pitch mark:

Unsurprisingly these pitchers overall posted a slightly lower than average BABIP. Their BABIP once they passed 100 pitches was only slightly higher than during pitches 1-100 but still remained close to league average in both categories. The essentially insignificant difference between the two for this group was nowhere near the difference of over 100 percentage points that Verlander experienced (.287 for pitches 1-100; .400 for pitches 101+).

However hits against were not Verlander’s only problem later in games. Verlander went from walking one out of every 10.8 batters he faced from pitches 1-100 (already a tad high) to walking one of every 6.4 batters the rest of the way. There was a slight jump in batters walked in the American League last year from pitches 1-100 (11.5) compared to 101+ (9.8) but again nothing near the jump Verlander experienced.

It seems that Verlander’s 2008 season suffered from the perfect storm of an abnormally high BABIP in the later innings, a high walk rate (in general but especially later in games), and the worst bullpen support in baseball. For Verlander to reestablish his dominance in 2009 he will have to cut down on walks more than anything else, which will be more important that being taken out of the game at just the right time.