Is Chris Tillman an Ace?

Typically, I answer my mail in private, but I figured today that this might be something to discuss more openly.  Perhaps, this may even become a series if you all throw me enough interesting questions.  If you wish to step up and deliver, feel free to email me.

Today’s email from Marc S.:

My friends and I are arguing over whether Chris Tillman is an Ace?

To me an Ace needs to be one of the top 15-20 pitchers in the Game.  Its not simply the #1 starter but clearly a top line pitcher in most teams.  

Over the last calendar year Chris Tillman is 18-4.  (Since July 1) through today June 29th.  He has not lost more than once in any of those months (July, Aug, Sept, April, May and June) His ERA over that 18-4 stretch is under 3.5.  To me that sounds like an Ace.

This is an interesting question to me on a couple levels that Marc addresses here: (1) what is an ace?, and (2) does Chris Tillman meet the qualifications of an ace?

What is an ace?
This is a definition that varies wildly and is often, in my opinion, used excessively.  I think some of that excessive use is due to optimism in scouting reports where players are mentioned as having ace potential.  That use gives the impression that baseball is abound with aces where I contend that it truly is not.  As an example, I’d like to offer the following tables which shows the top 30 fWAR starting pitchers in 2010, 2011, and 2012.

2010	2011	2012
Cliff Lee	Roy Halladay	Justin Verlander
Ubaldo Jimenez	Justin Verlander	Felix Hernandez
Justin Verlander	Clayton Kershaw	Clayton Kershaw
Josh Johnson	CC Sabathia	Gio Gonzalez
Roy Halladay	Cliff Lee	Yu Darvish
Francisco Liriano	Dan Haren	Cliff Lee
Jered Weaver	Jered Weaver	Chris Sale
Adam Wainwright	C.J. Wilson	David Price
Felix Hernandez	Doug Fister	Zack Greinke
Jon Lester	Ian Kennedy	CC Sabathia
CC Sabathia	Daniel Hudson	Johnny Cueto
Colby Lewis	Matt Garza	R.A. Dickey
Zack Greinke	Matt Cain	Wade Miley
Clayton Kershaw	Felix Hernandez	Max Scherzer
Yovani Gallardo	Madison Bumgarner	Jake Peavy
Roy Oswalt	Chris Carpenter	Cole Hamels
C.J. Wilson	Brandon McCarthy	Adam Wainwright
John Danks	Cole Hamels	James Shields
Anibal Sanchez	James Shields	Matt Cain
Tim Lincecum	David Price	Matt Harrison
Tommy Hanson	Justin Masterson	Hiroki Kuroda
Hiroki Kuroda	Matt Harrison	Anibal Sanchez
Dan Haren	Josh Beckett	Jarrod Parker
Gavin Floyd	Tim Lincecum	Kyle Lohse
Mat Latos	Alexi Ogando	Josh Johnson
Chad Billingsley	Anibal Sanchez	Jordan Zimmermann
Matt Cain	Edwin Jackson	Jon Lester
David Price	Jon Lester	Madison Bumgarner
John Lackey	Derek Holland	Ryan Dempster
Max Scherzer	Zack Greinke	Trevor Cahill

The players bolded, italicized, and given a fancy color are those who appear on the top 30 every year from 2010 to 2012.  Those players are:

Matt Cain

Zach Greinke

Feliz Hernandez

Clayton Kershaw

Cliff Lee

Jon Lester

David Price

CC Sabathia

Anibal Sanchez

Justin Verlander

Ten players.  I also imagine that several of those players slipped your mind if you were to make a guess at this list.  Now, I used fWAR here, but you would get similar lists if you used other metrics life bWAR, FIP, ERA, wins, whatever.  The names would slightly change, but the list would remain around 10 players.  Players who consistently are in the top fifth of production (however you measure it) are quite few.  Baseball is a hard game to be elite with performance and health.  So, Chris Tillman has a difficult climb here.

Now, Tillman’s history as a pitcher has been one filled with promise and lackluster velocity.  Only in the past year has he actually come forth and produced for the club where he has gone 18-5 with a 3.34 ERA.  Those 18 wins are 4th best over the past calendar year (Chris does need to give some watches out to his offense which has produced 5.5 runs per game in those 31 outings).  His ERA is 27th out of 82.

However, his peripheral statistics tell a slightly different story.  His FIP (4.65) is 78th out of 82.  His fWAR (1.7) is 71st out of 82.  You might be asking why do these numbers differ so much from those above.  Home runs are the main culprit.  Last year, Tillman gave up two thirds (8) of his home runs with the bases empty.  This year, it has been 76% (13) of his home runs this year.  League average is 57%, so you can see that Tillman has greatly benefited by having guys go deep on him when the bases are empty.  A metric like FIP and in turn fWAR (fWAR uses FIP) assumes that Tillman’s past performance with home runs is not likely to continue and future home runs will regress to the league average of expected runners on base.

The safe assumption is that a regression would be the case and, in turn, the home runs against Tillman will become worth more as more base runners will be on the paths.  However, I am not sure that is the case.  Even when Tillman’s performance was rather lackluster from 2009 to 2011, solo homers made up 69% of his batted balls that left the yard.  This is beginning to make me think that from the stretch, Tillman may actually be turning into a different pitcher.  Perhaps, his mechanics are slightly more consistent and he does not ride as many balls higher up into the strike zone.  Therefore, the assumption that FIP is using may applicable to the pitching population in general, but perhaps not to Chris Tillman.

If this idea is actually accurate, then FIP and fWAR should not sour us as much as it might in our assessment of Tillman.  However, it is still pretty difficult to thing of Tillman as an ace outside of looking at wins.  His ERA, while good, has not been especially elite.  Additionally, there are a couple peripherals that concern me.  His fastball velocity has dropped from 92.4 to 91.7 mph.  Currently, the velocity plays, but his past makes any drop a concern.  Mechanical adjustments were able to save him the first time to resurrect his career in reclaiming that velocity, but we do know that his performance erodes along with any drop in velocity.  Additionally of concern to me, last year Tillman was able to get swings and misses 8.1% (58th out of 88, if he qualified) of the time and that has dropped to 5.8% (95th out of 98).  As one would expect, if a batter is more likely to make contact on a pitch then it is more likely something bad will come from it.

So what is the answer?  Is Chris Tillman an ace?

No, I cannot think of any reason to call him that or to think that one day he could be called that.  He has won a lot of games over the past year, but it is hard for me to lay those wins completely on his shoulders when the rest of the team winds up mashing the ball in his starts.  Wins simply are not a great tool to measure the ability of a pitcher.  They are not awful, but there are plenty better ways to measure performance.  ERA suggests that Tillman just got into the top third of qualified pitchers.  FIP suggests he is one of the worst qualified pitchers.  When you take those together along with Tillman personal characteristics with regard to home runs, I think you wind up with a player who is probably a 3rd slot pitcher on a first division (read: playoff) team.

Tillman is still young and could become something more than he is right now.  If he is able to generate more swing and misses, then a rise to being league average with that could turn him into a top of the rotation kind of arm if he maintains his deviant ways of not letting batters club a long ball when there are base runners.  That said, I think he has way too much distance to cover to make it to being an ace pitcher.  I would not call it a 0% probability, but it is likely close to that.

Strikezone Analysis for June 24 - 26: Indians at Orioles

Series Thoughts

Here's a situation where a series' numbers don't necessarily match what's seen on the field. Overall, it was a cleanly called series with 3/4 games seeing better than 90% correct calls for the Rzone. On the other hand, there were some truly atrocious pitches - either pitches outside of the Tzone called strikes or pitches within the Rzone called balls. I don't think it's reasonable to expect perfection from an umpire, especially on borderline pitches, but on these types of obvious pitches, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the umpire to be close to 100%.

Game details after the jump.

Checking in With Chris Davis

Breaking News!  Chris Davis is having a spectacular season at the plate.  Through June 23, here are his offensive statistics and where he ranks in all of baseball for each one.

And while Miguel Cabrera is right behind Davis in both wOBA and wRC+, Davis leads the entire league in slugging percentage by a very comfortable margin (Cabrera is second at 0.644).  As we continue through the 2013 season and Davis accumulates more and more plate appearances, we can begin to trust these numbers with increased confidence, and if the season ended today, Davis would easily set career highs in basically every offensive category.

He would also set career marks for lowest K% and highest BB% as well, and his improved approach at the plate, documented previously on this site here (and here) have been a big reason for his increased production in 2013.  However, looking at the data a little closer, the month of June hasn’t been as kind to Davis as April and May, particularly as it relates to his K% and BB%.

I’m guessing it’s fairly easy to overlook the increased strikeouts and decreased walks since Davis is still having a very productive month, especially hitting for power (his 0.651 slugging percentage would still be at the top of the league).  However, the spike in his strikeout rate and continuing decrease in his walk rate are large enough to raise some eyebrows.  Breaking this down further by comparing Davis’ swing tendencies on individual pitches between the first two months of the season and the month of June (so far) tells us a little bit more.

Statistics courtesy of Texas Leaguers (http://www.texasleaguers.com)

There’s a couple of things going on here, but the important thing to note is that Davis isn’t swinging more at one type of pitch this month, he’s swinging more at basically every type of pitch, and making much less contact.  Of particular concern should be the fact that he’s seeing more fastballs in June (compared to April and May), yet he is missing them at a noticeably higher rate.  This increase in aggressiveness coupled with decreased contact is a good way to get your K% and BB% to go in the wrong direction.

There could be a lot of reasons to explain why this month has not been as good to Chris Davis as the previous two.  Pitchers are always making adjustments, especially when it comes to hitters as dangerous as Davis, and they may have found a better way to limit his damage for the time being (at least until Davis makes his own adjustment).  Additionally, Davis may be losing patience as he sees less pitches in the strikezone, leading to more swings and more whiffs on pitches off the plate.  Then again, this analysis could just be the victim of small sample sizes and arbitrary end points, meaning that it may not “mean” anything.   Or it could be a combination of all three.  The fact that Chris Davis has an elevated strikeout rate and a depressed walk rate in the month of June shouldn’t cause anyone to sound the alarms, but it is something to keep an eye on.