Has Gonzo's Luck Finally Run Out?

Over the past few weeks, writers for this blog have written a lot about Miguel Gonzalez (there is no truth to the rumor that this blog will be renamed Gonzalez Depot). Earlier in the year, I wrote that Gonzo was successful because he somehow found a way to get batters to hit the ball straight at fielders and I questioned whether that would continue. Now that it’s been a few months, I figured it makes sense to check and see whether that happened.

This first chart (data harvested via ESPN Stats and Information) shows Gonzo’s performance from the start of the year until June 10 (I’ll call this the first half of the sample for brevity) and then his performance for June 10 until September 2^nd (the second half). It shows that he has a slightly worse K-BB% and that he’s given up two more home runs in the second half of the sample compared to the first half of the sample. But his main problem appears to be that his BABIP increased from .236 in the first half to .350 in the second half.

The problem becomes even clearer when looking at these numbers based on whether there the bases were empty, there was a man on first base or whether there was a runner in scoring position.  Gonzo was able to reduce the percent of home runs allowed with RISP in the second half of the season compared to the first half as well as improve his K-BB%. But his OPS in those situations increased from .760 to 1.083 probably because his BABIP increased from .088 to .422. All of his numbers are worse in the second half with the bases empty against left-handed batters in the second half and so it’s no surprise they’re hammering him. Earlier this season he was successful because he was able to limit damage with runners on base but that’s not happening anymore.

The explanation isn’t that he’s giving up harder contact or more line drives. This chart shows that he’s given up roughly the same proportion of contact in the first half and the second half.  The problem is that opposing batters have been more successful regardless of what type of contact they’ve made.

This next chart shows that Gonzo has allowed more line drives with runners in scoring position and fewer fly balls. However, batters have finally started having some success with ground balls in the second half and are having far more success hitting line drives with runners in scoring position in the second half.

When looking at his pitch data, it seems clear that his fastball has been hit harder in the second half then in the first half. In part, this is because opposing batters had a BABIP of .208 against his fastball in the first half but a BABIP of .350 in the second half. What’s interesting is that in the first half, opposing batters had a BABIP of .205 and a wOBA of .248 against fastballs slower than 90.8 miles per hour while having a BABIP of .193 and a wOBA of .323 against fastballs between 90.8 and 95 miles per hour. In other words, he was successful when his fastball wasn’t effective.

In the second half of the season, batters have absolutely killed fastballs that were slower than 90.8 mph with a BABIP of .462 and a wOBA of .626 and have been slightly weaker against fastballs that were faster than 90.8 mph (BABIP of .321 and a wOBA of .418).

This seems to suggest that Gonzo’s problem is that his luck has run out. Earlier in the year, he was able to get batters out when throwing slow fastballs. When batters were able to make contact (most of the time), the ball went straight to fielders. In the second half of the season, balls have simply been hit away from fielders.

It makes sense that batters would crush slow fastballs so it seems that Gonzo was extremely fortunate that he wasn't drilled earlier in the season. Going forward, he was probably lucky earlier in the season and probably unlucky in the second half of the season. I would think that Gonzo's true performance is somewhere in the middle. The problem is that being somewhere in the middle of these two extremes will result in an ERA in the high 4's and will probably mean that he won't be successful. This suggests that Gonzo needs to find a new method to outperform his projections or else he’ll be in trouble come 2016.

Miguel Gonzalez Is Still Cheating His FIP

In the off-season, a number of Camden Depot writers wrote articles discussing how Miguel Gonzalez has outperformed his FIP. This year has turned out to be no exception so far as he has an ERA of 3.33 and an FIP of 4.60 based primarily upon a .235 BABIP (2nd best out of 106) and an 82.2% LOB (7th best out of 106).

What is interesting is that this year he is outperforming based on performance against hitters when runs are in scoring position. He’s faced 54 batters in that situation and he’s allowed 8 walks (2 intentional), 4 home runs and caused 7 strikeouts. This is pretty awful because pitchers that give up more walks than strikeouts usually struggle and giving up a home run every ten batters on average is awful. He’s allowed seventeen fly balls and given up four home runs for an HR/FB of 23.5%. Simply put, those numbers are dreadful. Two of the remaining thirty-five batters have hit doubles which is pretty reasonable and shows that hitters aren’t struggling to hit for power against him when runners are in scoring position. The area where Miggy has excelled is that he’s only allowed one single with runners in scoring position. That’s absolutely incredible and has allowed him to put up a BABIP of only .083 with runners in scoring position. In addition, he has only given up one unearned run so it’s not like runners are scoring but not counting against him. Batters have been able to put up strong power numbers against him, but can’t seem to hit for average.

With runners in scoring position, Gonzo has a Hard% of 30.8% (75th out of 118 qualified pitchers), which indicates that twelve balls have been hit hard against him. His Med% of 51.3% (51st out of 118) indicates that twenty balls have been hit with medium force against him. His Soft% of 18% (68th out of 118) indicates that only seven balls have been hit softly against him. He isn’t causing weak contact against them, which might explain his low BABIP. Rather hitters are hitting the ball with adequate power but that hasn’t translated to them hitting singles.

ESPNs TruMedia tool claims that Gonzo has thrown 206 pitches with runners in scoring position of which batters swung at 106. Gonzo only had 19 called strikes out of 100 pitches where a batter didn’t swing. Of the 39 pitches put into play, only 8 (21%) were outside of the strike zone.  This seems to indicate that batters aren’t struggling against him because they’re swinging at pitches outside of the strike zone. It seems like they’re swinging at pitches that they’re able to hit.

Part of the reason why Gonzo is doing so well was touched upon by Ryan’s earlier article about Gonzo. Gonzo has thrown a total of 81 combined sliders and splitters with runners in scoring position, allowed 11 batters to put the balls in play and only allowed 1 hit total (a double) with those pitches. By comparison, Gonzo has thrown 13 curveballs with runners in scoring position and allowed both batters to put the ball into play to get hits, thrown 11 changeups and allowed 1 of 3 batters to put the ball into play to get hits and thrown 98 fastballs and given up 3 hits on 23 balls in play. Hitters are simply unable to convert when facing his slider or splitter and have struggled against his fastball. Ryan argued that Gonzo’s improved slider and splitter have allowed him to strike out more batters, but so far it also seems that they’ve helped him by causing a lot of unproductive contact.

The other part of the reason of why Gonzo is doing so well is that he has allowed a low but reasonable six line drives with batters in scoring position of which three were hits. He also has allowed 17 fly balls for which he’s given up four home runs and no other hits, 14 ground balls of which zero were hits and 2 bunts that also didn’t result in a hit. So far, batters have been able to hit fly balls out of the park with a staggering amount of success, but they’ve had limited success when hitting line drives and zero success when hitting fly balls that remain in the park or a ball hit on the ground. Either Miguel Gonzalez has found a way to have batters hit the ball towards fielders or has been the beneficiary of nearly flawless performance by his fielders with batters in scoring position.

It seems that it is unlikely that this will continue. Even if the slider and splitter have legitimately improved, it seems unlikely that batters will continue to struggle as much as they have against his fastball. If the defense has merely over performed, then it is unlikely that they’ll continue to do so to this extent. Then again, a number of writers have been saying for years that Gonzo can’t continue to be this successful and he’s done an excellent job of finding a way to outperform what his peripherals suggest his performance should look like. If some pitchers like Rick Porcello can find a way to mostly underachieve despite strong peripherals then it stands to reason that a few pitchers could find a way to overachieve despite weak peripherals. When it comes down to it, Gonzo has been good the past few seasons and is well on his way of having another strong season. Sometimes it’s just better to be lucky than good and no one is going to care about his FIP if he continues to perform at such a high level.