Pitching Clusters and Batters facing Them

Since the last post on clusters of pitchers I have done two things or at least started to do them.

A) Start to make more clusters which I will share with you in this post.

B) Look at some batters to see what their career stats are v.s. these clusters.  The reason I have began this portion of the project is that announcer line.  "Johnny is 0-4 against Chris lifetime"  I can not stand it, so to remove some of the bias against small sample sizes, I am clustering similar pitchers and seeing how certain hitters do when facing them.  I intend to preview one batter's lifetime facing the clusters at the end of this post.  Then hopefully make the third and final post containing a lot of batters lifetime facing the clusters.

Anyway, my new cluster must meet the following requirements.

-Left-handed  pitcher

-Groundball pitcher

-70+ innings or starter

-90-87 MPH on Fastball

- 14-18% Strikeout percentage

So far, I have found nine pitchers who meet these requirements and they are:

-Jeff Locke          -Paul Maholm
-John Lannan       -Joe Saunders
-Chris Capuano    -Jason Vargas
-John Danks         -Chris Rusin

Before I go into detail explaining this list, I have to mention Andy Pettitte, who actually qualified for this list.  Andy is the first pitcher, in my doing this cluster thing that actually fits into two clusters.  This is partially my fault for two reasons.

A) I made crappy clusters.

B) Andy is a pretty flexible pitcher.

The way I fixed this was just decided that the first cluster he got put into he would be in that one.  Just a small thing.

Upon researching and finding this cluster, I noticed that Jeff Locke and John Lannan are very similar pitchers.  Right off the bat you notice they have the same initials (J,L) but their similar traits also lead to the stats side too.  Here just a few things that are similar about them.

They both have pretty crummy strikeout and walk rates. 

They both were able to fool people into believing they were good pitchers in their rookie year.

I predict them both to be 6th or 7th starters in the future, because John Lannan already is one.


Another thing about these pitchers was that they were all spread out on their career maps.  For example Chris Capuano is old and trying to stick, John Danks and Joe Saunders are going through a mid career crisis.  Jeff Locke and Jason Vargas were both dramatically overvalued by their teams based on luck and stupidity.  I mean who gives Vargas a 4 year/32 million deal?  Somehow I think this cluster is predictable because well their careers all appear to be heading into the same direction fringy.

Deservedly so I called this group the 'Fringe Lefties'


 Now for the batter connection to these players.

I am going to use Chase Utley for a little preview.  Make sure when doing this, that you pick players who have played a few years in the major leagues or else you'll be back at square one with the small sample size problem.  Also before you read this preview I would read the first Pitching Clusters so you know what clusters were talking about.  You can find this post right here http://mlbrumblings.blogspot.com/2014/03/pitching-clusters.html

Young Righties	Fringe Lefties	Velocity Busters
Chase Utley 8/31 .258	Chase Utley 30/109  .275	Chase Utley 3/21 .143

You might notice the young righties relatively small sample size, this is for two reasons.

A) I trimmed the list by adding a strikeout rate requirement so the remaining pitchers on young righties are now Andrew Cashner, Matt Garza, Ivan Nova, Tyson Ross, Zach Wheeler, Chris Archer, Jordon Zimmerman, and Micheal Wacha. 

B) The righties are young.

Thanks for reading.  Look for Pitcher Clusters Part Three.