In revamping their pitching staff this past offseason, the first thing the Mets did was to extend the Qualifying Offer to Marcus Stroman. Now, MLB deadline dates made that a necessity. Still, the Mets willingly paid the freight for a pitcher who sat out the year before. And it ended up being the highest AAV for a pitcher they would make in this critical offseason. And thru 14 games, Stroman has certainly delivered for the Mets. He likely won’t make the team but Stroman is in the discussion for an All-Star berth, an indication of how well he’s pitched so far in 2021.
In a time when it seems every pitcher is at least 6’4 and throws 97 mph, Stroman seems like a relic from a different time. At 5’7, with an average FB velocity of 93, Stroman’s game plan is to get you to beat the ball into the ground for easy plays for his infielders. Knowing that was his MO, it made some wonder if it was the right fit for him to be on the Mets, a team not exactly known for its great defense from year to year. But whether it’s the balls are easy outs or whether it’s the new emphasis on defensive positioning or something else entirely – the results have been terrific. After 77.2 IP, Stroman sits with a 2.32 ERA.
When the Mets acquired Stroman at the deadline in 2019, he was supposed to be an upgrade for Jason Vargas down the stretch and a replacement for Zack Wheeler in 2020 and possibly beyond. Vargas had actually pitched well (even though he didn’t after the deadline, when he was dealt to the Phillies) and Stroman, well, his Mets career didn’t get off to a great start.
But in his final four games of the 2019 season, Stroman put up a 1.88 ERA over 24 IP. If you add those four starts to what he’s done here in 2021, Stroman’s given the Mets a 2.21 ERA while limiting batters to a .588 OPS and a .260 wOBA. He’s got a 55.0 GB% and a 3.3 K/BB ratio. That last number shows an improvement with both strikeouts accumulated and walks allowed over his career numbers.
Stroman has always been good at getting grounders but this increase in strikeouts has elevated him to a different level. The strikeouts have not been consistent but when they do come, good things follow. And while he’s had a few good outings this year with low strikeout numbers, his two stinkers came in games where the Ks were scarce. In games against the Nationals and Rays, Stroman recorded just 5 Ks in 10 IP and allowed 9 ER.
Since that game against the Rays, Stroman has made five starts and in 31 IP he has a 1.74 ERA with 32 Ks. And it’s not like the hits just aren’t falling in, as batters have a .296 BABIP in this span. It’s the combination of strikeouts, grounders and keeping the hits to singles. In those 31 IP, Stroman has allowed just 2 HR.
Essentially, home runs are proportional to the amount of fly balls a pitcher allows. We have HR/FB data going back to 2002. From 2002-2015, MLB pitchers as a whole had HR/FB rates between 9.4 and 11.4%, meaning that roughly one out of every 10 fly balls allowed would leave the park. And that ratio didn’t care if you were a power pitcher or finesse pitcher – not at the macro level, as individual results would certainly differ. With the fly ball revolution, we’ve seen MLB HR/FB rates from 12.7 to 15.3% the past six years, with it currently sitting at 13.5%.
Stroman’s HR/FB rate currently is 16%, elevated but going down since his disastrous start against the Rays when he served up three gopher balls. Assuming his HR/FB rate continues to regress to the league mean and that Stroman will continue to strike batters out at better than his career rate, we should expect to see even better pitching going forward, right?
Well, maybe not.
By now we should all be familiar with the ERA estimators, like FIP and xFIP. These are an attempt to show us how well the pitcher has performed, attempting to strip away the “luck” of his games. We see Stroman has a 3.54 FIP, over a full run worse than his ERA. His xFIP is 3.33, showing how he’s been a tad unfortunate with his HR allowed.
Stroman has a lifetime .305 BABIP but this year he has a .267 mark in the category. Also, he has an elevated strand rate, with an 80.2 LOB%. Those things are why he has such a shiny ERA and why the estimators have him with marks in the mid-3s, instead.
And there’s another estimator we should consider. With all of the cameras and tools at its disposal, Statcast has an estimator it calls xERA, “an attempt to credit the pitcher or hitter for the moment of contact, not for what might happen to that contact thanks to other factors like ballpark, weather, or defense.” So, it incorporates things like launch angle and exit velocity into its estimator.
The news here for Stroman is even worse than with FIP, as his xERA is 4.13 so far in ’21.
This means Stroman’s been giving up harder contact than we would assume for a guy with a 2.32 ERA. Among Mets pitchers with at least 20 IP, Stroman has the highest HardHit% at 45.8%. Among the 67 pitchers that qualify for the FanGraphs leaderboards, Stroman’s HardHit% is the fifth-highest in MLB. Can he keep this up if nearly one out of every two balls that are hit are hit somewhere hard?
We have HardHit% going back to 2015, or nearly all of Stroman’s career. He has a 39.2 lifetime HardHit% but his numbers have not been consistent here year to year. Twice previously he’s had numbers in the 40s – 2016 when he had a 41.8 rate and 2018 when it was 40.4 HardHit%. Those were easily his worst two years, as in ’16 Stroman had a 4.37 ERA and in ’18 he had a 5.54 mark.
So, when you watch Stroman’s next start, keep an eye out for the type of contact he’s allowing. To be sure, not every hard-hit ball is destined to be an extra-base hit, much less a home run. There are groundballs with exit velocities in triple digits. But if 45% of the balls hit against you are rockets, sooner or later more of them are going to end up as hits.
In his career, Stroman has an 8.9 H/9 mark. This year it sits at 7.6 H/9. It’s difficult to imagine Stroman maintaining either his ERA or his H/9 if batters continue to hit the ball with authority so frequently against him.
Your usual good stuff Brian. It’s alarming to see Stroman’s hard hit rate so high, but does the high GB% help to mitigate that some? I would assume that a lower % of hard hit ground balls become hits than hard hit balls in the air, especially with shifts. Do you think we could expect Stroman to continue to get a higher than expected number of outs on hard hit balls if he keeps them on the ground?
Thanks Bob – we miss you in the Game Chatters.
With all of the grounders that Stroman gets, it’s likely he produces more hard hit balls on the ground than the typical pitcher. But it’s just difficult for me to believe that’s the main thing going on here. Maybe the thing that’s most alarming is that Stroman has a career-high 22.4 LD%. Since line drives are the batted ball type most likely to result in a hit, and often ones hit quite hard, too, this is not great news.
Brian, nice breakdown…certainly the expectation is that he may regress to his mean a bit, but he has clearly done his job and more so far. Additionally, I find him a fun guy to watch. Some of it is because he’s little (relatively), some of it is because he has a ton of energy, some of it is because he’s a local guy, and probably most of it is because he is not an exception – a pitcher that is going to try to get you out with some guile and some old school pitching.
I agree with TJ – he is fun to watch. Extremely athletic and definitely a bit “old school”.
Stroman has been sharp much more often this season than he is not. When he is sharp, his fastball gets quicker because he can locate it and the hitter has to watch for the bendy stuff. He just has too many weapons, and then if he puts it where he wants, forget it.
I’m guessing he’s using his fastball more often this year, Some games he leans on it quite a bit, and with effectiveness. At 93mph, it might account for more balls hit on the barrel, but still, he keeps hitters just off balance enough to get outs. He’s definitely a fun player to watch.
It’s funny (and interesting) that throwing 93mph today makes you a soft tosser. Weren’t pitchers like Gibson, Seaver, Marichal, throwing about 94-96mph in their era, and considered having “good heaters”? In fact, wasn’t it true that if you threw in the 90s then, you were considered “fast”?
I guess my question here would be: were the pitchers in the 60s & 70s looked better because they didn’t have to deal with loaded lineups like today? Would todays pitchers all be (elite) Koufax’es if transported back in time?
The questions in your second graph:
1. Unequivocally yes
2. Yes but
I think we accept without question that football, basketball and hockey players from 50 years ago couldn’t hold a candle to today’s athletes in those sports. Yet for some reason, baseball is held to a different standard and that’s just ludicrous.
Ted Williams talked about how it was so much more difficult to hit a slider. In tonight’s game, Keith Hernandez talked about how much trouble he had with a cutter. We expect pitchers to throw those now.
If Taijuan Walker and his 97 mph fastball, slider, cutter, curve and split finger was somehow transported back in time to pitch off the high mound and the weak hitters that Gibson, Koufax and others faced – he would be unstoppable. No different than if we transported Kevin Durant and asked Dave DeBusschere to guard him or if we asked John Elliot to try and tackle Dalvin Cook.