Verlander's back

[grandslam]

His velocity is up to where it used to be is the big difference. However he has had a good bit of luck both good and as bad as well, a combination of allowing very few groundballs and a lot of line drives and flyballs will catch up to him eventually and I'm not a believer that his K rate will stay so high but on the other hand he isn't stranding nearly as many runners as you'd expect.

Why do you expect his K-rate to plummet? He's struck out at least as many batters as innings pitched in every start this season. It may not stay at 12+/9 innings, because that is ridiculous for an AL pitcher who doesn't have the benefit of facing opposing pitchers or the much weaker NL lineups, but I don't see any trend that would indicate it will drastically decline.

How is he having good luck? Using the saber stats, his FIP is 2.10 while his ERA is 3.55, which would indicate he is having poor luck.

I hope he continues to pitch up in the zone rather than become a groundball pitcher, like the former pitching coach tried to remake him as last season (with poor results.) You can be a successful flyball pitcher and pitch up in the zone if your fastball is good enough. Not all flyballs are equal. I'm not sure if I buy that a certain percentage of flyballs have to go for HR.

As far as him pitching better than earlier this season, he was awful against the Blue Jays (opening day). But he's been pitching well since then, imo. In his other two bad starts this season, I think he ran into bad luck. He had a perfect game through 4 innings against the Mariners, and what should have been a 1-2 run fifth inning was turned into a 5-run inning by an inning-changing error, suicide squeeze, infield single. He wasn't getting hit hard that game. He wasn't as sharp against the Angels (had poor control), but his line was made ugly by Ryan Raburn's little league defense (he made two misplays that should have been ruled errors. JV gave up a 3-run homer & the runs should have been unearned) and some groundball singles finding holes. It was only a matter of time until his stats reflected how he was pitching, because nearly every baserunner was scoring against him in his first few starts.

[moochman]

Anyone else read about Verlander's hatred on Yahoo almost a week ago? It's what Darth Vadar always tried to get Luke to do.

The Tigers announcers are always talking about how Verlander is so focused on gameday and seems a little mean. Just from watching his demeanor during games it does appear that he has shut out distractions, showing more focus. I think this may be helping him to stop having the one big inning that was killing him earlier this season.

It is yet to be determined just how his use of the dark side will hold up the next time he gets rocked.

[Ender]

How is he having good luck? Using the saber stats, his FIP is 2.10 while his ERA is 3.55, which would indicate he is having poor luck.

45.7% of his balls are being hit in the air but only 4.3% of those are turning into HR, that is pretty lucky. I didn't say the good luck outweighed the bad luck or anything, it just makes his stat line a bit harder to read than most pitchers since like every peripheral is a bit out of whack. He isn't going to sustain that HR/FB rate, he isn't going to sustain his 12+ K/9 rate. He's given up an unsustainable number of infield flies as well and I doubt he can sustain that bad of a LOB%.

Most pitchers have 1 or 2 whacky peripherals that you can zone in on and decide if he has been a bit lucky with ERA or not, Verlanders are so out of place that is really hard to decide what is going to happen with him. Safest bet is probably expected about his career rates or his 06/07 rates since his 08 velocity was off.

[jjs]

Ender has been fighting this from the beginning. Must have traded him early on.

[Ender]

Ender has been fighting this from the beginning. Must have traded him early on.

Fighting what? I said he'd have around a 4 ERA and he has a 3.55 ERA. I could really care less about Verlander one way or the other as a player, I just look at the stats.

[jjs]

Ender has been fighting this from the beginning. Must have traded him early on.

Fighting what? I said he'd have around a 4 ERA and he has a 3.55 ERA. I could really care less about Verlander one way or the other as a player, I just look at the stats.

just kidding, only wanted to bump my thread to the top.

[californiasunshine]

How is he having good luck? Using the saber stats, his FIP is 2.10 while his ERA is 3.55, which would indicate he is having poor luck.

45.7% of his balls are being hit in the air but only 4.3% of those are turning into HR, that is pretty lucky. I didn't say the good luck outweighed the bad luck or anything, it just makes his stat line a bit harder to read than most pitchers since like every peripheral is a bit out of whack. He isn't going to sustain that HR/FB rate, he isn't going to sustain his 12+ K/9 rate. He's given up an unsustainable number of infield flies as well and I doubt he can sustain that bad of a LOB%.

Most pitchers have 1 or 2 whacky peripherals that you can zone in on and decide if he has been a bit lucky with ERA or not, Verlanders are so out of place that is really hard to decide what is going to happen with him. Safest bet is probably expected about his career rates or his 06/07 rates since his 08 velocity was off.

doesn't FIP or xFIP correct this?

[Ender]

doesn't FIP or xFIP correct this?

xFIP does somewhat though it doesn't do it in a perfect way by any means. His xFIP is 3.10 right now. His basic GB/FB/LD splits are pretty strange as well. 25.2% LD means he is getting a lot of hard contact against him, 29.1% GB is extremely low but add in the 12.7 K/G and it seems unlikely that players are really making good contact on him like those suggest. He isn't a pitcher you can really figure out just yet, his indicators are all over the darn place.

[jjs]

I don't think he's going to slow down. AL Cy Young. He's going to overtake Greinke and Halladay.

[coma]

Downright amazing. Makes Zack Greinke look like Wang .