16 Responses to “Jonny Cueto – Not Allowing Runs and Not Racking Up Strikeouts”

1. Andrew Says:
   August 22nd, 2011 at 9:48 am

   An interesting list, but the upper list is slightly unfair -- Lefty Grove and Harry Breechen did lead the league in Ks those years, after all. If they struck out 5.5 batters a game, nobody else in the league was striking out more than four...

2. Raphy Says:
   August 22nd, 2011 at 10:11 am

   Andrew- I guess you're right. I suppose we could normalize the strikeouts and see what comes up...

3. BSK Says:
   August 22nd, 2011 at 10:17 am

   Other Cueto trends...

   Walks down (68, 61, 56, 37).
   HRs down (29, 24, 19, 7).
   WHIP down (1.41, 1.36, 1.27, 1.00).
   WPA up (-1.5, -0.1, 0.5, 2.0).
   GB/FB up (.63, .74, .75, 1.13).
   LD down overall (21, 19, 20, 15).
   HR/FB down (10.5, 9.0, 6.6, 4.6).

   It is also possible that we are overestimating the drop in strikeouts. Keith Law has recently written that K/9 isn't as effective a measure because it doesn't account for how many batters a pitcher faces. A pitcher who allows more base runners is overall striking out a lower percentage of batters than a pitcher with the same Ks and IP but who allows fewer base runners. Now, I'd need to look closer at that to see if I agree, but it does make some sense and Keith Law is a pretty smart dude. Taking that into account, here are Cueto's K/BF compared to K/9.

   K/BF: .205, .178, .177, .162
   K/9: 8.2, 6.9, 6.7, 5.8

   Looking at K/9, he is down 29% over the 4 years. Looking at K/BF, he is down 21%. Still down, obviously, but not QUITE as much when looking at it in this way.

4. Mary Says:
   August 22nd, 2011 at 10:50 am

   A major difference for Cueto is also that the defense behind him has improved each year and he no longer has to fear that ground balls to third will be thrown into the first base boxes. As a result, Cueto is trusting that defense and throwing many fewer pitches and going deeper into games than he did when his K rate was higher

5. John DiFool Says:
   August 22nd, 2011 at 11:17 am

   Well, on that defensive note he's at a .225 BABIP, with ones in the .290's for his other seasons. I wonder when a pitcher seems to benefit from tons of luck like this pretty much across the board that it will give him a false sense of his own ability going forward and get him into bad habits which will burn him when everything normalizes.

6. Michael E Sullivan Says:
   August 22nd, 2011 at 11:32 am

   I was surprised not to see Greg Maddux on this list, but turns out when he was really good, he generally pitched >6 K/9. I only found one year where his ERA+ was excellent that was under 6, and at 159, it was not quite good enough to make this list. He had a number of other solid years (ERA+ 100-130) with under 6 K/9, but he was getting 6.5+ when he was dominant.

7. John Autin Says:
   August 22nd, 2011 at 11:42 am

   Note that 29% of Cueto's runs allowed were scored as unearned (11 of 38). There's only been one qualifying season like that in the divisional era.

   If you judge by Run Average instead of ERA, Cole Hamels actually leads the NL at 2.62, with Cueto at 2.67.

8. mosc Says:
   August 22nd, 2011 at 6:03 pm

   I'd love to see someone pull out 128.1 Inning stretches from some leading Cy Young candidates this year for comparison to Cueto. I mean, he's been good don't get me wrong but am I the only guy who thinks you should even be considered for a Cy Young unless you have more innings? Lets say the guy squeeks in and ends up with like, 165 IP with a 1.9 ERA this year. Is that really that historic?

9. BSK Says:
   August 22nd, 2011 at 8:10 pm

   Mosc-

   You are literally the first and only person to mention the Cy Young on this post...

10. camisadelgolf Says:
    August 22nd, 2011 at 8:17 pm

    For those who didn't know, Cueto changed his delivery this year. He is hiding the ball much better now, and there's no doubt a correlation with his increased production. I'd love to see some F/X data comparing 2011 and 2010 because it seems to me that his pitches are showing a lot more movement.

11. LeeTro Says:
    August 22nd, 2011 at 9:59 pm

    @10

    The only big change in his Pitch F/X is that he slowed his slider down 3 MPH. This has allowed for more horizontal and vertical movement. He is also throwing his 2-seamer 40% of the time, compared to 30% last year. The heat maps didn't show any great location differences to explain his rise in GB% from 42% to 54%.

12. Gerry Says:
    August 22nd, 2011 at 10:08 pm

    " This is very striking...." Pun intended, Raphy?

13. Raphy Says:
    August 22nd, 2011 at 10:16 pm

    @12 not at all. 🙂

14. Gonzo Says:
    August 23rd, 2011 at 1:29 am

    @Mosc: Funny you mention the ERA title. Joe Magrane hurled 165 innings and won the title with a 2.18. Even though his record was 5-9 with 10 no decisions and zero relief appearances.

15. MLS Says:
    August 24th, 2011 at 5:59 am

    Has anyone noticed that the pitchers have regained the high and inside strike zones? Makes a huge difference for control type pitchers.

16. George Says:
    August 27th, 2011 at 3:44 pm

    Responding to John DiFool,

    I often read these posts but haven't responded yet. I don't know what BABIP is...this is another one of those acronyms that looks bizarre to someone who doesn't live and breathe Sabermetrics. However, I wanted to respond to the gist of your observation, which seems to be a common assumption on these pages. Many writers assume that strikeouts are one of the best measures of a pitcher's worth, because that is the one element that is almost completely in a pitcher's control, and that all other factors are owing to luck. One poster once put up a list of pitchers who had many wins and low strikeout totals and observed that high strikeout totals are a good measure of a pitcher's future success. But the list he put up had about a dozen Hall of Fame pitchers, which is a pretty good indication that they were successful.

    I think these are unreliable assumptions; they confuse what is easy to measure with the value of what people are trying to measure. In fact, not that many of the leading pitchers in history were at the top of the strikeout boards, and many strikeout leaders had very short careers. There are countless pitchers who blew by hitters for a few years and either blew their arms out or lost velocity and couldn't throw the ball by people any more. If there is anything that will give a pitcher a "false sense of his own ability going forward and get him into bad habits", it is the over-dependence on speed.
    What most of the current measures are missing is something that is very difficult to measure, namely a pitcher's ability to work effectively with his defense.

    The best pitchers usually can strike out batters when they need to (thus, they usually need some velocity), but very few aim to strike out every hitter. There are often much more effective ways to get batters out. If there is a man on first base, a smart pitcher will try to get the hitter to hit into a double-play rather than strike out two batters. The best pitchers usually work effectively with their defense, getting the batters to hit to certain fielders (I remember reading once how Gaylord Perry had a set of signals to his infielders for where the next ball was going to be hit). In addition, a strikeout usually requires more pitches at high velocity than a ground-out; Maddux used to mow through lineups using two or three pitches for most hitters.
    And over the long term, a strikeout is often strategically less useful than another means of getting a batter out. There is usually a fairly predictable sequence of pitches and placement that a young strikeout artist relies on, but a master pitcher like a Perry or a Maddux worked out different strategies for different hitters, based on the last ten or twenty or fifty times they faced each hitter. That's how Maddux was able to own hitters for about fifteen years without blowing the ball by them.

    Of course, if your team has lousy defense and offers little run support, then you are out of luck. But "luck" is not equivalent to all the variables that are difficult to measure. A better term for this in many cases might be "skill."