Young Guns and Strikes

I was reading an interesting piece by Tom Verducci of SI the other day (you can read it here), and it got me wondering: how well is the rotation set up for now, but more importantly, for the future?

The article points out that the key to winning in the AL East is having pitchers that can throw lots of strikes, and also generate lots of strikeouts. We are going to look at statistics for pitchers 25 and under, which classify as young, either still prospects that are trying to break into the major leagues or pitchers that have just established themselves in the past few years. We will look at both the number of strikes and strikeouts individually, but I think the easiest place to start would be with wins.

It has been proven that wins are a very flawed statistic, but if your young pitchers are getting more wins in comparison to other years, it should be a good sign that you have some good young pitchers that are able to pitch and win at the major league level. This table shows the numbers of wins each year by pitchers on the Blue Jays that are 25 or younger (turning 25 before June 30 of the season). As the table shows, the 2009 Blue Jays had 23 total wins from pitchers under 25, mostly from Ricky Romero, Brett Cecil, and Marc Rzepczynski. That total ranked 9th all time for the Blue Jays, which shows that there was some promise there (as a comparison, 2008 had 25 and under Jays' pitchers winning only 13 games). You can see the 2009 totals for all major league teams here, which shows that the Jays ranked 14th. However, this year there has been a big step-up. There have already (barely 2/3 of the way through the season) been 26 occasions where a pitcher 25 and under has gotten the win this year. Again, the familiar names are Romero, Cecil, and now Brandon Morrow. They are currently in 2nd place for all major league teams for 2010. If the pitchers continue at this pace for the rest of the season, they will shatter the record of 34 set in 1982, and get to around 39 or 40. This shows that, in terms of wins, the rotation is set up well for both next year and many years to come.

Now that we have seen what wins have told us about the future, we can look at some less flawed statistics, such as strikes and strikeouts. Since wins are dependent on the pitcher as well as both the offense (scoring runs) and the defense (making plays for the pitcher), strikes are based purely on the pitcher's performance. The first point mentioned in the article is that pitchers in the AL East need to get a lot of strikeouts. If we look at the strikeouts per nine innings for pitchers 25 and under for the Jays, we can see that the past few years have been very good. Last year, there were 5 pitchers (who started at least 60% of their games) 25 or under who struck out at least 6 batters per nine innings. If we look at all teams in the major leagues, we can see that the Jays were second only to the Marlins, who had 6 pitchers that fit. So far this year, the Jays have 3 pitchers (Cecil, Morrow, and Romero) 25 and under that are averaging at least 6 strikeouts per 9 innings. Again, if we look at all teams, the Jays are tied for first with the Braves, Reds, Dodgers, and A's. So in terms of strikeouts, their young pitchers are performing better than ever, which shows that the future is bright for their rotation.

Finally, we are going to look at the other point mentioned in the article: throwing lots of strikes. Although it may seem counter intuitive to look at both strikeouts and % of strikes, there are cases (52 % strikes, 8.5 SO per 9 IP) where a pitcher may get a lot of strikeouts but not throw a high percentage of strikes. If we look at the % of strikes thrown by pitchers 25 and under, we can get an idea of how good they can be versus the AL East. This table shows the number of pitchers 25 and under each season for the Jays that threw strikes at least 60% of the time. Unfortunately, this data is only available from 2000 onwards, but we can still see that the last two years have the most pitchers 25 and under throwing at least 60% strikes (5 and 4, respectively). Again, if we want to view all teams in the major leagues, we can look at 2009 here and 2010 here. The Jays rank in the top 6 in both years, so we can see that their young pitchers are not only striking out hitters, but also throwing a lot of strikes.

It is always interesting to read something and then use statistical analysis to either back up what you just read, or completely falsify it. In this case, we can see that the article is completely correct in stating that the Jays have the pitching to win in the AL East based upon throwing strikes and getting strikeouts. It is excited to know that the rotation is set up very well for the next couple of years, and if the team continues to hit like this year in the future, the team should do very well.