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March 18, 2009

Checking the Numbers

The Man Who Broke PECOTA?

by Eric Seidman

Every offseason, when baseball news hits a lull and even an Esteban German signing seems interesting, the release of the PECOTA projections comes to the rescue and rejuvenates fans. Hordes of readers flock to the pages of their respective teams in order to assess the forecasts, seeing how their current talent stacks up with the competition. This year, the most controversial projection belongs to Orioles catcher Matt Wieters, but up until a week ago, an even more surprising "forecast" existed for Jamie Moyer. It turns out that he didn't have a PECOTA card, and the space usually reserved for it delivered a message that the web address in question could not be found. His projection is now available following an update, but until recently his unique career path made it difficult to come up with an accurate forecast.

Since 1936, there have been just 22 pitcher seasons in which a hurler over 45 years old had made at least ten appearances. Half of those seasons belonged to starting pitchers: Phil Niekro (four), Charlie Hough (two), Nolan Ryan (two), Tommy John (two), and Jamie Moyer (one). Niekro and Hough were both knuckleballers, so their ability to pitch while creeping up on AARP eligibility isn't really that impressive. Of the remaining four pitchers, Moyer's 2008 campaign featured the most starts, the highest innings total, and the lowest ERA. By now you've probably noticed the constant filtering taking place in this paragraph, which goes a long way toward explaining the difficulty level in forecasting the Phillies left-hander: there just aren't many seasons in which someone 45-years-old or older who is a non-knuckleballing starter, not to mention someone who didn't really begin to pitch effectively until the age of 34, has made a decent number of starts and then continued to pitch for at least another season. Jamie Moyer is literally in a league of his own, a fact which is evident in the very low similarity scores on the comparable pitchers section of his forecast.

Moyer's career is not over yet either, as he recently inked a two-year, $10 million contract to remain with the defending champion Phillies. They'll rely on the Jim Varney look-alike not just to plug the middle of their rotation, but to also serve as a mentor and teacher to the young players on their roster. The image of him perched alongside Cole Hamels on the bench has already become a fixture in the minds of the phan-base, and Hamels has admitted to benefiting greatly from the tutelage. Moyer has helped fifth-starter candidate J.A. Happ harness his changeup this spring, aiding the youngster's chances against Chan Ho Park. He reportedly even threw a poorly called pitch on purpose in a game against the Tigers, serving up a gopher ball in the process, in order to show young catcher Lou Marson why the call was incorrect. He has already lived up to the mentoring end of the bargain, and he still looks very capable of pitching as well. Take a gander at his plate-discipline statistics over the past four years:

Year  O-Sw  O-Cont  Z-Sw  Z-Cont
2005  20.5   64.4   65.3   90.5
2006  24.9   64.9   63.3   90.8
2007  24.3   70.9   62.0   85.8
2008  26.4   75.9   60.6   87.6

According to the numbers, which measure the percentages of swings and contact made on pitches both in and out of the zone, Moyer appears to be the anti-Pedro, in the sense that his ability to fool hitters has increased. The lower rates of both swings and contact in the strike zone definitely suggest that hitters are finding it difficult to identify his offerings. He throws a slew of slop, alternating between fastballs, cutters, changeups, and a curveball that probably does not even register on most radar guns, relying instead on their movement, their relative velocities, and his acumen. Another major contributor to his success is the indistinguishable appearance of the paths of both his changeup and fastball. The chart below shows the flight patterns of his chief deliveries from the view of first base: