Fili's GOD for May 18th 2011: Texas Rangers at Kansas City Royals

A fun game today with two young pitchers going at it.

The Texas Rangers send Alexi Ogando, whom I reviewed here, up against just promoted Royals prospect Danny Duffy.   

Ogando is 4 - 0 with a 2.06 ERA so far...so he's been fantastic right?  No, that honor would go to Pineda.  Ogando looks great, but there's a lot of reason to think that there have been some smoke and some mirrors involved.  Ogando is only striking out 6.6 per 9 innings thus far.  He does have a very good walk rate (2.06/9) though.  He's giving up a lot of fly balls (34% ground ball rate) and home runs (1.24/9).  That all adds up (and multiplies and divides up) to a FIP of 4.21.  That means, we should expect his ERA to be closer to 4 than to 2.

So, how does a guy who's below average at striking batters out, getting ground balls, and giving up homeruns have a 2.06 ERA?

Ogando's BABIP against is .193.
Batted Ball Type: Ogando's BABIP, League BABIP
Ground Ball: .140, .229
Fly Ball: .091, .138
Line Drive: .600, .716

He's well below average on each type of ball.  The Rangers' infield defense (think Beltre and Andrus) is pretty good, so the ground ball BABIPs might stay low, but not this low.  The outfield is...not as good...that is unlikely to stay low...and line drives...those are hits (and, yes, I love ellipses).

As a result of Ogando's low BABIP he is also stranding 95% of the runners that get on base against him.  He also stranded 93% last season, but when the major league average is 72%, 90% plus looks unsustainable.

Ogando has been better as a starter than I expected, but he's not as good as that 2.06 ERA might lead some to believe.    


In my last Game Of the Day, I wrote about the KC Royals prospects.  One that I didn't write about is making his major league debut tonight.  That's Danny Duffy.

*MLB.COM

Duffy is an interesting guy.  He took about a year off from baseball.  But he's come back about as good as can be.

Duffy has been a beast in the minor leagues.  In 344 innings across all levels, Duffy has struck out 10.5 batters per 9 whilst walking 2.9 per 9.  He's a pretty neutral fly ball/ground ball guy (40% ground ball rate).

Duffy throws 4 pitches:  A fastball in the lower to mid 90's, change-up, curve and slider.

He's not likely to be a star, but he's the second most talented starting pitcher (behind Jeff Francis) on the Royals right now.

*Stats from FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference, and StatCorner

Debut Review: Alexi Ogando and Michael Pineda

Two interesting pitchers made their debuts as major league starters today.

The Texas Rangers' Alexi Ogando

and the Seattle Mariners' Michael Pineda.

Ogando pitched in relief for the Rangers last year while Pineda is one of the Mariners top prospects.

I said this earlier today:

An interesting game today that, unfortunately, I'll be too busy to either watch or keep tabs on:
Seattle at Texas. While Texas is really good and Seattle, likely isn't, both teams will start pitchers making their first career starts. 
Alexi Ogando starts for Texas while Michael Pineda goes for the Mariners. 
One specific thing to watch will be how both pitchers fair against left-handed hitters. As is the case with most young pitchers, both have explosive fastballs and questionable secondary offerings. Those 'secondary offerings' are change-ups in both cases. 
Ogando used his change up only 5% of the time last season as a reliever. It rated as a basically average pitch according to FanGraphs' pitch type values. Alexi Ogando » Statistics » Pitching | FanGraphs BaseballOgando dominated right-handed batters to the tune of 10.4K/9, 2.2BB/9 and a 2.07 FIPLeft-handed hitters were a different story: 4.15K/9, 6.23BB/9 and a 5.23 FIP.The raw numbers:vs L: 58 batters faced, 11 hits, 9 walks, 6 K'svs R: 113 batters faced, 20 hits, 7 walks, 33 K'sOgando will have to face a few lefties today including: Ichiro, Jack Cust, Milton Bradley, Ryan Langerhans or Michael Saunders, Justin Smoak, Chone Figgins, and Adam Kennedy.
Pineda will have to face a few lefties as well: Josh Hamilton, Mitch Moreland, Julio Borbon, and David Murphy.
How their off-speed pitches are working will go a long way to determining how successful they are against these lineups.

So, how'd they do?

Ogando pitched 6 innings giving up 2 hits, 2 walks and striking out 4.  He held Seattle scoreless.
Pineda pitched 6 innings giving up 5 hits, 1 walk and striking out 4.  He gave up 3 runs.

They both pitched pretty well.  My main concern was how they would fare against left-handed batters.

Ogando allowed 4 base runners, all of them left-handed.  However, most of Seattle's lineup was left-handed, so it's not surprising that he'd give up some hits to lefties.
Single to Bradley, BB to Cust, 2B to Kennedy, BB to Bradley

Pineda allowed 5 base runners, 3 of them left-handed.
Pineda: 3B to Moreland, 2B to Moreland, 1B to Kinsler-R, 2B to Hamilton, 2B to Young-R
Righties were were 2 - 17 with a walk and 3 strikeouts.
Lefties were 3 - 7 with 2 doubles and a triple.  Moreland isn't a great hitter but a lot of guys have given up doubles (or more) to Hamilton.

This isn't enough data to confirm that either pitcher will struggle with lefties, but let's take a look at how they approached them.

First Ogando,
According to Brooks Baseball, Ogando threw 78 pitches: 49 fastballs (63%), 28 sliders (36%), and a single change-up (1%).   According to FanGraphs, last year Ogando threw fastballs 64% of the time, sliders 31% of the time, and change-ups 5% of the time.  Interesting that he pitched almost exactly the same as a starter as he did out of the pen.  That's one way to eliminate concerns over his change-up; don't throw it.

It appears that the change-up that Ogando threw was the first pitch to Chone Figgins in Figgins' at bat in the 6th inning.  It was a ball clocked at 84 MPH.  He followed that up with a 93 MPH fastball for a strike, a 83 MPH slider for a ball, and another fastball that was grounded back to Ogando.

Ogando's fastball averaged 94 MPH with a high of 96 MPH.  Last season his fastball averaged 96.3 MPH.  A two MPH drop is reasonable when going from the bullpen to the rotation.  Ogando's slider averaged 79.5 tonight compared to 81.9 last season.

As for Pineda,
Brooks Baseball shows Pineda throwing 73 pitches in his 6 innings.  46 of them were fastballs and the other 27 were sliders.  Pineda completely avoided throwing any off speed pitches.

Pineda's fastball averaged 93.9 MPH while maxing out at 97.7.  His slider came in at 83.3 MPH on average.

It appears that both teams shared the concerns about their young pitchers' tertiary offerings, and didn't have them throw them.  Today, their stuff was good enough that they could get away with it.  At some point both guys will have to expand their repertoire to continue to have success as starters.