The Most Dismissed Ace in Baseball |

As many of you may have noticed there has been a wealth of elite pitching talent in the league this year. Many wonderful starters are having seasons that will go down as historic. Only 3 qualified pitchers have had a higher strikeout per 9 higher than Yu Darvish is currently having this year(11.96). Max Scherzer has a sparkling 18-1 record. Felix is building upon his Hall of Fame career, with personal bests in strikeout percentage and walk percentage. Clayton Kershaw’s 1.80 ERA is the lowest by any starting pitcher since Pedro Martinez in 2000. Jose Fernandez is dominating like no pitcher his age since Doc Gooden’s heyday. Many others, including Chris Sale, Matt Harvey, Hiroki Kuroda, and Anibal Sanchez are having marvelous seasons. All together 8 qualified starters have an ERA+ of at least 150, tied for the 4th most of any season in history. In Arizona there is a man on that list that I am not sure many people are talking about, Patrick Corbin.

As I write this I am watching the Diamondbacks celebrating a victory over one of the best offenses in baseball, the Cincinnati Reds. Patrick Corbin started this game, and ended up with a complete game, allowing 2 runs with 10 strikeouts and no walks. It is only the 3rd time in the past 3 calender years that a pitcher has had double digit K’s against Cincinnati and not allowed a walk, Zack Greinke and Chris Carpenter being the other two. That is pretty good company to be in. This outing lowered his full season ERA to 2.45, all the while pitching his home games in the bandbox that is Chase Field. He has not been getting extremely lucky either. His FIP is now 3.08, the 7th lowest number in the National League. His walk rate has been kept at a well below average 2.19 per nine, while he is only allowing 0.61 home runs per 9.

Corbin has specialized in attacking the zone this year. He has thrown a first pitch strike to 70% of the batters he has faced this year, the highest percentage in the National League. This has allowed him to reduce the number of pitches he throws in an an-bat. He currently only uses 3.60 pitches per plate appearances, placing him 13th in baseball. Since he has been so efficient, as well as productive, he has been able to complete 6 innings in all but 1 of his 25 starts this year. There are obvious flaws in his game that many will say keep from being anything more than an above average starter. He doesn’t strikeout a large number of batters, only 7.83 per 9 this year. Also he is not among the elite at keeping the ball on the ground, at 46.7% compared to a league average of 44.6%. However, there is no denying that he has been able to assuage these flaws, and been among the most valuable pitchers baseball in 2013. At only 23 years old he is well ahead of the curve. As long as he keeps getting ahead of batters, and keeps throwing a two-seamer that PITCHf/x says has been the most valuable in baseball, then he will be a very good pitcher for a very long time.

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Mr. Dave

10 years ago

I think the reason why not many people are talking about him is due to the flaws you mentioned. He’s been a great story for the Diamondbacks, but it seems like people are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

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Neal Kendrick

Reply to Mr. Dave

I agree, I think that is the reason, but I feel like what he has done so far has been pretty much ignored. He is not among the top 5 pitchers in baseball, but he could be pushing himself into Cole Hamels type territory.

Phil

I must be really out of it—I know strikeouts are forever on the rise, but isn’t 7.8 K/9 still a good figure?

Reply to Phil

It’s above average, but not exceptionally so. League average right now is at 7.52K/9

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John Autin

I certainly admire what Corbin has been doing, especially his consistency at going 6+ innings. But I’ll be looking at a couple of markers next year, besides the K rate: – Hits per 9 IP are 7.0 this year. That’s way below his prior track record,majors and minors. It might be a skill, but when a low BA is built on a non-elite K rate, you want to see it repeated before buying. – His basic HR rate is pretty good, but the best aspect is that he has yet to allow a 3-run HR in his MLB career. And… Read more »

Doug

Reply to John Autin

To John’s point, Corbin has a very low .261 BABIP this season. Substitute a more normal number around .300 and it’s probably quite a different picture. The two largest parts of why it’s so low are probably a) luck; and b) Arizona’s outstanding team defense (FanGraphs has the D-Backs at 83 DRS and the Royals at 76, then a big drop down to 38 for the Brewers). If you’re a Mariano Rivera who can consistently get hitters to make feeble contact, maintaining an ultra-low BABIP can be a skill. But, there aren’t many Marianos (only one, in fact), so most… Read more »

bstar

Reply to Doug

I don’t know, Doug. Reflexively attributing any portion of a low BABIP (is .261 really that low?) to luck seems too easy. I think you have to look deeper. Do you have evidence that it’s luck? I’d say D-Backs fans who have seen the guy pitch all year can offer the best response. Does it seem to them as if Corbin has gotten lucky, or does it appear that he’s induced weaker contact all year? The rest of us are pretty much guessing. BABIP doesn’t delve deeply enough (or at all, really) into batted ball velocity and trajectory to really… Read more »

Reply to bstar

It actually isn’t me calling it luck. Voros McCracken was the one who did a very exhaustive study several years ago that concluded that, with very rare exceptions, a pitcher’s historical BABIP against provided no predictive value for estimating his future BABIP against. I’m probably getting out of my league citing sabermetric studies but McCracken’s work included development of some metrics that he called DIPS (defense independent pitching – I think the S was statistics, but might have been something else) that I believe were the foundation for what has become FIP. That was my basis for suggesting that Corbin’s… Read more »

Doug, with all due respect, I know who Voros is. (He’d be a good candidate for Neal’s goofy-name list if not for Quinten McCracken.) The problem is that too few people are aware that not everyone buys completely into Voros’ work or his conclusions. It’s hardly etched in stone. Here’s a smattering of quotes, mainly from guys who are behind the invention of WAR and other modern metrics. Sorry about the length of this. Some of these, I admit, are taken out of context (**): **MGL, co-author of The Book. “There is no saberist that I know of that has… Read more »

bstar, I appreciate the way you’ve expressed the BAbip/”luck” issue. But I think “luck” stands more broadly for the class of things that a pitcher may do by skill one year, such as locating great pitches in key spots, but which are very hard to repeat. To use an analogy, we celebrate a no-hitter with 3 strikeouts as much as we do one with 12 Ks, but we’d say the latter guy has a better shot of doing it again. I recall your impassioned defense of Kris Medlen’s 2012 performance, against my too-confident assertion that his BAbip would regress. It… Read more »

tag

John,

Isn’t it the case that prime-era Pedro Martinez had the lowest BABIP one year and the highest the next? Pedro struck out, what, 10 batters or so per game both years, a great skill borne out over his career, and he had excellent command of his pitches, was able to put them pretty much where he wanted to. But not exactly.

The part of baseball not determined, or rather not predominantly determined, by an obvious, verifiable, consistently repeatable skill is large. I have no problem with that, and also have no problem calling it luck.

Bryan O'Connor

Tag, you’re right that Pedro saw a crazy swing in BABIP from 1999 to 2000, from .323 to .236. But you underestimated his K rates, which were 13.2 and 11.78 per nine. His 1.39 FIP in ’99 is by far the best in history for a qualified pitcher. I’d say his 2.07 ERA that year was rather unlucky.

Right, but Pedro’s m.o. wasn’t inducing weak contact. It was blowing hitters away, and having an unreal strikeout-to-walk rate.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Just because there are fewer pitchers out there who have the skill to do this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

So everyone’s saying Mariano Rivera has gotten lucky for 19 straight seasons?

If so, he’s hardly the only lucky reliever out there:

Troy Percival, .232
Tyler Clippard, .238
Hoyt Wilhelm, .250
Joe Nathan, .256
Billy Wagner, .265
Trevor Hoffman, .266
Steve Bedrosian, .267
John Hiller, .270

There’s many, many, many more.