Blake Murphy Sports Writing

Title: Henderson Alvarez’ Smoke and Mirrors
Date: May 14, 2012
Original Source: The On Deck Circle
Synopsis: With Henderson Alvarez mowing down lineups in the early going, I looked under the hood at some scary signs the peripheral stats show.

With a 2.61ERA and a 1.10 WHIP, nobody is going to be complaining about Henderson Alvarez’ results so far this season.

Alvarez, the Blue Jays’ second-year number three starter, is off to a great start based on traditional baseball card numbers, also sporting a 3-2 record and averaging just shy of 7 innings per start. He’s been of great value to a rotation that has seen ups-and-downs from the new-look Brandon Morrow, rookie Drew Hutchison, and the rebounding Kyle Drabek. Alvarez has lasted at least six innings in every outing and has allowed more than three runs just once, providing a stabilizing force in the middle of the rotation.

With all of that said, there is legitimate cause for concern. Although Alvarez passes the eye test on the mound except for the occasional meatball, some of his peripheral stats simply can’t be maintained. Alvarez sports a 5.28 FIP and a 4.69 xFIP (which normalizes home run rate), indicating he’s due for some regression in a pretty serious way. While pitchers can show an ability to outperform their fielding-independent numbers, Alvarez has by far the biggest gap between ERA and FIP in the entire Major Leagues. In fact, Jeremy Hellickson (someone who appears to be demonstrating a skill in beating the peripherally-suggested measures) is the only other pitcher with an FIP-ERA gap of greater than 2. Simply put, while Alvarez’ ERA has graded out as 32% better than league average, his FIP actually sees him as 28% worse (xFIP shows him as 14% worse).

So where do the discrpancies lie, and can Alvarez maintain this to some degree? It doesn’t look positive.

The first thing that sticks out is Alvarez’ striekout numbers. At just 2.61 K/9, Alvarez edges out Derek Lowe as the league’s least capable strikeout artist. Alvarez also ranks fourth last in Swinging Strike %, meaning he only induces whiffs more often than Fat Bartolo, Chris Volstad, and Lucas Harrel. His K/9 is actually so weak that you have to go back to Kirk Reuter in 2004 for the last time someone qualified for the ERA title with a rate that low (and it was technically higher at 2.65 K/9). There has just hasn’t been a pitcher in recent history to display success with this low a strikeout rate.

It’s not all bad though, as you can expect the K-rate to rebound a bit. Alvarez had a 5.65 K/9 last year in his 10-start audition and ZIPS projects him for 4.79 K/9 the rest of the way. These numbers are still below average, but they’re safely outside of worst-of-all-time territory. Alvarez also maintains a K/BB ratio of greater than 1 by never walking anybody (2.42 BB/9) and keeps hitters from teeing off on his hittable pitches by inducing a 58.1% ground-ball rate, the 6th best in baseball.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the strikeouts forecasting gloom for the spectacled ground-ball artist. While ground-balls go for hits less often than line drives or fly balls, his BABIP is a minscule .212, indicating some balls should start missing gloves shortly. Alvarez does have the profile to beat the league-expected BABIP of approximately .295 as a ground-ball pitcher with an elite infield defense, but his current number would indicate an extreme amount of luck.

Alvarez has also shown an uncanny ability to pitch from the stretch…or an uncanny amount of luck stranding runners. His strand rate of 88.7% is well above the league average of approximately 72% and is currently the 6th best mark in the Majors. Again, pitchers can demonstrate some ability to beat the league average here, but like BABIP, this is an element more controlled by luck. Basically, by crediting him with his strand rate, either we’re saying he’s unbelievable out of the stretch, or he has the innate ability to sequence hits and walks how he pleases (as an example, homer+single = 1 run, but single+homer = 2 runs, despite the same outcomes occuring).

One area where Alvarez could see some improvement is in his home run rate, which is high at 15.2% of fly balls. Alvarez didn’t show a propensity for the long-ball in the minors, but this rate is almost identical to the one he had last season, so it’s also possible he’s prone to mistakes that Major League hitters don’t let him get away with. Hey, if you’re gonna credit him for his low BABIP, you’ve got to blame him for the HR% too.

I have some difficulty saying I expect Alvarez to regress to being a bad pitcher as his FIP would suggest. Again, he induces ground balls at a ridiculous rate, his K-rate should tick upwards, and his HR/FB rate should decline. ZIPS hates him to the tune of a 4.93 ERA the rest of the way, but my homerism won’t allow me to be so negative. The introduction of a cutter (though at the expense of his above-average changeup, which is now being used just 12% of the time compared to 18.3% last year) and the increased use of his slider (up to 14.7% from 9.9%) should allow him to keep hitters guessing more than they were last year (71.8% fastballs). Furthermore, he’s never shown a tendency to walk many batters, so his BB/9 rate should help keep his WHIP low even if his BABIP adjusts.

That said, he’ll simply have to find a way to start mising more bats to maintain anything close to his current success rate. He probably has to start getting more “effectively wild” to induce a few more swings, and a refined use of his changeup (it has 8MPH separation from his fastball, but it comes in with almost no vertical movement, per PitchF/X) could help.

With the Jays elite infield defense and his elite GB% and BB%, Alvarez has a better shot than most to outperform his peripheral indicators, but smoke and mirrors can only last for so long. Alvarez can have a very bright future if he can change his profile to be even a below-average strikeout guy, but there’s no way he’ll survive long-term in the AL East pitching to the 4th-highest contact rate in the majors. He draws the Tampa Bay Rays (6th in the AL in scoring) and the New York Mets (4th in the NL in scoring) this week, so now is as good a time as any to start making those adjustments.