THT Extra: Dominating Future Competition
April 15, 2010
Today at The Hardball Times, I looked at how college pitchers performed against top-flight competition--that is, against hitters who had been, or would be, drafted. Among other things, I showed which pitchers had the best results by that measure in 2009.
Let's go back a bit further. Here are the pitchers who posted the best K/9 against drafted hitters in 2008 (minimum 100 BF vs. draftees). In deference to Brewers fans and Tar Heels, this list goes to 21.
Player School BF K/9 BB/9 HR/9 Scott Bittle Mississippi 125 16.8 6.0 0.3 Daniel Schlereth Arizona 102 14.1 4.9 0.8 Ricardo Pecina San Diego 108 13.3 4.2 0.4 Evan Fredrickson San Francisco 136 13.2 9.4 1.0 Brian Matusz San Diego 147 13.1 2.7 0.3 Bryan Morgado Tennessee 150 12.8 5.6 1.2 Clayton Shunick North Carolina State 164 12.3 2.5 0.5 Chris Hernandez Miami (FL) 191 11.4 1.7 0.8 Martin Viramontes Loyola Marymount 105 11.3 5.6 0.4 Jordan Brown Louisiana State 120 11.1 4.8 1.6 Brad Boxberger Southern California 130 11.1 3.9 1.6 Mike Ojala Rice 102 10.7 3.9 1.7 D.J. Mitchell Clemson 178 10.7 4.3 0.5 Caleb Cotham Vanderbilt 162 10.6 3.6 0.5 Lance Lynn Mississippi 165 10.6 2.7 2.1 Shooter Hunt Tulane 109 10.5 4.5 1.1 Alex White North Carolina 191 10.3 3.3 0.8 Nick Haughian Washington 186 10.3 5.7 0.5 Matt Ridings Western Kentucky 107 10.3 4.3 0.9 Aaron Crow Missouri 201 10.3 3.6 1.0 Rob Wooten North Carolina 109 10.2 5.1 0.4
With less deference to Brewers fans, it must be noted that while Evan Fredrickson struck out everybody, with and without a future in baseball, he put guys on base at an embarassing clip.
Despite some uninspiring findings that I reported at THT, it's clear that this split is a good way to isolate some impressive pitchers. Whether it's better than other methods is less obvious.
Now for 2007 and plenty more familiar names:
Player School BF K9 BB9 HR9 Josh Ellis Wake Forest 108 14.2 3.6 0.4 Kevin Couture Southern California 101 13.5 5.6 1.4 Nick Conaway Oklahoma 145 13.4 5.6 1.8 Bobby Bramhall Rice 118 13.3 6.3 1.0 Luke Burnett Louisiana Tech 150 12.2 5.4 1.5 Matt Gorgen California 112 12.0 4.3 0.3 David Price Vanderbilt 230 11.9 2.5 0.0 Lars Knepper Hawaii Hilo 103 11.7 2.6 1.0 Kevin Boggan Boston College 171 11.7 4.1 0.5 Pat Venditte Creighton 107 11.7 2.9 1.1 Brian Matusz San Diego 227 11.7 3.3 0.9 Anthony Capra Wichita State 113 11.3 3.0 0.7 Preston Guilmet Arizona 250 11.1 2.5 0.7 Tim Murphy UCLA 231 11.1 5.2 2.0 Sean Morgan Tulane 119 11.1 5.9 0.4 Danny Farquhar Louisiana Lafayette 126 11.1 2.1 0.0 Kyle Gibson Missouri 132 11.1 3.4 1.2 Alan Farina Clemson 101 10.9 4.5 0.8 John Leonard Virginia Commonwealth 113 10.9 5.6 2.0 Jess Todd Arkansas 202 10.8 1.8 0.4
Attentive readers might notice that the 2007 and 2008 samples are quite a bit bigger than the 2009 samples. This is one drawback of the "versus draftee" approach: You can't do the full analysis until a couple of years have gone by.
In '07 and '08, these pitchers faced freshmen and sophomores who wouldn't be eligible until the 2009 draft. Of course, 2009 pitchers faced similar crops of freshmen and sophomores, but we don't yet know which of those guys will end up being drafted. Hence the smaller samples. We could remedy that by using deep draft prospect lists, but even the deepest lists are not nearly as thorough as the draft itself.
Check back tomorrow for a bit more analysis of how '07 and '08 pitching performances in light of results against drafted hitters.