Smoke and Mirrors

Over the last month, the Texas offense has been really bad. Too many strikeouts, not enough walks and a collective group simply not getting the job done. Luckily for the Rangers, their pitching staff has bailed them out.

That may change moving forward.

Kevin Millwood and Scott Feldman have been unusually lucky throughout the first half of 2009. BABIP has been established as an extremely useful statistic. The acronym stands for: Batting-Average-on-Balls-In-Play. In other words, it tracks how often a pitcher gives up a hit when the hitter puts a pitch in play.

Typically, the league average hovers around the .300 mark meaning that, on average, 30% of balls put in play result in a base hit. Let’s take a look at the two Texas starters in question:

Millwood
Since coming to Texas, Millwood has allowed a BABIP of around .335. Last year, when he posted an ERA of 5.07 – his BABIP was .357. This year, while posting an ERA of 3.34 – his BABIP is .267 (90 points lower than 2008), which is below league-average and well below his recent career trend. You might just think that he is making better pitches this year, but upon further review:

Millwood is striking out less this year than he did in 2008...
Millwood is walking more than he did in 2008...

When walk rates go up and k-rates go down, ERA almost always inflates. Instead, Millwood has seen his ERA drop almost two full points.

Feldman
Last year, when Scott Feldman posted a 5.29 ERA, he allowed a BABIP of .285. This year, while posting an ERA of 3.91 – his BABIP is .236 (almost 50 points lower than last year). Is he making better pitches? Possibly, but again:

Felman's walk rates haven’t changed much this year...
Feldman's strikeout rate is almost identical to last year’s...

The difference: he is allowing two less hits for every 9 innings that he pitches.

The Rangers have improved their team defense and that can play a significant role within hits-allowed numbers; however, the defense by itself cannot explain both pitchers’ sudden improvement. If the defensive changes were solely responsible, you would expect the entire staff to see massive improvement within their BABIP numbers. That hasn’t happened. Matt Harrison has seen a dramatic increase in his BABIP this year. Padilla has seen his BABIP remain fairly constant. Brandon McCarthy has a much higher BABIP than it was in 2008.

I hope that I am wrong and am pulling for Millwood and Feldman to continue pitching well, but the numbers generally don’t lie. They aren’t striking more batters out – they aren’t walking fewer batters – they are simply allowing fewer hits. That doesn’t typically happen very often, but we can hope, right?