Robbie Ray: How Atkins acquired an Ace

[Deadpool]

From Jason Stark. His year end awards.

 

MY NL CY YUK “BALLOT”: 1) Phillies bullpen, 2) Trevor Williams, 3) Stephen Matz, 4) Craig Kimbrel, 5) Madison Bumgarner.

 

SPECIAL BI-LEAGUAL CY YUK ACCLAIM: Robbie Ray, Brandon Workman.

 

Still too many walks, but he's been considerably better as a Jay than he was as a Diamondback (I mean, still no prize, but serviceable at least.)

[KevinGregg]

Final numbers for the 2020 season:

[table=width: 850]

[tr]

[td]league average o-looking[/td]

[td]league average swstr%[/td]

[td]league average foul%[/td]

[td]league average ERA[/td]

[td]TIPS Constant[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]0.694[/td]

[td]0.114[/td]

[td]0.504[/td]

[td]4.45[/td]

[td]3.471[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

 

Using the same method as before method I calculated the TIPS (just as a Blue Jay for Walker and Ray) for the each of the upcoming starters [plus Ray because this thread is actually about him]:

 

[table=width: 400]

[tr]

[td]Pitcher[/td]

[td]o-looking[/td]

[td]swstr%[/td]

[td]foul%[/td]

[td]TIPS[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Shoemaker[/td]

[td]0.3630[/td]

[td]0.123[/td]

[td]0.477[/td]

[td]2.338[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Ray[/td]

[td]0.3920[/td]

[td]0.141[/td]

[td]0.525[/td]

[td]2.122[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Ryu[/td]

[td]0.3750[/td]

[td]0.117[/td]

[td]0.545[/td]

[td]2.153[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Walker[/td]

[td]0.3911[/td]

[td]0.082[/td]

[td]0.506[/td]

[td]2.780[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

 

[table=width: 400]

[tr]

[td]Snell[/td]

[td]0.3840[/td]

[td]0.151[/td]

[td]0.551[/td]

[td]1.843[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Glassnow[/td]

[td]0.3530[/td]

[td]0.141[/td]

[td]0.582[/td]

[td]1.596[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Morton[/td]

[td]0.3140[/td]

[td]0.118[/td]

[td]0.553[/td]

[td]1.705[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

 

 

[table=width: 400]

 

[tr]

[td]Bieber[/td]

[td]0.3900[/td]

[td]0.171[/td]

[td]0.554[/td]

[td]1.677[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Carrasco[/td]

[td]0.3650[/td]

[td]0.151[/td]

[td]0.531[/td]

[td]1.826[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Plesac[/td]

[td]0.3140[/td]

[td]0.143[/td]

[td]0.507[/td]

[td]1.788[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

 

And people were worried about the possibility of facing Cleveland's pitching in the first round.. this does not appear to be much better for our hitters after all

Edited September 28, 2020 by KevinGregg

[Spanky99]

Final numbers for the 2020 season:

[table=width: 850]

[tr]

[td]league average o-looking[/td]

[td]league average swstr%[/td]

[td]league average foul%[/td]

[td]league average ERA[/td]

[td]TIPS Constant[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]0.694[/td]

[td]0.114[/td]

[td]0.504[/td]

[td]4.45[/td]

[td]3.471[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

 

Using the same method as before method I calculated the TIPS (just as a Blue Jay for Walker and Ray) for the each of the upcoming starters [plus Ray because this thread is actually about him]:

 

[table=width: 400]

[tr]

[td]Pitcher[/td]

[td]o-looking[/td]

[td]swstr%[/td]

[td]foul%[/td]

[td]TIPS[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Shoemaker[/td]

[td]0.3630[/td]

[td]0.123[/td]

[td]0.477[/td]

[td]2.338[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Ray[/td]

[td]0.3920[/td]

[td]0.141[/td]

[td]0.525[/td]

[td]2.122[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Ryu[/td]

[td]0.3750[/td]

[td]0.117[/td]

[td]0.545[/td]

[td]2.153[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Walker[/td]

[td]0.3911[/td]

[td]0.082[/td]

[td]0.506[/td]

[td]2.780[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Snell[/td]

[td]0.3840[/td]

[td]0.151[/td]

[td]0.551[/td]

[td]1.843[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Glassnow[/td]

[td]0.3530[/td]

[td]0.141[/td]

[td]0.582[/td]

[td]1.596[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

:

o-looking swstr% foul %

181818 941176

TIPS = 5216293

[td]Morton[/td]

[td]0.3140[/td]

[td]0.118[/td]

[td]0.553[/td]

[td]1.705[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

 

And people were worried about the possibility of facing Cleveland's pitching in the first round.. this does not appear to be much better for our hitters after all

 

Just curious, what would the Indians rotation numbers look like? Both staffs are great, just curious if you don't mind.

[Krylian]

Are they saving the ace for game 4?

[Spanky99]

Are they saving the ace for game 4?

 

Ughh...

[KevinGregg]

Just curious, what would the Indians rotation numbers look like? Both staffs are great, just curious if you don't mind.

 

Sure, I just edited the first post to include this data as well

 

[table=width: 400]

[tr]

[td]Pitcher[/td]

[td]o-looking[/td]

[td]swstr%[/td]

[td]foul%[/td]

[td]TIPS[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Bieber[/td]

[td]0.3900[/td]

[td]0.171[/td]

[td]0.554[/td]

[td]1.677[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Carrasco[/td]

[td]0.3650[/td]

[td]0.151[/td]

[td]0.531[/td]

[td]1.826[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Plesac[/td]

[td]0.3140[/td]

[td]0.143[/td]

[td]0.507[/td]

[td]1.788[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

[dineke]

Snell and Glasnow scare the f*** out of me. Hopefully Shaw doesn't play the first 2 games because he can't seem to catch up to a fastball anymore. And hopefully Biggio has learned how to hit a 95 mph+ fastball.

[connorp]

Snell and Glasnow scare the f*** out of me. Hopefully Shaw doesn't play the first 2 games because he can't seem to catch up to a fastball anymore. And hopefully Biggio has learned how to hit a 95 mph+ fastball.

 

Pretty much any team other than Min had a lethal top 2. Well Sox and Cle anyway- the alternatives

[connorp]

We can only hope for the intangibles like Glasnow gets the butterflies and can’t find the strike zone. Not sure how he’s done in prior postseasons

 

Edit: I see he didn’t do good last year but control wasn’t overly bad. I don’t see Jays smacking him around though

Edited September 29, 2020 by connorp

[G-Snarls]

Pretty much any team other than Min had a lethal top 2. Well Sox and Cle anyway- the alternatives

 

Right

 

Could have been Bieber or Cole

[Spanky99]

Pretty much any team other than Min had a lethal top 2. Well Sox and Cle anyway- the alternatives

 

Maeda and Berrios say hi!

 

We can only hope for the intangibles like Glasnow gets the butterflies and can’t find the strike zone. Not sure how he’s done in prior postseasons

 

Edit: I see he didn’t do good last year but control wasn’t overly bad. I don’t see Jays smacking him around though

 

He's prone to the dinger.

[connorp]

Maeda and Berrios say hi!

 

 

 

He's prone to the dinger.

 

I owned Berrios for a bit in fantasy and soured on him since.

[connorp]

I didn’t know FIP didn’t like Snell this year. Still obviously a stud

[Spanky99]

I owned Berrios for a bit in fantasy and soured on him since.

 

Oh okay, as long as you soured on him.

[connorp]

Oh okay, as long as you soured on him.

 

We’re all entitled to our personal tastes. It’s especially tough on us fantasy players that build a team from scratch rather than win a championship with a squad handed over to them:)

Just sayin

[Spanky99]

We’re all entitled to our personal tastes. It’s especially tough on us fantasy players that build a team from scratch rather than win a championship with a squad handed over to them:)

Just sayin

 

Oh god, leave that for the other forum, baldilocks! Owner since day 1...

[connorp]

Oh god, leave that for the other forum, baldilocks! Owner since day 1...

 

Co-manager/lineup checker from Day 1*

[King]

Ever since we acquired Robbie Ray I have been thinking he looks pretty good. Like "no way we acquired this guy for Travis Bergen" good. His numbers haven't been amazing since we got him (4.38 ERA, 5.55 FIP, 4.91 xFIP) but the living room scout in me sees a ton of potential in him. Just a note to start off, however, which I didn't realize at first: his ERA as a Jay has actually been below league average which is 4.52 this year.

 

His command isn't really that bad and his stuff is electric. I believe that this guy is different from Roark, Anderson, and Walker. My hypothesis is that he looks like a great pitcher who will substantially lower that 4.38 Blue Jays ERA moving forward.

 

But the reality is we did acquire him for Bergen, so the industry did not value him. And clearly his numbers were terrible (7.84 ERA, 7.29 FIP, 6.47 xFIP) - he wasn't pitching well at all prior to the trade, so what gives? What am I seeing that wasn't there with Arizona?

 

I went looking for something that has changed with Robbie since he came over to the Jays and it didn't take me long. Turns out that at the start of this season, he decided to stop throwing like David Price and start throwing like a 15 year old girl for some reason:

 

15 year old girl:

(watch the catcher)

 

Robbie Ray:

 

And now, as you can see here, in his first appearance with the Jays he was already back to using the same delivery he had used very successfully in the past.

 

But how can we know if he is for real? It is just three appearances so far (today's start was not included), that is too small of a sample size right? Wrong!

 

It has been 7 years since I first learned about the wonderful concept of pitch based ERA estimators such as TIPS. This beautiful stat has just 3 inputs: o-swing%, swStr%, and foul%. It doesn't use IP as an input like FIP or xFIP (IP are obviously not independent of defense unless you get every out in the inning via strikeout). Best of all, in a sample of just a few hundred pitches you have a stat that predicts future ERA better than any of the other major players including more complex stats like SIERA.

 

I was sure that this new idea would revolutionize pitching analysis and discussion, yet here we are 7 years later and we as baseball fans really haven't moved very far past FIP (just look at the start of my post). There was a good post here about the shortcomings of DIPS and I think the clear response should be a shift towards using better ERA estimators in our discussions.

 

So, using TIPS I will predict Robbie Ray's future success using only the 238 pitches he has thrown so far as a Blue Jay. Spoiler: he is probably gonna be really good.

 

 

Warning: Math - feel free to skip to the next dotted line for the conclusion

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Is 238 pitches really enough? In this post it says around 250 pitches is a good sample. I can't find any other references to a stabilization point, just several comments that mention it does stabilize very fast. In many blog posts regarding TIPS, its creator (our boy jFaS) would set the cutoff to 50 pitches. It would be interesting to dive into the math on when TIPS really stabilizes, but for now I will say that since jFaS said around 250 pitches is a good sample we will just trust him that 238 is close enough.

 

Unfortunately TIPS is kind of annoying to calculate because by definition one of the components is not searchable on fangraphs:

 

 

I used Statcast data rather than pitchFX data for classifying Robbie Ray's pitches and for calculating the league average foul% since I couldn't find a reliable source of pitchFX data. jFaS also did this at times and comments on this practice here, mentioning that it will result in slightly different o-swing% values because they calculate the size of the strike zone differently. So the first thing I wanted to do was make sure that I was able to replicate the original results using my method and data sources. To do this I just needed to calculate the TIPS constant for 2013, and make sure it is the same as jFaS's original value of 2.57

 

From the original blog post:

 

 

0.696 o-looking league average from fangraphs

0.094 SwStr% league average from fangraphs

3.87 league average era from fangraphs

 

But how to calculate foul%? I have different search terms available on Statcast, I can't get Contacts easily but Fouls and BIP are readily searchable. So using the equation from the original blog post and a bit of algebra:

 

 

therefore: CONTACTS - BIP = FOULS

rearranging: FOULS + BIP = CONTACTS

 

 

 

therefore: Foul% = Foul/Contacts

 

substituting:

Foul% = FOULS / FOULS + BIP

 

Easy enough from here to run a Statcast search on all pitchers and plug the results into Excel to get total Balls in Play and Total Fouls for all pitchers in 2013

 

total fouls = 119749

total BIP = 131848

foul% = 0.475955596

 

This allows us to calculate the 2013 TIPS constant as 2.547086859, which I say is damn near close enough to the original value of 2.57

 

Moving on now, since we know the method is sound:

 

Using the same logic I calculated the 2020 TIPS constant as 3.499557857, which is way higher than 2013 largely because of the much higher league average ERA

0.696 o-looking league average from fangraphs

0.113 SwStr% league average from fangraphs

0.500376637 foul% league average calculated from Statcast

4.52 league average era from fangraphs

 

All that's left to do is calculate Robbie Ray's TIPS as a Blue Jay using Statcast search.

 

use team = Blue Jays; pitchers = Robbie Ray

 

for fouls use pitch result = foul: 37 total fouls

 

for BIP use included stats = BIP: 36 total BIP

 

Therefore foul% = 37/(36+37)= 0.506849315

 

for o-looking%, use gameday zones 11 12 13 14 and pitch result = ball, ball in dirt, called strike or hbp: 0.3850

 

for swinging strike% just use pitch result = swinging strike and swinging strike (blocked): 0.131221719

 

Final calculation:

 

TIPS = 6.5*O-Looking% - 9.75*SwStr% - 4.8*Foul% + C

 

= 2.5025 - 1.279411765 - 2.432876712 + 3.50

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

 

As a Blue Jay so far, Robbie Ray's TIPS = 2.29

 

In conclusion:

 

Ray started the year off by changing his delivery and had some terrible results. He's changed it back to one that actually makes sense, the one he used when he was an Ace. Given that this is such a substantial change, we should limit ourselves to the sample of games where he has been using the new delivery in order to predict his future success.

 

Using the best statistics we have available to analyze the sample size following the delivery change, we can predict Robbie Ray's ERA moving forward to be approximately 2.29

 

Atkins has most likely found our #2 Starter for the playoffs.

 

Bump.

[BTS]

Unpopular, but I don’t like Ray at all and would have been happy if they’d let him walk.

[Jimcanuck]

Unpopular, but I don’t like Ray at all and would have been happy if they’d let him walk.

 

Hard to find issue with a cheap 1 yr deal for a historically 2 WAR pitcher.

 

With a 1 year deal, the scenarios are:

 

Ray is good, Jays are good = profit

Ray is good, Jays are bad = Ray traded at deadline

Ray is bad, Jays are good = a little less profit

Ray is bad, Jays are bad = f*** off Ray

 

Only 1 bad scenario out of 4.

[Laika]

Hard to find issue with a cheap 1 yr deal for a historically 2 WAR pitcher.

 

With a 1 year deal, the scenarios are:

 

Ray is good, Jays are good = profit

Ray is good, Jays are bad = Ray traded at deadline

Ray is bad, Jays are good = a little less profit

Ray is bad, Jays are bad = f*** off Ray

 

Only 1 bad scenario out of 4.

 

This is some galaxy brain stuff. If Toronto is good in spite of a bad Ray the contract will still be bad. There’s minimal risk, but if he sucks it’s a roster spot and $8M that could have gone to a better pitcher.

 

I love the deal but we don’t need fuzzy Jim logic to justify it

[Jimcanuck]

This is some galaxy brain stuff. If Toronto is good in spite of a bad Ray the contract will still be bad. There’s minimal risk, but if he sucks it’s a roster spot and $8M that could have gone to a better pitcher.

 

I love the deal but we don’t need fuzzy Jim logic to justify it

 

its what i remember of game theory, economics 101

 

not fuzzy logic, some serious brains do game theory research

[Laika]

its what i remember of game theory, economics 101

 

not fuzzy logic, some serious brains do game theory research

 

3 quarters of the time it works every time

 

#gametheory

#economics

#seriousbrains

[Jimcanuck]

3 quarters of the time it works every time

 

#gametheory

#economics

#seriousbrains

 

still better than your assertions without evidence

[Laika]

still better than your assertions without evidence

 

What assertion?

[Jimcanuck]

What assertion?

 

Fantastic deal. Minimal risk.

 

I at least used an entry level s***** ass economics approach to quantify the risk.

[Laika]

Fantastic deal. Minimal risk.

 

I at least used an entry level s***** ass economics approach to quantify the risk.

 

But why would you even do that? This is a baseball contract. We have WAR projections, performance histories, and reasonable ideas of what the cost of a win is.

 

Game theory is not applicable and nobody needs a decision matrix to realize that a contract could either work out or not work out.

[Jimcanuck]

But why would you even do that? This is a baseball contract. We have WAR projections, performance histories, and reasonable ideas of what the cost of a win is.

 

Game theory is not applicable and nobody needs a decision matrix to realize that a contract could either work out or not work out.

 

Can't you tell my post was not serious? Just channeling my inner Olerud.

[saskjayfan]

Unpopular, but I don’t like Ray at all and would have been happy if they’d let him walk.

I sort of straddle this line myself. When I look at the available free agents there's many more that I would have preferred, but we added three starters last year. I think we will do the same this year. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they saw something in Ray they were working on that they feel can get him back to being the pitcher he was the previous 4 years. A one year commitment is palatable.

[Brownie19]

Unpopular, but I don’t like Ray at all and would have been happy if they’d let him walk.

 

I'm curious to see what guys like Kluber, Archer, Quintana, Odorizzi, Paxton, etc. get.

 

I mean we all know the 'stuff' is electric, but there's nothing more frustrating than watching pitchers walk guys.