Sunday, October 16, 2011
Two More Data Points to Consider Re: Yu Darvish
I promise this will be the last Yu Darvish related post for the next day or two.
Kyle wondered about Colby Lewis and any other American starters that went to Japan and then returned to MLB. The only other one I could think of was Darrell May. So here are some of their stats.
| Lewis | G | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | WP | BK | RA | ERA | FIP |
| 2008-2009 | 55 | 354 | 307 | 124 | 111 | 25 | 46 | 369 | 4 | 3 | 3.15 | 2.82 | 2.42 |
| 2010-2011 | 64 | 401 | 361 | 193 | 181 | 56 | 121 | 365 | 13 | 0 | 4.33 | 4.06 | 4.10 |
| May | G | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | WP | BK | RA | ERA | FIP |
| 1999-2001 | 69 | 430 | 386 | 182 | 177 | 60 | 124 | 450 | 0 | 0 | 3.81 | 3.70 | 3.79 |
| 2002-2005 | 120 | 593 | 662 | 362 | 332 | 111 | 181 | 365 | 9 | 0 | 5.49 | 5.04 | 5.32 |
Lewis pitched for two seasons in Japan for Hiroshima in 2008 and 2009. He’s had two full seasons back in MLB since then.
For May I’m only showing his last three seasons in Japan and then what he did over the rest of his major league career.
Here are the ratios for the component stats pro-rated to the same innings.
| Ratios | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO |
| Lewis | 1.04 | 1.37 | 1.44 | 1.98 | 2.32 | 0.87 |
| May | 1.24 | 1.44 | 1.36 | 1.34 | 1.06 | 0.59 |
Lewis hasn’t suffered much in the hit department, but you can see his FIP peripherals took a pretty big hit. His HR rate has been almost double, his walk rate has been more than double. He maintained a bit more of his K rate than the starters I looked at in the last post. Despite all that he’s still been a solidly above average starter for Texas, in a park that boosts offense. In May’s case we see a bigger spike in hits and a precipitous drop in Ks.
Let’s look at ratios for all the starters that I’ve covered over the last two posts.
| Player | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO |
| Igawa, Kei | 1.29 | 1.74 | 1.98 | 1.95 | 1.88 | 0.79 |
| Irabu, Hideki | 1.43 | 1.67 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 0.89 | 0.70 |
| Ishii, Kazuhisa | 1.15 | 1.39 | 1.35 | 1.27 | 1.47 | 0.72 |
| Kawakami, Kenshin | 1.14 | 1.52 | 1.54 | 1.02 | 2.06 | 0.74 |
| Kuroda, Hiroki | 1.03 | 1.22 | 1.18 | 1.02 | 1.26 | 1.03 |
| Matsuzaka, Daisuke | 1.17 | 1.70 | 1.85 | 1.62 | 2.27 | 0.88 |
| Nomo, Hideo | 1.12 | 1.17 | 1.23 | 2.01 | 0.72 | 0.88 |
| Yoshii, Masato | 1.24 | 1.45 | 1.49 | 2.12 | 1.09 | 0.88 |
| Lewis, Colby | 1.04 | 1.37 | 1.44 | 1.98 | 2.32 | 0.87 |
| Darrell May | 1.24 | 1.44 | 1.36 | 1.34 | 1.06 | 0.59 |
| Worst | 1.43 | 1.74 | 2.00 | 2.12 | 2.32 | 0.59 |
The last row just shows the worst case for each component stat. So Hideki Irabu (RIP) saw the biggest increase in hits allowed, etc.,
Let’s run Darvish’s three-year weighted average against each pitcher as well as with each of the ‘worst’ components.
| Player | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP |
| Darvish, Yu | 214 | 150 | 43 | 38 | 6 | 41 | 240 | 1.81 | 1.59 | 1.88 |
| Darvish->Average | 214 | 178 | 62 | 57 | 9 | 51 | 197 | 2.62 | 2.42 | 2.62 |
| Darvish->Igawa, Kei | 214 | 194 | 75 | 75 | 11 | 78 | 189 | 3.15 | 3.14 | 3.19 |
| Darvish->Irabu, Hideki | 214 | 214 | 72 | 75 | 11 | 37 | 168 | 3.03 | 3.18 | 2.83 |
| Darvish->Ishii, Kazuhisa | 214 | 173 | 60 | 51 | 7 | 61 | 172 | 2.52 | 2.14 | 2.88 |
| Darvish->Kawakami, Kenshin | 214 | 172 | 65 | 58 | 6 | 85 | 177 | 2.75 | 2.44 | 3.08 |
| Darvish->Kuroda, Hiroki | 214 | 155 | 52 | 45 | 6 | 52 | 247 | 2.21 | 1.88 | 1.97 |
| Darvish->Matsuzaka, Daisuke | 214 | 176 | 73 | 70 | 9 | 93 | 211 | 3.08 | 2.94 | 3.10 |
| Darvish->Nomo, Hideo | 214 | 169 | 50 | 46 | 11 | 29 | 210 | 2.11 | 1.95 | 2.34 |
| Darvish->Yoshii, Masato | 214 | 187 | 62 | 56 | 12 | 45 | 211 | 2.62 | 2.37 | 2.59 |
| Darvish->Lewis, Colby | 214 | 156 | 59 | 54 | 11 | 96 | 209 | 2.49 | 2.28 | 3.26 |
| Darvish->Darrell May | 214 | 187 | 62 | 51 | 8 | 44 | 141 | 2.61 | 2.16 | 2.95 |
| Darvish->Worst | 214 | 254 | 108 | 115 | 19 | 119 | 116 | 4.56 | 4.84 | 4.93 |
It’s entirely possible that Darvish will be exposed against the best competition in the world. Perhaps he’s uniquely positioned to take advantage of things in the Japanese game that he won’t be able to in MLB. He’s a risk, particularly given the likely investment in him.
However, I’d temper that by saying that as far as I can tell, no pitcher coming to MLB from Japan has put up the lines that Darvish has put up. The only pitcher who had a three-year-weighted average FIP within 0.22 of Darvish’s 1.88 was Irabu at 2.20. The next closest was Matsuzaka at 2.59. This just confirms to me that we shouldn’t just assume he’ll struggle because most of the pitchers who came over did. He’s been better than any of them.
Since this is the last Darvish post for the next day or two, I’m going to add this video.
Comments
Repost from the last thread:
There’s also Darrell Rasner, who went the other direction at age 28. He’s pitched ~230 innings since going to Japan.
Doesn’t really seem to be worth looking at Rasner, particularly since he’s been far from great over there.
Replacement Level Darvish Weblog
Are the Brewers on the verge of collapse?
Anyone else scan the table and think “Worst” was SG snark for Igawa’s line, before going back to discover Igawa was already in the table ?
Anyone ?
How come we never manage to find a guy like Hairston to help hide our clutchless superstars during a postseason run ?
Are the Brewers on the verge of collapse?
Yes.
Go Rangers, I guess.
Why are the Yankees wearing Brewers uniforms and handing this game to St. Louis?
It’s getting very ugly in Milwaukee.
I was looking forward to the new season of The Walking Dead, but I didn’t realize they were airing it on TBS.
If I’m a Phillies fan I’m sick that my team is so much better then these two crapolas. Go St Louis FU Nolan Ryan.
Opening scene of Homeland tonight features the most perfect pair of…...
I think I’m weird enough to watch Japanese baseball if it was on TV.
Brewers are just playing mind games with Tony, they’ll be back.
Better La Russa than the Rangers. I still remember some punkass Texas kid with an “I hate NY” shirt last year. Still don’t want him to go to bed happy.
14 √√√
[14] Sums it up for me. Plus, eh, I dunno…St. Louis is an old-timey baseball town.
He really has some late oomph on that high fastball, and that breaking ball is really nasty. Still a lot of stuff right down the center that you can see even in the highlights. Korea just looked over-matched there.
Can’t I bet on all the horses to have a bad time?
[17] Yeah, I thought I was crazy watching the video and wondering where any east-west work was, but meanwhile Gary Thorne was stroking himself while talking about the guy. The tons of late movement was tasty, though.
Also, Jon Hamm was on the WTF Podcast recently, and Marc Maron asked him about growing up in St. Louis, if there was anything to do there. Hamm just kind of sighed and said, “Well, we’ve got Cardinals baseball.”
Someone get that to the marketing department. “Cardinal baseball! Hey, this is kind of all we got.”
Hmm, does Darvish speak English? Apparently he did for the first few years of his life (his parents met in America), so I don’t know what kind of adjustment he’d be making culturally.
Next entry: NBC NY: Previewing the Yankee Offseason: The Young Arms
Previous entry: All Darvish, All the Time
