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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.