FanPost

They’re Getting Under the Ball More (Or Why Julio is Better Because Magic)

Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

I’m just going to go with command being the difference. Command should not be confused with control, the former is the ability to put the ball where you want whether in or out of the zone, while the latter is most simply the ability to limit walks. Julio hasn’t really limited walks this year: 10.3% BB%), but he has managed to get more ideal results both in terms of batted ball profile (for him) and plate discipline. Of course there are a few terrible starts that might be wrecking what might actually be a better BB%, but at this point we don’t know if those starts are signal or noise (the one where he got pulled early with his injury was probably noise). That’s why most of this article is going to be about the good years for Julio (2016 and 2018) and the bad years (2015 and 2017).

I say "just going to go with" because there’s no obvious way to track command. Unless I go back and watch every start and track every pitch watching his catcher’s glove to get an idea where he wants the ball to go, but even that would be far from an exact science since where a catcher lines up isn’t necessarily where he wants the ball to go. I can’t simply look at the percentage of pitches he’s placed in the strikezone (Zone%) because maybe he doesn’t want pitches in the zone, as you’ll see later.

Yes, maybe I should’ve waited until the end to give you my grand conclusion about command, but you have to know right now that I can’t, after all of this it will still be just a guess. All I can tell you are the things that are different between "good" Julio and "bad" Julio.

What you need to know about Julio, in case you didn’t already know, is that, even when he’s good, he’s still a bit of an enigma. He’s a classic FIP (and xFIP) beater. For those that don’t know FIP, on it’s most basic level, is an ERA estimator that gives a pitcher credit for the things he’s most responsible for, strikeouts, walks, and home runs, and tries to filter out things that are largely luck-dependent, xFIP is the same but it adjusts his home run rate to a league average home runs per fly ball rate (HR/FB%). In his career Julio has outperformed his FIP by 0.50 runs and his xFIP by 0.60 runs; for reference that 0.50 runs is the 13th largest ERA-FIP gap among pitchers with more than 1000 innings pitched since the end of World War 2. There have been many theories about why a pitcher would consistently outperform their FIP: the ability to strand batters on base (LOB%), good sequencing, ball in play luck/results (BABIP against), defensive play behind the pitcher, ability to control the run game, pop ups, etc. The reason Julio is currently outperforming his FIP by 1.2 runs is a combination of all those factors, and how those factors go in any given year is usually the difference between good Julio and bad Julio, which leads me to:

A Lot of Luck:

When Julio is good there’s usually a lot of sequencing luck. This is shown by his year-to-year LOB%:

  • 2015 LOB% - 73.8% (2015 ERA - 4.04)
  • 2016 LOB% - 77.8% (2016 ERA - 3.21)
  • 2017 LOB% - 73.1% (2017 ERA - 4.49)
  • 2018 LOB% - 84.5% (2018 ERA - 3.14)
There’s no real understood skill for LOB%, we can have an argument about clutch if you want, but if Julio is clutch he is only clutch every other year which is a neat skill, I guess. Mostly it’s just sequencing luck, this year the dingers and big hits have come with no one on, it’s saved his ERA. That 84.5% he’s put up this year is going to regress, in order to prevent it from taking his ERA with it into the stratosphere he’s going to have to limit baserunners, good Julio usually does that, and in his good starts this year that has been true.

The Slider Is Better:

Remember my discussion of command vs control to start this post? None of that is more evident than in his slider. Good years Julio gets chases on his slider outside of the zone, despite him not even throwing it in the zone very often. Here’s the Zone% and OSwing% (percentage of time the batter swings at a pitch outside the zone) on his slider:
  • 2015 Zone% - 41% (2015 OSwing% - 42.8%) *
  • 2016 Zone% - 39.2% (2016 OSwing% - 46.8%)
  • 2017 Zone% - 33.1% (2017 OSwing% - 36.3%)
  • 2018 Zone% - 28.4% (2018 OSwing% - 44.6%)
If batters decide to stop swinging at the slider, there’s going to be a very large problem, but right now they are, which leads me to believe Julio is putting the pitch where he wants in order to trick batters into swinging. The pitch itself is different from what it looked like in 2017: there is more horizontal movement (3.4 xMov vs 0.7 xMov) and downward vertical movement (-0.7 zMov vs 2.6 zMov) and like all the rest of his pitches, the average velocity is down (79.1 MPH vs 82.5). In conclusion, it’s a better pitch (more movement, especially downward movement) that he’s locating better.

* [Note: 2015 wasn’t really bad because of his strikeout numbers, in fact his slider from 2015 most resembled the slider he has thrown so far this year, 2015 was bad for LOB% reasons plus my next point, 2017 was bad for those reasons plus a bad slider]

They’re Getting Under It:
Julio Teheran is an extreme flyball pitcher, at a 45% FB% is the 14th highest in the majors. This is double-edged sword. Flyballs have a lower BABIP against than line drives and grounders, this means he’s less likely to give up hits, hence why he’ll have a low average against, but flyballs become home runs, and Julio gives up his share. You may think in good years Julio gives up softer fly balls (lower exit velocity), but no, friends! No indeed, in fact it’s the opposite, here are his average exit velocities on flyballs by year:
  • 2015 Average Exit Velocity on flyballs - 91.0 MPH
  • 2016 Average Exit Velocity on flyballs - 92.2 MPH
  • 2017 Average Exit Velocity on flyballs - 89.4 MPH
  • 2018 Average Exit Velocity on flyballs - 92.3 MPH
So he must just be giving up fewer flyballs in good years then, right? No! Because you see, Julio Teheran wants flyballs, more importantly he wants high flyballs, he wants batters to get under his pitches, and either pop them up or hit them at a launch angle that are less likely to do damage against him. The bad years for Julio are the years when launch angle fall more into the linedrive range. Below is a list of Julio’s line drive rate (LD%), fly ball rate (FB%), infield fly ball rate (IFFB%), and average launch angle against (LA):
  • 2015 LD% - 24.2% FB% - 36.2% IFFB% - 9.6% LA - 12.5
  • 2016 LD% - 19.0% FB% - 41.9% IFFB% - 8.6% LA - 15.3
  • 2017 LD% - 20.2% FB% - 39.8%IFFB% - 9.3% LA - 12.9
  • 2018 LD% - 18.0% FB% - 45.0% IFFB% - 12.0% LA - 17.2
The higher they hit the ball the better for Julio! Kind of... he’s giving up home runs at a bad rate, but he always will because of the flyball, so he’s going to have to rely on sequencing (LOB%) for when he gives up those dingers, or keep the bases clean by not walking guys. Edit: An explanation of why more flyballs is better, pretty simply it just means he’s giving up fewer hits (.208 average against this year vs .254 average against last year), meaning there’s fewer baserunners (lower WHIP), and less chance for the baserunners that do get on to be cashed in. This, theoretically, should keep his LOB% higher, but there’s still a lot of sequencing luck involved in that.


Why It’s All Magic:
Remember how I just sort of hand waved at it all being command at the beginning? That’s because I have no idea how or why he’s getting the good (for him) batted ball profile/launch angle and the better slider. I considered a lot of things including:
  • Pitch type usage: there’s just nothing really here. The only real difference is he abandoned his curveball, mostly a bad pitch, and is throwing a lot more sinkers, but this makes no sense for more flyballs, quite the opposite really. His sinker is much more in the "bad" band of launch angle for him, though it is getting a good amount of groundballs. He is throwing a few more changeups to lefties, but they’re mostly bad.
  • Pitch sequencing: a fully possible explanation, he could be setting up batters better and keeping them off balance better, I dunno, can’t really test it. It’s as good a guess as any really.
  • More vertical movement/higher spin rate on his fastball: intuitively I thought this would lead to a higher high-flyball rate, but nah the fastball is the same, even a little less vertical movement this year. He’s not even working up with it in the zone at a higher rate or anything, I invite you to look at his heat maps to verify this claim, I was too lazy to include them.
  • Change in horizontal or vertical release point: nah, nothing really here.
  • Literal magic: it’s honestly possible look at these table of xwOBA-wOBA on his flyballs and pop ups by year (ie, the expected results of the flyballs and pop ups he’s given up minus the actual results):

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Good years Julio (2016 and 2018) has been lucky (or very lucky this year) on flyballs, bad years Julio has been unlucky on flyballs. 2015 was particularly unlucky.

Some of the newfound good luck on flyballs might be atrributed to outfield defensive value and positioning. Getting rid of Matt Kemp and increased focus on outfield defensive positioning should help him to get those flyballs caught. It’s still pretty lucky though. There’s actually a lot of similarities between good Julio and bad Julio, his FIP versus lefties is still over 5, his xFIP is still pretty scary high, but the results have been good when things are going right.

Why It’s Command:
Because I don’t want it just to be luck. A lot of it is luck, maybe most of it, probably most of it, but he is getting a batted ball profile more in line with the years where he was good, and there’s no obvious answer to why that is. So, I just have to think he’s been better at putting the ball where he wants to. Consider these two heat maps of his sinker placement to right handed hitters:
2017:
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2018:
RBCIPyu_-_Imgur.0.jpg

This has nothing to do with how how he’s getting a better batted ball profile it’s just to illustrate that it seems like he’s putting the ball in better spots

Tl;dr: Julio Teheran pitches better when he gets more flyballs (because it results in fewer hits, helping reduce both baserunners, and baserunners being cashed in), he’s getting more flyballs, I have no real idea why, I’m guessing it has something to do with his command being better, but there’s a very good chance it’s all just luck and he’ll regress closer to his results from 2017 as his LOB% and luck on batted balls normalizes, but a better slider might prevent it from being that bad.

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