Reds righty Logan Ondrusek and Indians lefty Tony Sipp both had decent seasons in relief in 2010, posting 3.68 and 4.14 ERAs, respectively.
However, advanced metrics such as FIP found Ondrusek, a 25 year old rookie, and Sipp, a 27 year old second-year pro, to be fairly lucky, with expected ERAs between .5 and a full run above their actual performance. Such numbers would make them fungible replacement-level guys at best.
It’s easy to see flaws in both Ondrusek and Sipp. Neither could muster a 2/1 K/BB ratio last year. Ondrusek throws strikes but doesn’t miss many bats, while Sipp doesn’t have any fastball command and walks far too many batters.
As you might expect given the facts I’ve outlined, Ondrusek and Sipp both posted low BABIP numbers last year: .249 each, to be exact.
So are they just nondescript relievers destined to shuttle between Triple-A and the bigs for the next five years? I don’t think so.
How’s this for a leaderboard?
Neftali Feliz
Logan Ondrusek
Peter Moylan
Andrew Bailey
Tony Sipp
Those are the top five pitchers since 2002 with the lowest line drive rates. Ondrusek and Sipp are in pretty good company, no?
Both put up 14-15% liner rates last year, and in Sipp’s rookie year, he had the same liner rate.
Now, line drives aren’t the most reliable skill to gauge–many analysts believe them to be completely irrelevant. I agree to an extent, but it doesn’t apply to all cases. We shouldn’t throw out Mariano Rivera’s liner rates and say he’s due to regress: his cutter induces weak contact, and it’s tough to square up, so his 16.6% career liner rate is no fluke.
The question here is whether there’s any reason to believe Ondrusek and Sipp have the ability to maintain low line drive rates (and thus low BABIPs, and lower ERAs than would be expected).
Sipp now has 103 innings under his belt with a career 14.4% line drive rate. He has a career walk rate of 5.59 BB/9, and only 44.8% of his career pitches have found the strike zone (Average is 3-4% higher than that). The guy isn’t throwing meatballs down the middle of the plate, that’s for sure, so with fewer pitches in the zone, there are fewer opportunities to square the ball up.
Sipp also has a few other tendencies that bump his liner rate down a bit: a deceptive delivery (making the ball harder to pick up and square up), a tendency to work high in the zone (making him an extreme flyball pitcher, so batters don’t often get over the top of the ball), and his lefty reliever role which matches him up against hitters he’s likely to flummox. He likely won’t keep up 14.4% liner rates forever, but 17% or so? Definitely possible.
Ondrusek, on the other hand, has a bit of Rivera in him. He only has the one season of data, so it’s less reliable to go on, but Ondrusek relies on a cutter that eats lefties alive–how’s a 15/1 K/BB against lefties vs. a 24/19 one against righties? Ondrusek locates the ball well–he walked five batters in his Triple-A career, yet doesn’t put the ball in the zone any more often than Sipp–so when you combine the late movement of his cutter, some solid breaking stuff, and the precise location, you get a pitcher who, again, is fairly likely to have better-than-average liner rates, and thus look to be lucky more often than not. Ondrusek’s 6′8″ frame also creates unusual downward angles for hitters, like Sipp creates upward angles.
While they aren’t stars, Ondrusek and Sipp’s styles work so well in limiting liners that they should be able to carve out decent careers.
Original Story:
http://calltothepen.com/2010/12/29/lo...
