After last night's gem, Fried's BB% is currently sitting at 4.6%, ranking him #6 in MLB out of 87 qualified pitchers. Right now in 2019, he is demonstrating elite control, and elite control is what allows pitchers to perform much better than their arsenal suggests they should. With this type of elite control, it doesn't matter that Fried's FA is a bit flat.
This dramatic improvement in control isn't typical for pitchers in their mid-20s, and pretty much nobody saw this coming. Is Fried one of the exceptions folks will point to in the future when talking about a guy with good stuff who is struggling with control? We know BB rate stabilizes around this point in the season, but flukes do happen over large sample size. Is this a fluke, or is this real?
Here is an article where the author found correlations between all the plate discipline metrics and BB/K rates:
https://www.pitcherlist.com/a-begin...anding-plate-discipline-metrics-for-pitchers/
For those who don't want to read the whole thing, here's the money quote:
3.For walk rates, none of the metrics show a high enough correlation to make such rules. Walks are unpredictable in nature, thanks to human umpires. O-Swing% and F-Strike% are certainly good, but not really guaranteed to improve walk rates. Throwing balls in the strike zone does not even appear to be a factor. For walks the only thing we can predict is their unpredictability.
Not exactly the silver bullet we were hoping to find, but we know O-Swing (swings on pitches outside the zone) and F-Strike (first pitch strikes) hold at least some predictive power, with O-Swing being the most predictive. The best we can do is look there...
In 2018 there were 5 qualified pitchers who posted a BB% under 5%. Here are their BB%, O-Swing%, F-Strike% and Zone% (I know Zone% doesn't correlate to BB%, but it is so intuitive that I'm including it anyways).
Mikolas: 3.6%, 36.6%, 70.8%, 48.0%
Kluber: 4.0%, 35.0%, 63.2%, 42.5%
Leake: 4.3%, 34.0%, 65.1%, 45.0%
Verlander: 4.4%, 34.6%, 68.9%, 47.7%
Gonzales: 4.7%, 35.9%, 66.3%, 43.0%
Fried 2019: 4.6%, 28.5%, 65.8%, 47.2%
Fried 2018: 14.1%, 27.7%, 57.8%, 41.2%
We see Fried is throwing more strikes overall and more first pitch strikes in 2019 than he was in 2018, and those 2019 values are in line with what other guys have done in full seasons they posted an elite BB%. Definitely a good thing.
We also see Fried's 28.5% O-Swing being far below the typical ~35% value we see from guys who post 5% BB rate over a full season. This rate is the most predictive of BB%, and it suggests Fried is experiencing some luck in the BB department so far.
His current plate discipline numbers most closely resemble the 2018 values posted by Jose Quintana (9.2% BB%, 3.51 BB/9), Jon Gray (7.0%, 2.72), and Charlie Morton (9.2%, 3.45).
This suggests to me that while Fried's control going forward won't be elite, it should fall into the ~3 BB/9 range, which is still Grade 50/55, just not the Grade 80 he's shown so far in 2019.
This dramatic improvement in control isn't typical for pitchers in their mid-20s, and pretty much nobody saw this coming. Is Fried one of the exceptions folks will point to in the future when talking about a guy with good stuff who is struggling with control? We know BB rate stabilizes around this point in the season, but flukes do happen over large sample size. Is this a fluke, or is this real?
Here is an article where the author found correlations between all the plate discipline metrics and BB/K rates:
https://www.pitcherlist.com/a-begin...anding-plate-discipline-metrics-for-pitchers/
For those who don't want to read the whole thing, here's the money quote:
3.For walk rates, none of the metrics show a high enough correlation to make such rules. Walks are unpredictable in nature, thanks to human umpires. O-Swing% and F-Strike% are certainly good, but not really guaranteed to improve walk rates. Throwing balls in the strike zone does not even appear to be a factor. For walks the only thing we can predict is their unpredictability.
Not exactly the silver bullet we were hoping to find, but we know O-Swing (swings on pitches outside the zone) and F-Strike (first pitch strikes) hold at least some predictive power, with O-Swing being the most predictive. The best we can do is look there...
In 2018 there were 5 qualified pitchers who posted a BB% under 5%. Here are their BB%, O-Swing%, F-Strike% and Zone% (I know Zone% doesn't correlate to BB%, but it is so intuitive that I'm including it anyways).
Mikolas: 3.6%, 36.6%, 70.8%, 48.0%
Kluber: 4.0%, 35.0%, 63.2%, 42.5%
Leake: 4.3%, 34.0%, 65.1%, 45.0%
Verlander: 4.4%, 34.6%, 68.9%, 47.7%
Gonzales: 4.7%, 35.9%, 66.3%, 43.0%
Fried 2019: 4.6%, 28.5%, 65.8%, 47.2%
Fried 2018: 14.1%, 27.7%, 57.8%, 41.2%
We see Fried is throwing more strikes overall and more first pitch strikes in 2019 than he was in 2018, and those 2019 values are in line with what other guys have done in full seasons they posted an elite BB%. Definitely a good thing.
We also see Fried's 28.5% O-Swing being far below the typical ~35% value we see from guys who post 5% BB rate over a full season. This rate is the most predictive of BB%, and it suggests Fried is experiencing some luck in the BB department so far.
His current plate discipline numbers most closely resemble the 2018 values posted by Jose Quintana (9.2% BB%, 3.51 BB/9), Jon Gray (7.0%, 2.72), and Charlie Morton (9.2%, 3.45).
This suggests to me that while Fried's control going forward won't be elite, it should fall into the ~3 BB/9 range, which is still Grade 50/55, just not the Grade 80 he's shown so far in 2019.
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