{"id":6543,"date":"2013-04-26T11:12:19","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T15:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=6543"},"modified":"2013-04-26T11:19:51","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T15:19:51","slug":"whats-eating-stephen-strasburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=6543","title":{"rendered":"Whats eating Stephen Strasburg?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What's eating Gilbert Grape? Photo: howtowatchsports.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Our Ace, and “Best in the League” by many pundits pitcher Stephen Strasburg<\/strong> is now 1-4 on the season with relatively pedestrian<\/a> (for him) numbers so far (3.16 ERA, 3.32 FIP, 3.65 xFIP<\/a>).<\/p>\n

So what’s the problem? \u00a0Or, more importantly, what is NOT the problem?<\/p>\n

First off; I think its safe to say we can ignore his inflated FIP and xFIP numbers for now. \u00a0As I pointed out in this April 4th post<\/a> about my issues with fWAR, FIP focuses entirely on the “Three true outcomes” that a pitcher entirely controls and really does a poor job of measuring pitchers who induce a whole slew of weak ground balls (like Strasburg does). \u00a0 This is easily seen by looking at the two example cases in the 4\/4\/13 post to see how FIP measures a guy who strikes out 9 but gives up 5 earned runs higher than a guy who strikes out just a few but gives up zero runs in an outing.<\/p>\n

I also do not buy the opinions I’ve heard in various forums and podcasts that hitters are “squaring him up” a lot this year. \u00a0You heard this a lot after his 4\/19\/13 loss to the Mets<\/a>, when he gave up back-to-back homers to Ike Davis<\/strong> and Lucas Duda<\/strong> in the 6th (two of the three homer’s he’s given up this year, the third being an out-of-this-world chest-high fastball just clubbed out by Evan Gattis<\/strong>). \u00a0 \u00a0I don’t buy this because observation has shown that he gives up a TON of bloops, dinks, infield nubbers, etc. \u00a0He also has a very low Line-Drive percentage right now; just 14.9% of the balls hit off of him<\/a> so far this year have been classified as “line drives,” or hard-struck balls.<\/p>\n

Dave Cameron<\/strong> of Fangraphs had a piece on ESPN<\/a> talking about Strasburg and the Nats “pitch to contact” strategy that shows essentially that pitch-to-contact guys don’t really throw that fewer a number of pitches than guys who just try to strike you out. \u00a0 Is Strasburg’s change in style leading to issues for him? \u00a0So far it doesn’t seem so: he’s averaging about 6 1\/3 innings per start and has been right around 110 pitches each of his last four despite still going deeper into the game. \u00a0But his K\/9 is absolutely down (from 11.1 last year to 8.0 this year).<\/p>\n

No, I think Strasburg’s issues are these three items.<\/p>\n

1. Bad first innings<\/span><\/strong>. \u00a0Tom Boswell<\/strong> had a great piece on this earlier this week<\/a>, talking about how a lack of a first pitch strike has really cost Strasburg this year. \u00a0And he’s right; pretty much the absolute worst thing you can do as a pitcher is to show a hitter your fastball for a ball at 0-0. \u00a0 Not only does the hitter get the timing down pretty well on your fastball, but he also gets ahead in the count. \u00a0Boswell is probably right in saying that hitters are now trying to jump on the first fastball they get, knowing that getting behind in the count against him is near-certain demise; but Strasburg has to make that adjustment too. \u00a0He can’t nibble on first pitch fastballs; he has to be smarter than that.<\/p>\n

Strasburg has given up 15 total runs in 5 games this year; fully EIGHT of them have come in the first inning. \u00a0That just cannot continue.<\/p>\n

2. Bad luck<\/strong>; we’ve watched his games, and he’s not exactly getting pounded when he gives up most of these runs. \u00a0 Check out the game-logs for his losses:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n