Stephen Strasburg, start by start
February 17th, 2009 | Published in Sabermetrics, Stephen Strasburg, baseball, draft, prospects | 8 Comments
By Myron Logan
As you can probably tell, from this post and the last, I’m in college baseball/draft mode. It’s a little early (at least for draft stuff), though the start of the college season, right around the corner, is probably the source of my anxiousness.
Anyway, with the help of the SDSU website and Boyd’s World, I tracked down each of Stephen Strasburg’s 13 starts from last season, and added the park factor for the stadium where the game was pitched and the opposing team’s ISR rank (described here; think RPI, but better). I included the ISR’s to show what caliber of opponents he faced. We really only care about their offense, of course, not total team strength, but this will have to serve as a proxy for offensive prowess. Anyway, here’s the chart. Make of it what you wish:
| Date | Innings | Runs | Hits | Walks | Ks | PF | ISR |
| San Diego | 8 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 7 | 113 | 6 |
| Cal Poly | 6 | 4 | 8 | 1 | 5 | 113 | 54 |
| Santa Clara | 5.3 | 7 | 7 | 1 | 9 | 113 | 19 |
| BYU | 6 | 3 | 8 | 2 | 8 | 113 | 110 |
| @Utah | 8 | 2 | 7 | 1 | 9 | 109 | 82 |
| Houston | 8 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 113 | 36 |
| Utah | 9 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 23 | 113 | 82 |
| @UNLV | 7 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 13 | 123 | 115 |
| TCU | 9 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 13 | 113 | 24 |
| @ Air Force | 9 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 11 | 145 | 219 |
| @BYU | 9 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 15 | 130 | 110 |
| @CSFull | 6 | 4 | 8 | 2 | 3 | 104 | 7 |
| Utah | 7 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 113 | 82 |
Look at how he turned it on after the start at Utah. Through then, here are his totals:
33.3 inn, 18 runs, 35 hits, 6 walks, 38 ks
after
64 inn, 8 runs, 26 hits, 10 walks, 96 ks
Remember, of course, the same size here is extremely small — especially when we start slicing and dicing — like half the size of a full MLB pitcher’s season.
What also stands out to me are the park factors. He didn’t pitch in a pitcher’s park all year. The average PF for stadiums he pitched in was 117. If you assumed his road parks were neutral, which is what we often do in the majors, you’d get a PF of like 108. In reality, his road parks, collectively, were actually tougher than his home park. That’s tough luck, but I suppose comes with the territory when you pitch in the hitter-friendly Mountain West Conference.
The average ISR of teams he faced was 73, which seems relatively high, though I admittedly have nothing to compare it against. Five of his 13 starts came against teams rated in the top 40.
With the Padres holding the third pick in the 2009 draft, Strasburg very well may not be available. In case you haven’t been following the hype, Strasburg is as big of a college prospect as we’ve had in a few years, to say the least. In a recent chat, Kevin Goldstein said he’d rank him in the top three on his top 100 list right now. That isn’t his top 100 college prospects; it’s his top 100 minor league baseball prospects.
A lot can happen between now and the draft, like, uh, Strasburg’s junior campaign. It’ll be a fun one to follow, even if the Pads don’t get a chance to take the young right hander.
February 17th, 2009 at 2:26 am (#)
For the MWC, I’ve got the average ISR of the teams was 105.73. That’s such a hitter’s friendly league (average PF is 114.43), and to put it into context, that avg ISR for the MWC is low. Pac-10 is 119.01, Big East is 98.52, Big 12 is 113.52, Big West is 114.19, CUSA is 107.92, ACC was 111.03, SEC was 110.36, and the Big 10 was 100.01.
So, while he was in an extreme hitter’s park for pretty much most of his starts, the quality of the competition pretty much cancels it out for the lack of a better way to explain it.
I’ve only got 8 conferences for 2008 season entered into my system thus far, and Strasburgh’s adjusted dERA came in 4th among starters with at least 190 batters faced:
Scott Bittle, Ole Miss; 0.24, 275 TBF
Jason Stoffel, Arizona State; 0.26, 195 TBF
Robbie Weinhardt, OK State; 0.49, 191 TBF
Stephen Strasburgh, SDSU; 0.60, 366 TBF.
The three ahead of him were their team’s primary shut-down relievers — weinhard and Stoffel were the primary closers for their teams and Bittle was the anytime-anywhere reliever for Ole Miss.
So, he was easily the best starting pitcher in the college game last year quantitatively.
February 17th, 2009 at 11:31 am (#)
Awesome stuff, Mike.
I was confused for a second regarding ISR … I used the team’s rank for ISR, rather than the actual ISR. I probably should have specified that, though I didn’t really even think of it.
Anyway, I like the avg. conference ISR’s you compiled … was thinking about doing that myself.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:05 pm (#)
Good Strasburg profile (h/t: Fire Jim Bowden).
February 18th, 2009 at 4:32 pm (#)
Where did you find college baseball park factors?
February 18th, 2009 at 4:45 pm (#)
Tom, at Boyd’s World, a truly invaluable site.
Here’s the link to the park factors page: http://boydsworld.com/data/pf2008.html
At the top of that page, you’ll find a link that explains the methodology, if you’re interested in that.
February 19th, 2009 at 8:59 pm (#)
Good Strasburg/draft talk over at Hank’s Padre discussion.
Does anyone else hate the format over there? Maybe I am alone, but I can’t stand it. Love the discussion, though.
February 20th, 2009 at 1:02 am (#)
Yikes. That format is bad.
March 10th, 2009 at 4:58 am (#)
[...] the year with an 8-3 record, a 1.57 ERA and 133 strikeouts in 97 innings, and only got better in the second half of the year. In a game against Utah, he threw a complete game one-hitter and struck out [...]