IST: Cubs vs Rockies

Add to it his BAA is .270. You are making some points on his swing and miss rates but when teams are hitting that high there is a core problem issue.

Add to it Jake is at .261 and Jon is at .263. Jon has worse BB and SO so he has been luckier than the other two with his results.

So yes there is a luck issue going on here for sure but this team is under performing in general. The staff is not leading the way as it was last year. Even if they added a staff ace that is only covering 1 out of 5 games that you don't have to hope the O pounds out 6 runs to have a shot at winning

You can't build a contender like that

CSF77 said:

That came right off Fangraphs website

Click to expand...

Well whoever wrote that doesn't appear to know what their talking about. Last year the average for starters was 12.8%. xFIP which is designed to calculate that as "neutral" on pitchers uses 10.5%. Realistically it's more like

8% - Excellent
9.5% - Great
11% - Above average
12.5% - average
14% - below average
15.5% - poor
17%+ - awful

And also, its worth noting you really should compare it within year rather than to a static amount like that because it totally changes the context. This year HR's are up. But in 2015 HR/FB among starters averaged 11.6%. In 2014 that chart may have been right as average was 9.8%.

The author said FB/HR is more luck than skill. What they have more control of is GB/FB rates. The best way to prevent HR's is to increase GB rates.