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Lance McCullers: More Effective than Wild So Far

Lance McCullers was effective but wild last night against Tampa Bay, giving up no runs, 3 hits and 3 walks in seven innings on the mound.  Lance struck out  batters and held the Rays to an expected batting average (including strikeouts) of .185.  The offense had a good night too, and for one of the few times at Tropicana Field, the Astros won a laugher 9-2.

But notable to me in Lance's line from last night are the 3 walks.  McCullers has started 5 games this season, and has walked 3 batters in 4 of those starts; he walked 2 in his previous start against the Angels. 

Lance's K Strut Last Night

Lance is walking 12.7% of all of the batters he is facing this season, at a rate of 4.73 walks per 9 innings pitched. These numbers are an increase from the  last season (8.8% BB%, 3.27 BB/9) and from the rates we saw before McCullers had Tommy John surgery after the 2018 season (2018 9.5% BB%, 3.51 BB/9; 2017 7.8% BB%, 3.03 BB/9).  

Further evidence of McCullers's command issues this season are shown in the figure below. It shows the percentage of balls thrown by McCullers in each season of his career.  From his 2015 debut until 2020, McCullers has a narrow band in the percentage of his pitches that do not find the strike zone. He threw 38.0% of his pitches for balls in his debut 2015 season, and the share of balls thrown has not deviated more than 1% above or below that number for the 2016-2020 season.  

Until this year, where Lance is missing the strike zone on 41.9% of his pitches. In short, Lance's high walk rate in April does not represent bad luck from sequencing, but an issue with his command. He is throwing more balls, and putting more people on base as a result.

Does Lance's high walk rate matter?  Well, so far this season it has not.  Outside of his blow-up against the Tigers, McCullers has been excellent this season. He has given up only 4 runs in those four other starts for a 1.57 ERA. 

And across all 5 starts over 26 2/3 innings, Lance is giving up a slash line of .152/.291/.217. How low is the .508 OPS that hitters are managing against Lance? Only one qualified batter in the American League this year has a lower OPS.  

Lance is striking out 27.3% of all batters he faced in April, which would be the highest rate of Ks for McCullers since 2016. 

But are those numbers sustainable?  Lance's good numbers are the result of a .213 BABIP--batting average on balls in play. Pitchers have little control over whether batted balls find gloves, so it is nearly certain that number will come back to the .283 major league average for BABIP.  

Lance has also given up only 1 home run this season. That is good for a 5.3% rate on home runs per fly ball. But Lance has given up home runs on 11.6% of the fly balls hit against him across his career.  Again, that rate will increase over the long course of the season. 

Thus, it is unlikely that Lance can continue to pitch this well if he walks so many batters.  More balls will find holes against him and more fly balls will find the seats.  And it is not good to have baserunners on when those things happen.

But it is also possible that Lance's high rate of balls and walks will also come down.  He produced those numbers over a short sample size--5 starts in a single month of baseball.  

But Lance needs those rates to come down. He is unlikely to be able to sustain these high rates over the season and maintain such a low ERA. 

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