The Weekly Walk: A New Series

I've written at Beyond the Box Score for more than six months now, and it's been a phenomenal experience overall. The only problem that I've encountered has been repetition — I've found myself writing the same types of pieces over and over again. Whether it's with Stephen Strasburg's bad luck, Dallas Keuchel's grounder/strikeout/walk mix, Johnny Cueto's good luck, Baltimore's left-side defense, Max Scherzer's Opening Day snub, Dylan Bundy's optimistic prospect ranking, Jose Fernandez's comparatively exceptional cutter, Jim Fregosi's unlucky career arc, or Marlon Byrd's awful plate discipline, my strength seems to lie in asking: "[Player/Team X] [is doing/has done/is on pace to do] [weird thing Y]. How common is that?"

Recognizing this, I decided to aggregate all my stray observations about the kooky goings-on of Major League Baseball into one weekly post. Henceforth, the task of "historical tidbit-finder" shall fall upon my willing shoulders. If you've noticed anything that I might want to look into in a future edition, let me know in the comments.

Part I: Really Bad Luck

Our first strange occurrence takes place in Arizona, where a starting pitcher has dramatically under-performed. Brandon McCarthy will hit the free agent market when the 2014 season comes to a close. If he sustains his current performance, it'll be interesting to see the contract he'll receive.

See, McCarthy hasn't exactly posted impressive standard statistics; in fact, with a 5.18 ERA in 92.0 innings, he seems to have pitched quite poorly. As readers of this blog should know, however, only dullards and fascists utilize ERA to evaluate a pitcher. McCarthy's 2.92 xFIP tells a completely different story of his play this year; while that earned run-based statistic comes in at fifth-worst out of 98 qualified starters, its advanced counterpart places eighth-best.

So now comes the question: How common is this level of poor fortune? How many pitchers have put up peripherals this excellent while providing such repugnant results? Since fly balls have played the largest role in McCarthy's ill fate thus far (his HR/FB% currently sits at an astounding 22.7%), we'll look at recent years; and because we like to keep things fair around here, we'll use ERA- and xFIP-.

In the xFIP era (i.e. from 2002 until now), 1,140 pitchers have qualified for the ERA title in a season. Of them, 42 posted ERA-s of 130 or greater, meaning McCarthy's 135 ERA- fits right in. Of these men, the lowest xFIP- by far is McCarthy's, at 77. For that matter, only six had an above-average xFIP:

Season	Name	ERA-	xFIP-
2014	Brandon McCarthy	135	77
2010	James Shields	131	85
2002	Brandon Duckworth	134	95
2011	Derek Lowe	134	95
2014	Tim Lincecum	139	96
2012	Tim Lincecum	139	98

By that measure, McCarthy's misfortune makes history. On the other side of the coin, the story's the same — among pitchers with a sub-80 xFIP- (of whom there are 205), McCarthy stands out as one of five with an ERA- greater than 100:

Season	Player	ERA-	xFIP-
2014	David Price*	105	68
2006	Felix Hernandez	103	75
2009	Ricky Nolasco	119	76
2014	Brandon McCarthy	135	77
2003	Odalis Perez	112	79

*I plan on covering Price's unusual 2014 in next week's edition.

And even among them, his ERA- blows the others out of the water. No matter how you slice it, McCarthy is on pace to do something incredible this year.

ZiPS doesn't do batted ball data, and therefore xFIP, but if it did, I'd think it would project a bit of regression to the mean here. If McCarthy doesn't improve, though, his price could take a hit when he looks for suitors in the offseason (although, according to Dave Cameron, it might not).

Part II: Unrelenting Bad Luck

Next, we travel to the Windy City, where another starter has performed worse than expected for the second straight year. When the Cubs inked Edwin Jackson to a four-year, $52 million contract following the 2012 season, they thought they would receive the pitcher who posted a respectable 4.03 ERA in 189.2 innings with the Nationals. His 4.98 ERA in the first year of that deal undoubtedly left them with a bit of buyer's remorse.

As with McCarthy, ERA belies Jackson's true talent. In both 2012 and 2013, his FIP (3.85 and 3.79, respectively) represented a significant upgrade from that deceptive statistic. Focusing on the latter year, we see that his FIP was 3% better than the major-league average, while his ERA was 29% worse than the major-league average. How many pitcher seasons, going back to 1920, have featured an average or better FIP along with a 20%-worse-than-average or worse ERA?

Quite a few, relatively speaking — 73. However, Jackson's case stands out for a special reason; look at this table of the pitchers who met the criteria:

Season	Name	ERA-	FIP-
2014	Edwin Jackson	134	100
2014	Zack Wheeler	124	92
2013	Edwin Jackson	129	97
2011	Derek Lowe	134	97
2011	Ryan Dempster	121	98
2011	Ricky Nolasco	121	90
2003	Cory Lidle	123	97
1999	Jose Jimenez	129	98
1997	Jaime Navarro	131	96
1995	Doug Drabek	121	96
1994	Denny Neagle	120	96
1994	Bob Tewksbury	129	99
1993	Melido Perez	121	7
1992	Erik Hanson	122	91
1990	Mike Bielecki	123	98
1990	Kevin Gross	121	91
1989	Bobby Witt	130	98
1988	Calvin Schiraldi	120	88
1988	Bert Blyleven	131	89
1985	Rick Rhoden	123	98
1984	Mike Moore	121	86
1984	Bruce Berenyi	124	95
1983	Steve Trout	120	96
1983	Len Barker	120	90
1981	Moose Haas	128	99
1981	Rick Waits	131	94
1977	Jim Barr	123	95
1975	Bill Bonham	121	90
1974	Burt Hooton	124	93
1972	Dick Bosman	120	90
1972	Jerry Reuss	124	91
1972	Jerry Koosman	122	87
1972	Mike Caldwell	122	93
1970	Joe Horlen	125	96
1969	Gary Peters	123	96
1969	Tom Murphy	121	96
1969	Woodie Fryman	123	98
1968	Gary Peters	125	90
1967	Don Sutton	127	96
1965	Al Jackson	123	100
1960	Tom Brewer	120	98
1956	Robin Roberts	120	97
1954	Bob Friend	123	92
1949	Mickey Harris	122	95
1949	Johnny Sain	125	95
1947	Bob Muncrief	126	91
1945	Ed Lopat	124	94
1944	Al Gerheauser	129	100
1943	Orie Arntzen	127	98
1943	Al Hollingsworth	124	94
1942	Bobo Newsom	133	87
1942	Sid Hudson	122	94
1942	Early Wynn	143	100
1941	Si Johnson	127	91
1941	Al Javery	122	100
1940	Cliff Melton	126	92
1939	Boom-Boom Beck	121	97
1937	Wayne LaMaster	120	97
1934	Alvin Crowder	131	100
1932	Syl Johnson	122	96
1932	Jumbo Elliott	125	96
1932	Ownie Carroll	120	93
1931	Jack Russell	120	96
1930	Jack Russell	120	99
1929	Herb Pennock	122	96
1929	Bill Sherdel	124	93
1929	Bump Hadley	134	97
1927	Hub Pruett	142	92
1927	Hal Wiltse	124	97
1926	Jesse Barnes	139	98
1921	Roy Wilkinson	121	98
1920	Allen Sothoron	120	99

Look who's leading the way for 2014! Yes, Jackson has continued to underwhelm for the second consecutive year; as the table shows, only Jack Russell in 1930 and 1931 and Gary Peters in 1968 and 1969 have suffered this much back-to-back.

Of course, ZiPS doesn't think Jackson will keep this up, at least to this extent — its RoS projections see him as a 4.09-ERA , 3.78-FIP pitcher from here on out. At the same time, though, it probably said the same thing about him last year, and look how that turned out.

Part III: Dual Bad Luck

Our last tale comes out of Cleveland, where a hapless hurler has accompanied another, marginally less hapless deity. Ever since he resolved to eschew the four-seam fastball, Corey Kluber has dominated the competition, to the point that Carson Cistulli created a Society in his honor. Or rather, he's dominated by sabermetric standards (career 3.33 FIP); traditional statistics (career 4.02 ERA) don't feel the same way about him.

For this exercise, we'll move from minuses to WAR. FanGraphs has a fancy statistic called FDP-Wins, which is the difference between a pitcher's fWAR (based off FIP) and RA9-WAR (based off runs allowed). It does a pretty good job of indicating how lucky or unlucky a pitcher has been. Kluber has accrued 2.4 RA9-WAR in his four-year career, which underscores a career fWAR of 5.8; subtracting the latter from the former reveals a career FDP-Wins mark of -3.4. That certainly seems like a low number, and it is — since he debuted in 2011, that ranks 13th in the majors.

I decided to take this one step further, by putting that number on a per-180-inning scale, to compare Kluber with other, more durable pitchers. When I completed the strenuous math, I saw that Kluber's career FDP/180 stood at 1.97. That's unique, insofar as only 30 pitchers (listed below) with 300 career innings going back to 1920 can top it; however, instead of focusing solely on Kluber, let's look at another name on this leaderboard:

Name	RA9-WAR	WAR	FDP-Wins	IP	FDP/180
Hal Elliott	-5.0	1.4	-6.4	322.1	-3.58
Arnold Earley	-3.7	2.7	-6.3	381.1	-2.98
Jim Crawford	-3.2	3.6	-6.8	431.1	-2.84
Ray Harrell	-6.3	-1.2	-5.1	330.0	-2.78
Dan McGinn	-4.7	1.4	-6.1	408.2	-2.69
Dave Eiland	-2.8	2.6	-5.4	373.0	-2.61
Chris Zachary	-2.3	2.2	-4.4	321.1	-2.47
Bill Trotter	-3.6	3.0	-6.6	483.1	-2.46
Mike Stanton	-0.6	4.5	-5.1	384.1	-2.39
Bo McLaughlin	-2.9	1.2	-4.1	313.0	-2.36
Don Schulze	-2.0	2.4	-4.4	338.2	-2.34
Paul Calvert	-3.4	0.5	-3.9	301.2	-2.33
Rich Robertson	-2.9	1.0	-3.9	302.1	-2.32
Slick Coffman	-1.9	2.1	-4.0	313.2	-2.30
George Grant	-3.6	0.8	-4.4	347.1	-2.28
Jose Silva	-0.5	4.9	-5.4	427.1	-2.28
Vic Frazier	-4.6	2.6	-7.2	579.0	-2.24
Rich Wortham	-0.8	3.7	-4.4	355.0	-2.23
Russ Van Atta	-1.1	7.7	-8.8	712.1	-2.22
Al Gerheauser	1.2	8.9	-7.7	643.0	-2.16
Seth Morehead	-1.6	2.2	-3.8	318.1	-2.15
Lefty Hoerst	-5.2	-1.1	-4.1	348.0	-2.12
Andrew Miller	-1.0	4.4	-5.4	459.1	-2.12
Mike Paxton	1.1	6.5	-5.4	466.1	-2.09
Zach McAllister	-0.2	3.6	-3.7	324.2	-2.05
Hank Fischer	-2.1	4.1	-6.2	546.2	-2.04
Lou Koupal	-1.5	2.2	-3.8	335.1	-2.04
Ray Francis	-1.4	2.4	-3.8	337.0	-2.03
Felipe Paulino	-0.4	4.0	-4.5	403.2	-2.01
Danny Coombs	-0.6	3.7	-4.3	393.0	-1.97
Corey Kluber	2.4	5.8	-3.4	311.1	-1.97

Notice anything about that player six spots up from Kluber? He's Zach McAllister, a starting pitcher for...the Indians. That's right, Cleveland has two of the unluckiest starters in history on its current roster; as far as I can tell, none of the other hurlers on this list ever pitched for the same club simultaneously.

This trend is probably less likely to be maintained than the preceding two; nevertheless, Oliver's five-year projections predict bad luck for the foreseeable future for both Kluber and McAllister. The Indians certainly would like to avoid this ignominious distinction; perhaps, if they upgraded that awful defense, they'd see a bit more overperformance.

That's all I have for this week. On the one hand, I could run out of ideas for this piece pretty quickly; on the other hand...

. . .

All data courtesy of FanGraphs, as of Thursday, June 19th, 2014.

Ryan Romano is a featured contributor for Beyond the Box Score. He also writes about the Orioles on Birds Watcher and on Camden Chat that one time. Follow him on Twitter at @triple_r_ if you enjoy angry tweets about Maryland sports.