How Is "Cool Hand" Lannan Getting It Done?

by James Kannengieser on May 10, 2009 10:37 AM EDT Comment 3 comments

I've followed John "Cool Hand" Lannan's career closely, mainly because we're both from Long Island. He's been somewhat of a statistical anomaly. Last season, Lannan's ERA drastically outperformed his defense independent pitching statistics (DIPS), making him a prime candidate to regress this season. But after a month of baseball, Lannan has managed to continue to outperform his ERA, and his DIPS have been even worse than last season. Take a look:

Year	ERA	tRA	FIP	xFIP
2008	3.91	5.33	4.79	4.47
2009	3.89	6.33	5.79	4.71

(Side note: What's tRA? What's FIP? What's xFIP?)

Lannan doesn't strike out a lot of guys and his walk rate isn't exactly stellar. He also has trouble keeping the ball in the ballpark. How can he possibly maintain a sub-4 ERA? I don't have a great explanation, but here are some contributing factors:

Ground-ball % (GB%). This season, it sits at 58.2%, good for best in all of baseball. Last season he was 4th, behind only Brandon Webb, Derek Lowe, and Aaron Cook. That's good company. What's odd is ground-ball pitchers usually don't give up many home runs, a trait shared by the three aforementioned pitchers. However, Lannan's HR/9 this year is a quite poor 1.60 and is 1.16 for his career.
Line-drive % (LD%). Below 20% for LD% is decent, and last season Lannan's was just 19.1%. This year it's 16.4%, which is excellent.
Batting average on balls in play (BABIP). The standard benchmark is that a pitcher's BABIP normalizes in the .295-.300 range, and a lower BABIP signals that a pitcher is getting lucky, while a higher BABIP signals bad luck. However, Lannan has displayed an ability to control balls in play (evidenced by his GB% and LD%) so his career BABIP of .276 might not be a product of just luck, but rather some skill. Pitchers with a lower BABIP will generally outperform DIPS.

I'm a Mets fan who writes over at Amazin' Avenue, but am also a Nats supporter. A Met pitcher with a similar skill set as Lannan is Mike Pelfrey. Big Pelf has also managed to outperform his ERA last year and this year. Look at his stats the last couple seasons:

Year	ERA	tRA	FIP	xFIP
2008	3.72	4.51	3.96	4.70
2009	5.46	6.45	6.23	5.95

Are both of these pitchers getting lucky? Is this kind of performance sustainable in the long run? Who knows, but it'll be fun to watch both of these guys pitch over the next few years, and hopefully provide answers to these questions.

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thanks James--that's good stuff

I noticed Lannan’s GB% last season and thought it was rather striking since he’s hardly the typical sinkerballer. He gives up gopher balls like a lefty soft tosser, but whence all the grounders and DP balls? I’ll be watching as the season goes on to see if he can keep it up.

"It's pretty much all garbage time right now." --ROSCOEtheNATSfan

by Doghouse on May 10, 2009 2:40 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Craftiness?

I don’t know about all of those stat categories but I’ll just say that he seems to be crafty. He does walk a lot of people but he seems to have good baseball sense. He will gear up for key situations so he tends to get out of trouble, most of the time.

He probably won’t be the ace of the staff in the years to come but I think he could be a solid no. 3 starter, especially if he starts to throw more inside pitches. He gets hammered by a couple of hitters like Chase Utley because he won’t pitch inside. Maybe it’s because he got ejected from his first game because he hit a couple of the Phillies batters. He shouldn’t let that deter him from throwing inside. He doesn’t have overpowering stuff so he needs to back up the hitters and get them a little nervous about crowding the plate.

by Potomac Fan on May 10, 2009 9:24 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs