Lance Cormier's Weird Season

by R.J. Anderson on May 13, 2009 2:45 PM EDT

Sky wrote a piece on Cormier's odd peripherals - mostly to dash our dreams - but his mention alerted me to Cormier's plate discipline numbers as well. So far, Cormier's O-Swing% is at a career high 32.2% -- that means batters are chasing almost a third of Cormier's total pitches outside of the strike zone. Cormier's Contact% is another career high, this time at 87.3% -- hittable! - but most of that is coming way of the O-Contact%, which is a peculiar 73.4%. In fact, Cormier is only throwing 44% of pitches inside of the strike zone, the rest of the time he's throwing borderline strikes or balls and the hitters are putting them in play.

Can Cormier sustain success this way? Well, I really don't know, because I've never seen anything quite like this. Looking for comparables, I decided to zone in on:

- High O-Contact%

- Zone% under 50%

- Shaky peripherals

Here's how Cormier stacks up with those from 2008:

Player	GB%	OS%	OC%	Zone%	K%	BB%	HR/FB%	FIP
Cormier	54.9	32.2	73.4	44.4	7.6	5.7	3.7	3.78
Lopez	59.6	26.1	68.5	48.4	15.4	11	10.3	4.19
Villone	37.8	23.6	68	45.1	21.8	16.2	7.4	4.51
Beimel	47.4	27.3	66.7	47.8	15	9.8	0	3.3
Aardsma	44	23.1	65.5	46.7	21.5	15.4	7.8	4.65
Sarfate	41.2	23.9	64.2	46.5	24	17.3	9.5	4.88
Grilli	42.4	24.7	63.1	48.9	21.4	11.8	2.8	3.24
Romero	61.5	27.1	58.8	41.6	20.4	14.9	14.3	4.66

Without going back further, I have no idea how Cormier will perform moving forward, but right now he's probably the oddest thing about this season.

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Comments

Don't ask questions when it comes to Cormier's success

Just accept it as him being good and move along.

www.draysbay.com

by Tommy Rancel on May 13, 2009 2:52 PM EDT reply actions

I think we're at the point where we can substitute a finer toothed comb for K/BB/HR combined with league averages for things like BABIP.

What causes high OS% rates? OC% rates? Algebraically, how do OS%, OC%, Zone%, Zcontact%, etc. combine into K%, BB%, and contact%? How do those things influence HR/FB rate? BABIP?

How much do each of them need to be regressed based on sample size? Which stabilize the fastest? Which are the most flukey? How are they affected by pitch speed/spin/location?

Yada yada. Not saying it’s easy, but with more data, we can start drilling down even further.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on May 13, 2009 4:15 PM EDT reply actions