Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks?




Looking at the stats so far from the season few players stand out like Livan Hernandez. While he may nor be as impressive as the pitcher who went 4-1 with a 0.87ERA in March, the fact the going into August he is 8-7 3.12 ERA is mighty impressive for a pitcher who has posted a 5.45 ERA in 568 Innings since 2007. While many still look at is blazing 85 MPH fastball and Bugs Bunny like 67 MPH curve and are waiting for the expected stink bombs that Livan seems to have tossed out the last few years, they have yet to come. So is he just the luckiest pitcher out there or is there more to it.


Even ZiPs projection system can't reconcile it listing his rest-of-season stats a 5.43 ERA and a 4.49 FiP (fielding independent pitching). While he has run out a 3.69 FiP and a 4.58 xFip so far this year those number are both much better than he has been. The last time he posted a FiP that low was 1997 and his xFiP has been below 4.58 since 2005. Looking at his strikeouts this year, they stand at 4.86 per nine innings fairly inline with what he has been excluding two tough years in 2007 and 2008 where he sat sub 4K/9inning. He also managed to cut his walks to 2.56 per nine innings well below hi 3.07 career number. Combined they add up to a 1.90 K/BB ratio, his best since 2004 with the then Expos.


Looking further there may be some luck helping Livan out so far, his BaBip sits at .280 his lowest since 1997, and well below his career number of .310 and the league average of ~.300. He is also helped by fly-ball not finding the seats with just a 5.0% HR/FB well below his career 9.7%. He is also allowing a career low 19.4% line drives but has managed to keep his Flyball rate fairly low at just 38.2%.


But again, why are these number different, changing from a downward trend of 2005-2009 to rebound the Livan of 2004? The culprit it appears is his pitches. The wonderful FanGraphs.com shows he is still a Fastball, Slider, Curve, Change picture, but the big deal, so to speak is his fast ball. Fansgraphs PitchFx show he now throwing a two seam fast ball 31.6% of the time and a four seam 32.5, as opposed to all four seamers in previous years. The two seam fastball is coming out at the same velocity (about 84 MPH) but is listed at having 2.8 inched of additional downward movement.


So how is a new pitch translating to different results. Fansgraphs once again show a vast change for previous years. Most notably is his first pitch strikes which have risen to 60.4% above his career of 57.2% and his highest since 2003. Oddly his first pitch strikes have led to a much lower overall Zone% (pitches throw inside the strike zone) which is at just 37.9%, far lower than his 51.2 career number. Batters are swinging as the same number of pitches, 41.5%, a number very much in line with his career number and they are also making contact a lot more, 87.8% this year. The only year hitting made more contact than that was 2008 when the hit 91.5% of swings which led to a 6.05 ERA. The big change is the number of pitches outside the zone batter are swinging at, 28.6% far above his 20.6% career number and the amount of those winding up being hit 82.7%.


So it seems Livan year isn't all smoke and mirrors, or at least no more than usual. He seems to have changed his approach, getting ahead of batters more often and leveraging that with his new found sinker to get batters to swing and hit more pitches outside the zone. For a guy who as always been a 'pitch to contact' pitcher getting batter to swing an hit more bad pitches especially those with the downward movement of his sinker to keep weaker hit balls in play. At 35 he may not be a top pitcher, but people will have to stop and think a minute before assuming he ready to collapse into the pitcher he was the last few years.