I should note that I have no idea what this all means, but it is interesting.
Kubo has a nasty ERA as a starter. Nasty as in truly ugly if you’re a fan, not nasty as in “the guy ahs nasty stuff.” His ERA as a reliever is quite nasty in the other direction.
So, yeah.
First thing I did was go delve into his contact profile. How are hitters putting balls into play?
Type | RP | SP | Total | %RP | %SP |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Flyball | 8 | 32 | 40 | 42.1% | 34.4% |
Groundball | 5 | 28 | 33 | 26.3% | 30.1% |
Line Drive | 4 | 30 | 34 | 21.1% | 32.3% |
Popup | 2 | 3 | 5 | 10.5% | 3.2% |
19 | 93 | 112 |
So that adds up.
If we look at his contact percentage as a SP by inning, we get another interesting table, though what to do about it, I’m not sure.
Inning | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
LD% | 16.7% | 42.9% | 23.5% | 47.1% | 27.3% | 26.7% |
This got me to wondering about his BABIP across innings.
So here that is, too:
Role | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | BABIP |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SP | 0.250 | 0.357 | 0.235 | 0.294 | 0.381 | 0.400 | 0.319 | |||
RP | 0.200 | 0.200 | 0.333 | 0.333 | 0.263 |
Bottom line, this profile is making me thing that a couple things are in play.
First, it seems there’s a bit of a correlation to the idea that Kubo struggles against the better hitters in a lineup. No great surprise there, but innings 2 and 4 are likely to be where the big bats are, and his 7 movement is not special. There’s also maybe a times through the order issue going on here. Dunno.
But it led me to wonder when he’s giving up runs.
So I looked at runs/inning:
Role | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
RP | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | |||||
SP | 0 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 12 | 1 | 1 | 20 | ||
Total | 0 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 12 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 21 |
Yikes.
Bottom line: if this season is a proxy for Kubo’s profile, he’s a solid 4-inning guy, but that fifth is a beast of another color. I should note his 1 run in the 7th comes on the only time he made it that far, and represents a single At Bat in which the hitter homered.
So, what gives?
Does any of this help us understand the game that is OOTP?
No. Not really. But it’s certainly an interesting little exercise, and it was a fun way to while away an hour or so. Bottom line to me, Toshikuni Kubo is an interesting pitcher with enough stuff to get guys out in spots, but without enough to do it over the long haul. Is that right? Well…it looks good here, I suppose, but it’s worth remembering that the sample size is really quite small.