2058 - A Very Brief Dive Into Toshikuni Kubo

[RonCo]

As a result of a TN I wrote about using several of my pitchers to start games, Ben brought up the curious case of Toshikuni Kubo, noting that the lefty performed quite differently as a start and a reliever. So, of course I got to wondering. So I pulled out my handy-dandy results file that comes out of my handy-dandy little game log script, and got to fiddling around.

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

Well, isn’t that special. As a starter, his line drive rate on contact is 32%. As a reliever it’s only 21%. That seems interesting. His pop-up rate, too, is much nicer as a guy from the pen. Adding pop ups and fly balls says that almost 53% of Kubo’s contact as a reliever comes in the form of easier outs, whereas as a starter, that’s 37%.

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%

Bottom line, the second and fourth innings are pretty horrendous, with roughly 45% of contact coming in the form of line drives. One suggests that maybe this is where the heart of the order come along.

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

Again, I’m not sure what to make of it, but here Kubo really struggles in innings 2, 5, and 6 as a starter, and is league average in inning four. He’s very good in inning 1 an 3. As a reliever, he’s lights out early, then fades a bit…though there are usage issues there.

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.

[CTBrewCrew]

Hes got 8 stamina, what is his P count in the 5th in all this games? Have those 12 runs been bloated by just one bad game (i.e. got lit up for 6 runs in one game in the 5th).

[cheekimonk]

Kubo done went and got himself waived/dfa. He's still doing better as a reliever: 4.84 ERA vs 7.09 as SP. So there's that...