After Porcello dropped a 3.15 ERA, 223 innings, 5.8 WARP, Cy-Young-winning season in 2016, it seemed like he had finally harnessed his potential, and would be a guy who could provide a strong bridge to the back of the rotation. Turns out we jumped the gun on that. Porcello followed up his Cy Young season with a replacement level 2017 – by BP’s WARP anyway; FanGraphs’ version of WAR saw him as average. But regardless of the measure, 2016 stands out pretty clearly as the oddity in Porcello’s career to date. It is great that he showed that level of pitching, but it is unlikely he recreates the heights of 2016. Ideally, he can find a comfortable place somewhere between his 2016 and 2017 seasons in 2018.

What Went Right

There is not a lot to choose from here. I think the best thing that can be said about last season for Porcello is that he took the ball every fifth day. He made 33 starts, racking up 203.1 innings, which put him over the 200 inning threshold for the third time in the last four seasons. While Porcello was not lights out in his innings, consistently eating innings does provide value. It keeps the team from asking Henry Owens to take a break from walking minor league batters to instead come and walk some major league batters. It is better to have Porcello out there. The gap between Porcello and a go-between minor leaguer might be shrinking, but Porcello remains the better option.

Throwing 200 innings is great, but if the last bunch happen while overly fatigued, it could portend bad things (i.e., injury) for the following season. As far as I can tell this was not the case for Porcello. The velocity on all of his pitches held through the end of the season, and he was striking batters out at the same rate in the second half (22.0 percent) as he did in the first (22.8 percent). Porcello’s ongoing standing as a durable starter did not take a hit in 2017, but it would be nice if was more than just that.

What Went Wrong

Porcello struck out a lot of batters in 2017, but when he didn’t miss bats he got hit hard. Oh boy, the hard contact. He is on the wrong end of many categories on the 2017 Statcast leaderboard (minimum 190 batted ball events). He tied for the 19th highest average exit velocity, had 230 batted balls of 95 mph+ (third most, 41st highest percentage of batted balls), tied for the 20th highest rate of Barrels per batted ball, and on and on.

Porcello’s problems with the home run stood out; he allowed 38 (i.e, more than one per start). That is simply bad. Of course, we must point out that the ball was juicier in 2017 relative to previous seasons, and that might explain some of Porcello’s issues with home runs and hard contact last season, but it wasn’t just juiced for Porcello’s outings. Even if for some reason you ignore the 38 home runs he allowed from those Statcast measures, there remain 194 missiles to explain (for those checking my math: two of the homers he allowed had an EV below 95 mph; this one and the one below) . Simply put, he got hit hard last season, and harder than most.

One other noteworthy part of Porcello’s 2017 is his penchant for bad starts to his starts. He had a 7.09 RA9 in the first inning, which was more than two runs worse than his average performance in each of the next five innings, and almost a half run worse than his seventh innings. By rule, he is forced to face the top of the opponents’ order in the first inning, which usually involves stronger hitters, and this is not necessarily true for any other inning. This could explain poorer performance in the first inning, but the magnitude of Porcello’s trouble is alarming. His troubles actually lasted through his first trip through the order resulting in a reversed times through the order penalty last year, rendering the effect’s name temporarily incorrect. He was better his second time through the order and held that level the third time through. This is odd. Perhaps he needs to adjust his pre-game routine so as to be in a stronger position come first pitch. Alternatively, he should leave his routine alone, as this is most likely just a single-season oddity. It is certainly worth watching for in 2018.

What to Expect

Despite a mostly difficult 2017, Porcello’s spot in the rotation is not in doubt. He slots into the 4/5 hole behind Sale, Price, and Pomeranz. Expecting him to recreate his 2016 season is foolish, but he is better than what he showed in 2017. I think a reasonable baseline expectation is roughly 175 innings of average run prevention. If things bounce his way a few more times than they don’t – which of course depends on him limiting hard contact more than he did this past year – he could get in the 3-4 WARP range. His doing that would push the Red Sox’s rotation to the next level.

Photo by Bob DeChiara – USA TODAY Sports

As they did for batters, the great team in the Statcast lab has created leaderboards that allow us to find the pitchers who are the best at limiting batters from barreling up their pitches. These can be defined per batted-ball event (Brls/BBE) or per plate appearance (Brls/PA). So we can look at how often pitchers allow barreled-up balls when their pitches get turned into balls-in-play, but also factor-in the fact that some pitchers allow fewer balls-in-play than others due to things like strikeouts and walks. With our minds now re-oriented to the pitching side of the batter-pitcher matchup, let’s look at how pitchers fared in limiting barrels-against.

Before getting right into things I think it is worth considering that, now more than ever, starting pitching and relief pitching are two very different roles. As such, I evaluated the roles separately. Starters were defined as pitchers who started more than half their games. This is a crude definition, but it provides a decent distinction. With the starter/reliever categorization made, I then limited the data to only include starters who had at least 60 batted ball events, and relievers who had at least 45 batted ball events. 60 BBE was used as the threshold for the starters because it matched the threshold I used for batters last week, and 45 BBE was used for relievers because it was reasonably above the dataset minimum of 30 to provide a strong sample. These thresholds were mostly arbitrarily selected, and therefore can be adjusted if someone thinks there is a reason to do so. In any case, using these BBE thresholds leaves 533 pitchers (216 starters, 317 relievers) in the sample.

For the 216 starters, the average Brl/BBE was 6.96 percent (SD = 2.35). As was the case when looking at the batters, barrels do not happen very often. The starter who was the best at limiting opponents from barreling up his pitches: Alec Asher of the Phillies (1.2%). I was not sure I knew who he was until I looked into this metric, but it turns out he had five nice starts for the Phillies last year. My knowledge of 2016 starting pitchers aside, the list of the top-25 guys at limiting barrels includes many of the pitchers you would expect to be at the top of a list like this: Noah Syndergaard, Gerrit Cole, Jose Fernandez, Kyle Hendricks, Aaron Nola, Rich Hill and Jake Arrieta. Changing things to be on a per-PA basis lowers the average rate to 4.36 percent (SD = 1.61) and flips the top spots, moving Brandon McCarthy (0.6%) into first and Asher to second (0.9%).

How about the Red Sox starters? As a group they had the third best ERA in the American League last year, and this is reflected in the group’s ability to avoid opponents’ barrels. Other than Clay Buchholz and Drew Pomeranz, all of the 2016 Red Sox starters who met the BBE threshold were better than the league average. Note that being better than average means having a low rate. Steven Wright and his dancing knuckler was a standout for the Sox last year; he was ninth best in Brls/BBE and 11^th in Brls/PA. Oh, and just as you expected, Sean O’Sullivan was a top-30 pitcher in terms of barrel-limiting. He will certainly be missed. Fortunately the Red Sox acquired a reasonable replacement, Chris Sale, who was not far behind in limiting barrels-against.

Henry Owens did not have 60 BBE last year, but I included him because this provides another bit of evidence that he is not ready to pitch in the major leagues. He has serious control issues (career 4.66 BB/9) and when he allows contact, it is hard contact more often than anyone would like. Given this, and his struggles this Spring, it might be time to move on from the Henry-Owens-is-a-reasonable-depth-option thought process. The rest of the list – O’Sullivan notwithstanding – shakes out mostly as expected. I am interested in seeing Pomeranz’s San Diego/Boston splits for this metric. From what I recall, and this is likely unfairly biased, he gave up all kinds of rockets during his time with the Red Sox last year; he certainly has this Spring, which doesn’t exactly instill confidence.

On to the relievers. For the 317 relievers included in the sample the average Brl/BBE was 6.3 percent (2.99); relievers allow barrels slightly less often than starters. Joba Chamberlain did not allow a single barrel among his 49 batted ball events. He was one of three relievers to do so last year, along with German Marquez (Colorado) and Xavier Cedeno (Tampa Bay). Accordingly, putting things on a per PA basis does not change the top spots, but as is typical when making this adjustment the average barrel rate drops: 3.71 percent (SD = 1.86). As for the Red Sox’s relievers, much like the starters, they were for the most part better than league average.

Craig Kimbrel is an interesting example of the importance of considering the barrel measure on both a per batted-ball and per PA basis. Per batted ball, Kimbrel was slightly worse than league average, meaning that when opponents managed to put the ball in play he was not much different from the average reliever in having that contact come off the opponents’ barrel. But when you consider how often he strikes out (and walks) batters, his barrel rate is much more palatable. Noe Ramirez did not make the BBE threshold, but I included him here for similar reasons as with Henry Owens: he should probably not be considered a viable major league option. If the 2017 Red Sox have Ramirez and Owens throwing many innings then I suspect something has gone wrong.

As I noted when looking at barrels from the batting perspective, this is supposed to be a process metric. We are interested in finding pitchers who, due to their pitch repertoire, pitch movement, deception, or other factors, are able to consistently avoid having opponents barrel-up their pitches. For batters I suggested this is about swing and approach consistently resulting in contact on the barrel. If it is a process metric we should expect some year-to-year consistency. This was the case for batters, as the year-to-year (2015-to-2016) correlation for barrel rates was quite high (0.747 for Brls/BBE, 0.742 for Brls/PA). This turns out not to be the case for pitchers. The Brls/BBE correlation across 2016 and 2015 for pitchers who met the BBE threshold criteria by pitching role in each year was only 0.13; it was only slightly better for Brls/PA: 0.19. Pitchers changing roles between seasons and survivorship bias (those who frequently give up hard contact are not kept around) likely have an effect here, but this is still interesting. For those interested, here are scatterplots of the batters and pitchers year-to-year Brls/BBE and Brls/PA. Taken together, these correlations suggest that it is the same batters who are barreling the ball year-to-year, but they are not necessarily doing it off of the same pitchers each year.

While the relation between years may not be as clear for pitchers, here are the changes for Red Sox pitchers (grouped by role; negative numbers mean the rate was lower (better) in 2016):

The emergence of Steven Wright is clear, as it is for Fernando Abad. Wait, that seems odd. Perhaps, as for Drew Pomeranz, it would be interesting to see Abad’s team splits for these barrels measures. Otherwise most of the Red Sox pitchers stayed fairly similar across the two seasons.

In the end, the majority of the 2016 Red Sox pitching staff allowed barrels at better rate than league average. This certainly helped them post a top-10 team ERA. The extent to which it is replicable in the coming season is unclear, as the available data suggest the year-to-year barrel-against rates involve a lot of noise. Regardless, barrels-against are not the whole story, but rather just one component, and the additions of Chris Sale and Tyler Thornburg, and improved defense in left field and at third base should keep the run prevention side of the 2017 Red Sox in the top third of the league.

Photo by Kim Clement – USA TODAY Sports

One of the first metrics released by the Statcast lab team is Barrels. Barrels combines exit velocity and launch angle to determine high-value batted balls: those that were ‘barreled-up’. The basic idea is that if a ball is hit hard and within a certain range of angle it is likely to leave the yard, or at least go for extra bases. Either piece of information on its own is not enough. You can hit a ball hard (i.e., high exit velocity) but if you hit it too high or into the ground you likely won’t have much to show for it. Conversely, you can hit a ball at a typically strong launch angle, but if it is hit weakly it will probably find a defender’s glove. As determined by the Statcast lab members, a barrel is a batted ball whose exit velocity and launch angle have typically resulted in at least a .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage. In Statcast terms these are balls that were struck with an exit velocity of at least 98 mph and a launch angle between 26 and 30 degrees (and expanding as the exit velocity increases). I recommend you check out the linked article above and the MLB.com glossary entry for barreled ball to see a visual of this idea.

As an example, this is what a barreled-up ball looks like:

Those are the details, but the take away note here is that barrels are what batters want. They are well-struck balls that typically end in good results. Those nice folks at the Statcast lab have even created leaderboards for us to find which batters are the best at barreling up the ball (and which pitchers are best at limiting barreled balls). This can be defined per batted-ball event (Brls/BBE) or per plate appearance (Brls/PA). This first limits things to when the batter puts the ball in play, while the second factors in things that might come with trying to crush balls every time in the batter’s box, namely more strikeouts and fewer walks. I played around with the leaderboards to see how Red Sox batters fared in barreling up the ball.

First, I limited the 2016 dataset to only include batters who had at least 60 batted ball events. I did this because 60 is a reasonable sample… ah who am I kidding, I did it because this is the highest minimum that includes Andrew Benintendi. Using the 60 BBE minimum leaves 439 players. The average Brl/BBE for this group was 6.38 percent (SD = 4.22). These barrels do not happen all that often; they are somewhat special events. Top barreler in this group last year was David Wright at 20.3 percent. I was as surprised as you are right now. Second best was Yankees’ hall of fame catcher Gary Sanchez at 18.8 percent. Shifting to things to a PA basis basically halves the average rate (3.74, SD = 2.30) and shakes up the top spots. Oakland’s Khris Davis was best at 10.7 percent and Sanchez dropped to third best (10.5 percent).

How about the Red Sox hitters? Interestingly, despite having the best offense in baseball last year, only four of the 14 Red Sox hitters who accumulated at least 100 PA had a Brl/BBE rate above the average (of my sample) and two of them are no longer with the team. David Ortiz (15.8 percent), Jackie Bradley Jr. (9.8), Hanley Ramirez (9.5), and Travis Shaw (8.8) were the above-average barrelers. Yet another measure showing how ridiculous David Ortiz was last year. Last year, old friend Jake Peavy was on the wrong end of Big Papi’s penchant for barreling baseballs:

While Shaw and Ortiz are gone, the good news is that their replacement, Mitch Moreland (10.7) was also an above-average per-BBE barreler last year. Putting things on a per PA rate adds Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts into above-average territory.

Generally, the order of the list falls in line with what we should expect. Power guys up top, weaker, slappy hitters at the bottom. However, there are a couple of players worth noting. I was surprised to see Mookie Betts be so far down the list (and below average in Brls/BBE). I mean, he hit 31 home runs last year, but evidently they were not all barreled. Perhaps there is some Green Monster magic afoot here. Also, Mookie hit a lot of doubles and many of them are likely a result of his speed more than his barreling up the ball. Referring back to the Statcast article there is a plot of slugging percentage on batted balls shown as a function of exit velocity and launch angle that has a large, sweeping area of decent slugging just below the barrel area. Petriello says this area has “…some extra-base hits, but mostly the kind of doubles and triples that are bloops, well-placed or generated by speed…”. I suspect Mookie has a bunch of contact in that region. Also, he fared well on this measure when considering the rate per plate appearance. Dustin Pedroia showing up toward the bottom of the list might be a surprise given his great year last year, but his power numbers were down, and he reported making a conscious effort to not focus on strength during last offseason. So it makes some sense. Finally, at the bottom is poor Ryan Hanigan, who went barrelless last year; a rough end to his time in Boston.

It is important to note that this measure, barrels, is supposed to be a process metric. So it is great that a player gets a barrel here and there – sorry, Ryan – but we care more that it reveals the players who have a swing (and approach) that consistently generates velocity and balls in the air. For now the Statcast data are only available for the 2016 and 2015 seasons so we are limited in seeing consistency over many years, but I found that the year-to-year correlation in Brls/BBE was 0.747 and 0.742 for Brls/PA (for players who had at least 60 batted ball events in each of 2016 and 2015). Just a quick note that Giancarlo Stanton led the way in 2015 with almost a third of his batted balls getting classified as barrels. Maybe MLB.tv has a few more highlights of him lying around on the cutting room floor. The magnitude of the year-to-year correlation suggests this measure is picking up on something more than randomness or luck, which I suppose is not all that surprising given that characteristics of a player’s swing (plane, strength) is not likely to change dramatically from one year to the next.

The year-to-year consistency was evident for Red Sox players (positive numbers mean the rate was higher in 2016):

Some reasonably large changes at the extremes, but all centered around a team-level change of about 0, which was also true for the full sample.

All told, while the 2016 Red Sox did not exactly light the world on-fire with their ability to barrel up the ball (at least according to this Statcast metric), they were still a dominant offense. What they perhaps lacked in barreled-up triples and dingers, they made up for with a steady barrage of doubles, singles and walks. David Ortiz and his barreling ability will certainly be missed, but Mitch Moreland will help pick up some of the slack with his strong ability in getting the barrel to the ball. Also, Pablo Sandoval, who actually managed to barrel-up fairly often (6.3 percent of BBE, 4.20 percent of PA) in his disastrous 2015 season, should give the team an offensive boost from the third base position. On the whole, lots of barrels or few barrels, I expect the Red Sox will have a top-five offense again in 2017.

Photo by Kim Klement/USA Today Sports Images