What Statcast says about the Colorado Rockies’ starters

A month has gone by and the Colorado Rockies have started to surpass our expectations for this season. It’s buoyed by the fact that they’ve played 16 of their first 26 games at Coors Field, but they’re surpassing preseason expectations and projections nonetheless (now projected for a 74-88 record on Fangraphs, previously was at 68-94).

The starting rotation has been pretty solid (95 ERA-), but it’s happened in an unexpected way. The top-end of the rotation is struggling (Kyle Freeland and Germán Márquez). The back-end has been solid (Austin Gomber and Chad Kuhl). Antonio Senzatela has been playing with fire but hasn’t gotten really burnt yet.

So what’s real and what isn’t? Let’s take a look at what Statcast says about the Colorado Rockies’ starters and find out what to expect for the remainder of the season. We’ll start with Saturday night’s starter.

What does Statcast say about the Colorado Rockies’ starting pitchers?

Kyle Freeland

Take one look at Colorado Rockies Opening Day starter Kyle Freeland and his Statcast profile and you’re probably not all too shocked. He ranks right around the 30th percentile in the following categories:

• Hard Hit percentage
• xwOBA
• xERA
• K percentage
• Whiff percentage
• xBA
• xSLG
• Average Exit Velocity

He’s been getting hit fairly hard, but not terribly hard. It’s leading to a .342 wOBA. That’s basically saying hitters are a slightly worse Ryan McMahon (.352 wOBA) when they face Freeland. The results are pretty true right now also as Freeland’s xwOBA is .338 so far. He’s gotten a touch unlucky, but not to a degree where it’s game-changing.

His pitch mix isn’t dramatically different from last season, rather the only considerable change is his fastball usage and slider usage have essentially flipped, making his slider his pitch of choice.

Hitters are simply seeing him better right now compared to last season, though, especially with his curveball. Last season hitters only tagged him for a .214 wOBA on his curveball. This season they’re hitting it for a .327 wOBA, the highest year-over-year increase of his four pitches.

So is Freeland doomed?

No, not necessarily. He’s been getting unlucky results on his slider and to quite a drastic degree. Hitters are hitting his slider for a .329 wOBA, but that comes along with a .238 xwOBA. To put this into terms of more traditional statistics, hitters have a .269 batting average against his slider but it has a .171 expected batting average. That’s quite the gap!

The rest of his pitch mix has varied results in terms of what’s lucky and unlucky, but none as drastic as the gap for his slider. I would expect that throughout the rest of the season we see some better results out of Freeland, especially when we look at some of his other advanced stats (3.80 FIP, 3.62 xFIP).

His 3.94 ERA will come down a touch and we’ll continue to see good results out of Freeland. We may not see him get back to his 2018 Cy Young finalist season, but he’s settled down after two rough starts to begin the season and is in a great groove right now.

Germán Márquez 

Try not to fret too much, but Colorado Rockies’ starter Germán Márquez’s Statcast profile isn’t pretty. Going into Sunday’s start, he ranked in the 20th percentile or worse in the following categories:

• Exit Velocity
• Hard Hit percentage
• xwOBA
• xERA
• xBA
• xSLG
• K percentage
• Whiff percentage

None of this is what we’re accustomed to from Márquez, who we traditionally view as the Rockies’ ace (sorry Jon Gray). The only metric he had last year that was in the 20th percentile or worse was his fastball spin rate, but that’s not as bad as it looks given that a lower spin rate fastball works better at Coors Field. So to see these drops early in the season? Well, it’s not good.

Either he’s missing his spots or hitters are seeing him better to start the season. This is shown by his Whiff Percentage. Last year it was up to 27 percent. That was a touch above league average as it ranked in the 57th percentile. This season it’s down to 19 percent, ranking in the 14th percentile. It’s pretty evident in all of his pitches too.

On his fastball hitters are whiffing at just a 9.1 percent rate compared to 14 percent last season. His slider’s whiff rate dropped from 40.1 percent last season to 31.7 percent this season. And his curve’s down from a 42.7 percent whiff rate to a 26.7 percent whiff rate. Given that these are his three most common pitches, that’s a bad sign.

Now he has been getting a bit unlucky based on xwOBA (.390 xwOBA paired with a .410 wOBA), but that’s still a high number (a .410 wOBA is basically the same production as 2017 Charlie Blackmon when he finished fifth in the NL MVP race).

By pitch, it’s hitters getting a hold of his fastball that’s hurting him the most. It’s getting crushed for a .510 wOBA with a .414 xwOBA. That’s a big gap, but still a high number regardless. He’s gotten a touch lucky on his slider (.311 wOBA to .343 xwOBA), but that doesn’t change much of the results we’re getting from him.

Márquez’s velocity has been pretty consistent from last season to this season, so this likely isn’t anything to do with velocity. Hitters are simply seeing him better or he’s missing his spots. Márquez is trying to combat this by switching up his pitch mix a little bit, mostly with an equal swap in usage from his fastball (45.5 percent in 2021 to 36 percent in 2022) and his slider (26.9 percent in 2021 to 32.3 percent in 2022). But that switch doesn’t matter if hitters keep seeing him well no matter what.

Positive regression will come to Márquez soon enough as told by his xFIP (3.60 xFIP compared to a 5.43 FIP and 6.92 ERA entering his start Sunday), but he needs to get more whiffs on his pitches to increase his K percent. A 15.7 percent K rate won’t get it done for Márquez, especially when he’s traditionally in the low 20s.

After Márquez’s better start on Sunday (6 IP, 6 H, 4 R/3 ER, 4 BB, 7 K), Bud Black said that he was “encouraged” by the start. The walk rate is a bit high but the start is a step in the right direction.

Chad Kuhl

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the season so far has been just how well Chad Kuhl has pitched this season. He has, by far, the best Statcast profile of any Colorado Rockies starters this season, ranking average or above average in the following metrics:

• xwOBA
• xERA
• xBA
• xSLG
• Barrel percentage
• Whiff percentage
• BB percentage
• Chase Rate

The biggest question with Kuhl is simply this: How much of his season is a result of luck and should we expect negative regression?

The answer is yes, but probably not as much as you’d think.

Hitters are hitting him for a wOBA of .215 and an xwOBA of .293, so it’s only natural that he’ll soon regress to the mean. But that is by no means a poor xwOBA as it ranks in the 74th percentile. He’s in the same company right now as guys like Justin Verlander by that metric (.295 xwOBA in 2022).

So what’s working?

Specifically, it’s his slider that’s getting a lot of work done. He’s mixing it up pretty well with his sinker, making it a bit more unpredictable to know which one’s coming. He throws his slider 39.2 percent of the time and his sinker 37.2 percent of the time.

While his sinker’s getting hit for a .345 wOBA, his slider’s only getting hit for a .103 wOBA. His sinker’s results are pretty true (.367 xwOBA) but his slider will eventually get hit a little better as it has a .229 xwOBA. Now, that’s still a fantastic xwOBA to have, so even when that regression comes he’ll still get some really good results out of it.

Last season with the Pirates, Kuhl had much worse results, posting up a .347 wOBA with a .334 xwOBA. That led to a 4.82 ERA, 5.31 FIP, and a 4.90 xFIP. Those numbers were a reason I was initially not a fan of Kuhl’s signing. However, a key change in his pitch mix seems to be the main driver in his resurgence this season and the main reason why he’s making me eat my words.

In 2021, Kuhl’s second most used pitch was his four-seam fastball. He threw it 25.4 percent of the time and it got hit for a .420 wOBA. This season he’s only throwing it 3.7 percent of the time, drastically limiting the damage hitters can get off him and instead focusing more on his better pitches in his slider and sinker. This appears to be the largest change he’s made this season and it’s providing much, much better results than anticipated.

We’ll soon see some negative regression, but Kuhl’s hot start shouldn’t be cooled off a ton and his signing will continue to look like a positive one for the Rockies.

Antonio Senzatela

Antonio Senzatela has generally been a successful pitcher at Coors Field that has defied some of the advanced metrics, which say he shouldn’t be having the success he’s having. While much of what Statcast does isn’t what I would call “advanced,” it’s more than clear by his Statcast profile that they are not enthusiastic about what he’s done in 2022.

Senzatela ranks in the bottom 10% of the league in the following categories:

• xwOBA
• xERA
• xBA
• xSLG
• K percentage
• Whiff percentage

He’s never been a big strikeout guy and has always lived off soft contact, but these numbers are ugly. His strikeout rate of 6.4 percent is nearly 10 percent lower than his rate last year, which was already in the bottom 5 percent of the league at 15.7 percent. You can get by with a low strikeout rate, even at Coors Field, but when you’re in the single digits then you are asking for trouble in nearly any stadium you play at.

But beyond the strikeout rate being microscopic, it’s what hitters are doing with his pitches. They’re hitting him for a .427 wOBA with a .421 xwOBA. That’s like facing 2021 Juan Soto every single at-bat.

Senzatela’s four-seam fastball, which he throws 50.6 percent of the time, is getting tagged for a .519 wOBA and a .504 xwOBA, so those results have been fairly true. His slider, which he throws 32.8 percent of the time, is getting tagged for a .418 wOBA and a .402 xwOBA, so those results are pretty true as well.

That means over 83 percent of Senzatela’s pitches are getting hit for at least a .400 wOBA. That is not good.

For reference, last season, his fastball got hit for a .315 wOBA and his slider got hit for a .342 wOBA. He throws them at about the same rates this season, so he’s either missing his spots or hitters are seeing him better to start the season.

The Statcast numbers aren’t pretty, but so far, it’s resulted in relatively little scoring (3.75 ERA). However, negative regression needs to be expected as is made evident by his 4.33 FIP and 4.74 xFIP.

If he focuses more on getting more strikeouts, or simply increasing his groundball rate (38.7 percent this season) then he can limit the amount of negative regression. But it’s coming and it may not be pretty if he doesn’t make the necessary changes.