We’ve been examining Weighted On-Base Average minus Expected Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA-xwOBA) for hitters up to this point. It works for pitchers as well once the sample has become large enough. A higher xwOBA than wOBA indicates someone’s been lucky with balls in play. A higher wOBA means they’ve had poor luck.
Here is the leaderboard of wOBA-xwOBA for a minimum of 500 pitches.
Many of these pitchers have fastball problems. Corbin Burnes is the poster boy for that. Great secondary stuff could be muddled by a fastball that hitters do what they want with.
A bunch of relievers show up here, likely due to a select number of poor innings in a smaller sample. Those blips will smooth if they continue to pitch well.
That won’t be the case for someone like José Leclerc if he continues to have control issues.
Chris Stratton is still not a major league pitcher, despite his luck.
Is Tyler Beede as bad as his wOBA? Maybe not. He’s been all over the map. It will be interesting to see which version settles in.
Here are the pitchers getting a bit more luck than the batted balls against them indicate.
Dylan Covey is a bad pitcher. Even worse than his results indicate, in fact.
Be cautious jumping back into bed with Ryan Brasier . There has been no shortage of hard contact against him this year. It could have been related to an injury. Is that injury healed, though?
Don’t take offense to Mike Soroka being on this list. It indicates that he creates weak contact with pitching control.
The two Rays, Ryan Yarbrough and Ryne Stanek , likely have a similar propensity for inducing weak contact. Hitters only tend to see them once or twice in a game and have less opportunity to adjust.
Merrill Kelly is another pitcher looking to pitch to contact. He hasn’t been nearly as effective as the others on the list. It’s a hard way to make a living if you can’t.
I suspect Walker Buehler ’s high velocity may have something to do with him showing up here. His results have been mixed this season, though.
You can examine the wOBA-xwOBA results for yourself and adjust parameters as you see fit. Isolating individual pitch types is a great next step. Trade deadlines aren’t that far away and most of us could use more pitching. This is one avenue to look to for a leg up on your competition.