I spent a lot of time last April trying to figure out what was wrong with John Lackey last year and when I sat down to write this I realized I was starting again. Something I didn’t note last year was besides the obvious injuries he has suffered early in many years he has also been his worst each year in April nearly every season.
His career FIP in March and April stands at 4.60, which is nearly a run higher than his career FIP of 3.85. His month by month even follows a trend of getting better*: April-4.60, May-4.34, June-3.65, July-3.27, August-4.11, Sept/Oct-3.52. Other than a blip in August his season follows a solid trend from April to October.
*I found according to baseball-reference that this trend was matched by all pitchers in 2010, but that set is not controlled for young pitchers who inflated the ERA early on and then were replaced by other pitchers.
So what is causing this trouble early in the season each year? I noticed in his last start he had a substantial drop in his velocity from his first pitch to his last. Perhaps this was something he had always done so I decided to run several games and find what his average game looked like. I ended up using three Yankees games in Fenway as a test.
The first game was on April seventh of 2010 and was a 3 to 1 loss for the Red Sox. Lackey threw 100 pitches and had 3 strikeouts and 2 walks. He did not give up a run. The second game was on October third of 2010 and was an 8 to 4 win. Lackey threw 118 pitches and had 10 strikeouts and 2 walks. He allowed 2 earned runs. The final game was friday’s game a 9 to 6 win for the Red Sox. Lackey threw 91 pitches with 2 strikeouts and 2 walks. He gave up six earned runs.
Next I took every “cutter” thrown by Lackey, which is now his most common pitch and was thrown around 30 times in his April games and over 50 times in his October game. Already we can see he threw it more in the October game, but the interesting part comes when we look at the velocity.
In His April games I ran a linear regression and found the average velocity for the first pitch would be 92.62 in 2010 and 91.44 in 2011. He was starting even slower this year based on the model. Then in October he was starting out at 92.65, which isn’t to shocking.
The interesting part is when you look at his average velocity for the thirtieth pitch of the game. According to the model he would throw a 89 mile per hour cutter at this point of the game in either his 2010 or 2011 April game. Then last fall he improved this by having an expected velocity of 92.14 for the thirtieth pitch.
Essentially his velocity was the same from the first pitch to the fiftieth in his October game. In April he is losing 2-3 mph after thirty pitches, but not even a full mph in October. I would be curious to run some more of this data as my analysis is limited by small data sample in only three games. I also do not have a negative control to see if this is a normal result.
As a quick control I tried an elite pitcher in Tim Lincecum in his March 31 start this season. Here is his graph of his Four Seam Fastballs throughout the game in order.
Tim Lincecum Fastballs” width=”300″ height=”180″ />
I have a feeling those two pitches below 88 are also misclassified and should be labeled something else. Even still his linear regression is almost flat. He lost about 0.14 mph from his first fastball to his thirtieth. This is not only different than Lackey’s April, but it’s better than his October start.
An interesting test would be if this trend was scene as strong in his years before injuries since his overall velocity is nearly the same on average, but without the pitch f/x we can tell how his velocity fell.
Conclusion
No pitcher is the same level in the first inning as he is in the sixth inning, but Lackey appears to fall off more than others and in April it’s even worse. His injury troubles also primarily occurred in the early going suggesting a potential flaw in his off-season regimen. I can’t say what his off-season entails, but it could be to much work with not enough rest or vice-versa.
Either way Lackey has been trouble in April and seems to have a problem with velocity as the game goes on. The best way for the Red Sox to address this for 2011 is to have relievers ready early for Lackey. You have to hope he can get through the fifth inning, but taking chances will continue to result in high run totals for the opponents.
On the other hand heading into 2012 the team should take a look into his offseason regimin and try to see if he is doing to much or to little. With three more years to go the team surely wants to avoid more April starts like Lackey has shown so far.