5/30 Pitcher Preview: Josh Beckett

Josh Beckett will go tonight for the Sox vs the O's and Daniel Cabrera. Beckett is coming off a good performance last time out vs Oakland in which he gave up 2 runs in 7 innings.

While Beckett's season to date might look discouraging to the casual viewer with a 5-4 record and a 4.43 ERA, there are many more encouraging signs in his perphials. His 31-3 strikeout to walk ratio over his past three games along with a 65-11 K:BB rate on the year is extremely impressive. In fact, look at these numbers from Fangraphs over the past three seasons:

K/9:

2006: 6.95

2007: 8.70

2008: 9.59

BB/9:

2006: 3.25

2007: 1.79

2008: 1.62

FIP: Predicted ERA based on peripherals

2006: 5.13

2007: 3.08

2008: 3.59

So with that said, where is he struggling? Three main things are leading to "presumed" lack of success this year:

HR/9: This is increased because of his fly ball percentage

2006: 1.58

2007: 0.76

2008: 1.48

FB%:

2006: 38%

2007: 37%
2008: 40%

LOB%: Needs to do a better job of stranding runners

2006: 69%
2007: 75%
2008: 68%

Overall, Beckett is settling down nicely after a rough first week of the season. Expect his ERA to drop and Wins to pile up as we move into summer. In fact, he can hold his peripherals and move his HR/9 number down to about 1.00, we can expect another run at the Cy Young award.

Below is Beckett's pitches from his 5/24 start vs Oakland. I am going to use the pitch type from Ross Paul's algorithm. This method is used to identify pitches on a real time basis, so its job is to get the majority of the pitches right and doesn't take into account each pitchers repertoire. With that said, Josh Beckett is a fairly easy pitcher to identify. He throws a 2 seam FB, a 4 seam FB, a curveball and a changeup. These charts don't split up the fastball, but that is nitpicking for a real time pitch identification system right now.