Collin McWho?

Collin McWho?

            You could pretty much sum up the Astro’s season thus for with one simple phrase.  “Where did this guy come from?”  For the most part the team has survived on players that either weren’t relevant last season or just ineffective.  Take today’s pitcher we’ll be looking at, Collin McHugh.  A young journeyman his entire career than all of a sudden a star with the Astros.  So lets take a look at his success and see if there’s anything to say what has caused this amazing improvement.

	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA	WHIP	AVG	FIP	LOB%	ERA-	FIP-
2014	9.94	3.15	0.66	2.82	1.03	.188	3.04	76.8%	71	80
2013	3.81	1.73	2.08	10.04	1.92	.375	5.78	50.5%	247	143
Career	7.79	2.83	1.33	5.67	1.39	.268	4.35	62.4%	143	112

            So I’ll start off by saying I only looked at his major league stats and didn’t add in his minor league stats.  He also pitched a few less games last season compared to what he’s done to this point.  With all this said you’ve already looked at this and shook your head asking yourself “where did this come from!?”  Well like I’ve said in the past these numbers give us the ground works but not the full story.  Still what a transformation this pitcher has made from his early work to now.  Increasing the K% by 2 per 9 is a huge deal and lowering that HR/9 to the levels its at is no small task either.  The most important stat to look at here is the FIP and just how close to the ERA it is since you always expect to see a higher FIP to ERA but his is low even on the FIP side.  League AVG FIP is roughly 3.30 so he’s pitching way better than the rest of the league and it makes me wonder how sustainable it is.  The fact he’s pitching so well and beating his career totals will always make nervous but he’s pitching well and he’s actually lowered the FIP from earlier which to me says this could be legit.  So we know he’s pitching well but lets look at the contact he’s giving up.

Batted Balls

	LD%	GB%	FB%	HR/FB	GB/FB
2014	22.1%	40.4%	37.5%	7.8%	1.08
2013	28.2%	39.8	32.0%	18.2%	1.24
Career	25.3%	38.6%	36.0%	13.5%	1.07

            McHugh has done one thing very well and that’s limit the hard contact.  The LD% is down quite a bit which could mean that teams are having a hard time lining him up for hard hits but he’s also giving up more FB%.  Even though the FB% is up so is the IFFB% which last year was at 6.1% and this year is at a staggering 15.7% which once again adds to the argument of opposing hitters not squaring the ball up.  The GB% being the same makes sense since he is trying to get the soft contact.  Bottom line is McHugh has found a way to limit the hard hits and even get more K’s, next question is how is he doing this.  Lets see what pitches he’s using and see if there’s something that can answer for this success.

            PITCHf/x Pitch Value

	Fastball	Curveball	Slider	Change-up
2014	-0.3	5.2	4.4	0.5
2013	-9.6	0.3	-1.0	-0.9
Career	-16.5	7.8	-0.4	-.02

            From this chart its plan that McHugh has started relying less on the FB and more on his off-speed pitches.  Specifically his CB, he’s increased his percentage thrown from 15.2% last season to 23.3% this season which is the biggest jump of all his pitchers.  It seems to be working for him since the CB is his best-valued pitch saving an average of 5.5 runs above average.  He’s also really backed off his FB going from 52.4% last season to 43.7% this season.  The decreased use seems to be improving the pitch but he also is using his 2-Seamer far less, a pitch that was causing issues for him in the past.  What we see here could be a good reason for his ability to keep the opposing hitters from getting solid contact.

            PITCHf/x Plate Discipline

	O-Swing	Z-Swing	Swing	O-Contact	Z-Contact	Contact	Zone
2014	31.5%	63.3%	47.7%	60.7%	83.5%	76.0%	50.2%
2013	33.3%	65.5%	50.8%	76.1%	86.4%	83.3%	53.8%
Career	32.6%	63.7%	48.1%	69.8%	84.0%	79.2%	49.8%

            Now here is some differences and could explain some of the improvements.  We can see that he’s been able to decrease the swings that batter take in and out of the zone but the big difference is the Contact% dropping 7% overall and a lot of that comes from the pitches outside the zone.  While you don’t expect that to be too high in the first place he has been able to avoid contact from hitters outside the zone while still getting them to swing about the same rate as he normally does.  This could explain why his K% and BB% are up so dramatically.  If batters are making less contact but still swinging that means more strikes but if you live outside the zone to much you’ll walk more hitters.

            We’ve really learned quite a bit about a pitcher who’s career seemed to be stuck in the minors for all eternity.  I have read many reports on how McHugh had been learning to throw his CB with more efficiency but this is above even what I expected to see him capable off.  The key thing we learned is his ability to get batters to chase the pitches outside the zone and make the contact in the zone very weak causing less hard hit balls.  Is McHugh the next big pitcher?  Sadly I don’t think so but he is going to be a good solid pitcher moving forward.