Colby Lewis came back from Japan and had a nice season for the Texas Rangers last year, tossing 201 innings with a 3.72 ERA. His success went right along with his peripherals, as he struck out a good number of batter (8.8 K/9) while keeping the walks down (2.9 BB/9). This year his ERA is up to 3.81, but the manner in which he’s gone about posting it has been a bit more interesting.
Lewis’ velocity is down a little, as is his strike-out rate. He’s K’ing just 6.3 batter per nine, which means a lot more balls in play. But, he’s not giving up that many more hits, because his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) has fallen from an already relatively low .275 (.301 career) to .232. So missing fewer bats hasn’t hurt Lewis yet (and it helps that he’s walking fewer batter as well. On top of that, he’s also stranding a ton of runners. His left on base rate of 84.4% is one of the highest marks in the league – and it’s unlikely to last (average is more like 73%). So Lewis isn’t allowing all that many baserunners, and many of those he’s allowing are failing to get across the plate – so why is his ERA up?
That would be the home runs. Lewis is giving up close to 2 home runs per nine, which is more than double his 2010 rate. No AL pitcher has been taken deep more, and that’s were almost all of his runs allowed are coming from. Total runs allowed: 24. Total runs allowed on the 12 home runs: 19. That’s almost 80%, which (by my count) is the highest mark in the majors. It’s unlikely that Lewis is going to keep giving up homers at such a high rate, even as a flyball pitcher.
So Lewis’ ERA is a solid 3.81. But, on the other hand, he’s been very fortunate with the BABIP and LOB%, and that’s why his FIP – which looks at strike-outs, walks, and homers – is way higher, at 5.22. On the other, other hand, once you normalize his home runs rate (almost 14% of his flyballs have left the yard, compared to less than 9% as the major league average), his xFIP is down at 4.18. So everything seems to be evening out pretty well, but depending on whether the good stuff or the bad stuff regresses first, Lewis might see his ERA go up (or down!). Should be interesting to see how it goes.
