We're almost ready to close up the baseball shop and open up football with the September debut of the Scouting Notebook. This week, we look at the two stats I value the most for projection purposes to predict players who either should improve in ERA next year or who should still stay elite because their stat foundation is so strong.

For next week, send me your pitching questions via Twitter (@michaelsalfino) and I will answer the best ones. We want to be looking ahead to 2013 though.

In last week's column, I think I stumbled upon an extremely useful stat that few if any people, to the best of my knowledge, have previously used for predictive purposes – isolated slugging allowed (slugging average minus batting average, where lowest is best). It works because there are few outliers and it's repeatable, at least in the context of pitching stats.

Previously, we looked at K/BB ratio – very simple, old school but extremely useful. But in retrospect that analysis should have been Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: An eye towards '13

Johnny Cueto, king of weak contact. (AP)We're too hit-obsessed in fantasy baseball when it comes to evaluating pitchers. Even the breakthrough stats like BABIP still lump all hits together. But of course, all hits are not equal. Extra-base hits are extra bad when it comes to run prevention.

Let's illustrate by solving the mystery of Johnny Cueto. Last year, his low ERA (2.31) was easy for people to explain – he was lucky when it came to BABIP (just .254). As expected, his BABIP corrected this year to .302 (actually worse than league average). But his ERA has barely budged – it's just 2.45. So why the heck is Cueto so stubbornly good? Yes, his strikeout rate is up, but not dramatically (7.1 from 6.0 in 2011). That explains very little. But his slugging average allowed explains a lot. Simply put, most of the hits Cueto allows are harmless singles. The best way to isolate this stat is to look at isolated slugging allowed (slugging average minus batting average) – and Cueto's is a MLB best 0.093.

Skeptics I'm guessing are Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Weak contact

Don't let Jon Lester sink your fantasy team any further. (AP)Looking at performance over the last month is a way to increase the likelihood of finding some very hot, healthy cheap assets in place of some higher-named players who are destroying pitching categories.

Last week we examined the hottest pitchers and their availability in Yahoo! leagues. This week, let's look at some pitchers they could replace. Not all of the cold pitchers on this list are guys who owners in standard mixed leagues should be kicking to the curb. Perhaps there is some solid foundational numbers that remove most of the doubt concerning health and that also highlight that there is some bad luck in the admittedly small sample size.

Here are the coldest big-name hurlers of late:

Player	Team	IP	GS	W	K	BB	ERA	WHIP
Lester, Jon	BOS	28.2	5	0	23	12	8.79	1.57
Jimenez, Ubaldo	CLE	25.2	5	0	21	18	8.42	2.03
Nova, Ivan	NYY	28	5	0	24	10	8.36	1.82
McDonald, James	PIT	26.2	5	1	22

Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Cold call

For Hisashi Iwakuma, his recent 13-K outing speaks loudly. (AP)While we always want to place great weight on the largest samples of data, exceptions can be made at this stage of the season for pitching.

Let's look only at the last 30 days production for some pitchers who are not widely owned in Yahoo! fantasy baseball. We're going to focus primarily on K/IP but the averages matter, too – and may even matter most for owners in leagues with generous innings caps. But the caveat is that guys who strike out the most batters are more likely to have the best averages, too.

Here's the list, in no particular order, for the last 30 days:

Player	IP	K	ERA	WHIP	Y% owned
Homer Bailey	33.1	29	2.70	1.35	45%
Zach McAllister	37.2	34	3.11	1.19	15%
Hisashi Iwakuma	24	23	3.00	1.38	2%
A.J. Griffin	31	27	2.90	1.10	26%
Joe Blanton	29.1	26	3.68	0.99	19%
Wei-Yin Chen	36.2	41	3.44	0.95	35%
Jeff Samardzija	26	25	2.08	1.12	44%
Mike Minor	27.1	26	1.98	0.73	39%

Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Available arms

Some very valuable fantasy baseball starting pitchers face being shut down for non-performance reasons due to some statistical snake oil that continues to con baseball executives long after it's been discredited by sabermetricians.

Shut down Stephen Strasburg? Not so fast ... (AP)A big reason is that the man who "discovered" this bit of pseudo-science, Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated, has a very big microphone and direct access top decision makers. The "Verducci Effect" says that young pitchers are more likely to get injured if they pitch more than 30 innings than the prior year. The term was coined by Will Carroll, formerly of Baseball Prospectus and now sharing the Sports Illustrated mantle with Verducci. To illustrate what an embarrassment it has become in the sabermetric community, Baseball Prospectus has scrubbed the definition that Carroll coined while writing there from its glossary. And my Yahoo! Friends & Family League colleague Derek Carty of Baseball Prospectus recently did a harsh takedown of the VE at BP Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Myth busting

If you're playing in fantasy leagues with a strict innings cap, the typical pitcher valuation chart distorts so much that it's as if you're looking at it in a funhouse mirror.

Sergio Romo generates plenty of useful fantasy numbers from his set-up role. (AP)If you're over your innings pace, you must act now. Broom your starters who are not pulling their weight in strikeouts per inning and, just as important (but unfortunately much harder to project), wins per inning. I know it's hard to let starters with solid ERAs and WHIPs walk to your waiver wire, but unless they are on very good teams and thus likely to help in wins/inning, they must go. Explore trades, but you are in a bind and can't afford to dawdle and shouldn't expect any favors from leaguemates. What you need instead, pitching wise, are relievers with great strikeout rates. That usually means "closers," but not always. Good news, mixed leaguers: you are guaranteed to find closer-worthy K-rates on your waiver wire, just from guys with few saves and little hope of getting more.

Getting them in for your Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Middle management

Velocity is a wonderful thing for a pitcher. But there’s evidence that extreme velocity leads to greater injury risk. Simply put, these flame throwers defy the physics of the human anatomy, but usually not for long.

Conversely, then, the slower you throw, the less your injury risk, even though throwing a baseball repeatedly at any even quasi-major league speed is a very stressful and thus risky act. Unfortunately, results often track velocity. So poor velocity often leads to poor results.

But what about the guys who prove they don’t have a need for speed? Let’s look at all of the pitchers with the lowest fastball velocity, sorting by strikeout rate, while also looking at percentage of fastballs thrown and the other averages that count in our leagues – ERA and WHIP.

First, though, a hat tip to colleague Ben Lindbergh at Baseball Prospectus for his article on why some pitchers don’t get injured. He noted that the average fastball velocity of the five pitchers who have gone the

Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Slower velocity

We like stories and second-half splits tell us one: pitchers are good early in the year but tire late. They fade.

Give me last year's trailers in ERA and WHIP during the second half and I will certainly find examples that seem to support this theory. If you are so inclined, you will bet against them. Except that when you look at three-year splits, you find what you'd expect to find if second-half (or post-All Star) splits meant nothing – the bad second-half pitchers are mostly the bad overall pitchers and vice versa.

Some people even bet that pitchers who improved last year in the second half will improve this year, too. I'm not sure what the story even is there. Okay, they don't tire. But how can they get better as the season wears on?

Let's illustrate with leaders and trailers, post-All-Star break from 2009-2011 (minimum 200 second-half innings pitched). We'll start with leaders first, even though, again, what's the theory here even? I'm not sure. If you are a believer, pleaseRead More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Half-baked notion