Bear or Bull: What’s Happening?

J.A. Happ is the 16th pitcher on the Razzball Player Rater. Bet that went in one ear and out the other. Grabs head. Shakes it up and down and side to side. Uses one of those thingamajiggies with the light on the end that the doctor uses to inspect the inside of your ear. Throws head down after being satisfied that there is more than air in there. J.A. Happ has 50 strikeouts in 36 innings for a 12.50 K/9! Wha…wha….whaaaaat! Mount Kilimanjaro just surfaced between your legs. J.A. Happ is 35 years old. Click HERE. So, what’s Happening?

Let’s get this out of the way. Happ will not have a 12.50 K/9 all season. I accept PayPal, Venmo, Bitcoin, and whatever online payment system is out there. His career K/9 rate is 7.87 and most of the projection systems had him around 8.9 for the 2018 season.

Velocity? 93 mph on the fastball, same as back in 2014.

More offspeed stuff? Sinker usage down 2% from 2017, changeup usage down 3%, and curveball usage down 1%. Happ has been throwing the slider more, but only 1% more from last season. So, the slider is inducing more swings out of the strike zone? O-Swing% is down over 1%.

Swinging strike rate is at 13.1%!!! Happ had never been over 10% in his 11-year career. To be fair, the last two seasons have seen rates of 9.6% and 9.4%, but last time I checked, 9 is less than 10.

How can we explain this sorcery?

Below are two heatmaps. The first is from the 2017 season and the second is from the current 2018 campaign. What do you see?

Less pitches down in the zone and more pitches up in the zone. High heat baby! Happ has become more unpredictable by utilizing the entire zone, which has kept hitters off-balance. I also kept thinking about Lance’s article on pitch tunneling last month. Go read it. Fantastic stuff. Anyways, the fastball-slider and fastball-changeup combos were the ones he focused on. Well, the usage for both the fastball and slider have increased for Happ.

I interrupt your regularly scheduled program for a little bit of the bad in the land of Happ. The 1.50 HR/9 rate is the highest of his big league career. No guts, no glory. Ok, back to your regularly scheduled program.

To open up the 2018 season, Happ has faced the Yankees, White Sox, Orioles, Royals, Red Sox, and Rangers. Below is a chart on where the six teams rank in terms of strikeout percentage to left-handed pitching.

(as of 4/30/2018)

We got ourselves a good old chicken or the egg conundrum. Did Happ feast on these teams because they strikeout a ton against LHP or are these rankings due to the fact that Happ destroyed them?

Anyways, the main thing to take away from the above chart is that three of those teams are in the AL East, the division that Happ pitches in. For you enquiring minds out there, the Rays are ranked 15th in strikeout percentage against LHP (23.9%).

The final thing I want to touch on are the righty-lefty splits for Happ. So far, he’s been filthy against lefties: 38.5% K% and 1.36 xFIP. Against righties? 32.4% K% and 3.07 xFIP. Career numbers are 21.7% K% and 3.64 xFIP against lefties and 20.2% K% and 4.31 xFIP against righties.

All the numbers have been absurd for Happ. Regression is coming, especially as hitters adjust to the adjustments. Let’s not forget that it’s only been 36 innings. With that said, I like what I’ve seen from Happ. He has excellent control (currently a 1.75 BB/9 rate and projected for around a 2.75 mark for the season), is a veteran and knows how to sequence, and is utilizing the entire strike zone and keeping batters off-balance.

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