Hyun-Jin Ryu is a Brick Shit-House

Hyun-Jin Ryu is a Brick Shit-House

(He’s listed at 6’3 250)

(He puts the Beef and Cake into Beefcake) 

Here are a few statistical explanations in layman’s terms: FIP (Fielder Independent Pitching) essentially it takes the things a pitcher can control: K’s, BB’s, and home runs allowed and turns it into an ERA-like number. xFIP is FIP except it changes everyone’s home run rate to league average (currently 14.3%). BABIP. (Batting Average of Balls in Play) when the pitcher allows the ball in play it is the rate at which they become hits (league average is currently .289). WOBA utilizes linear weights to measure a player's overall offensive contribution per plate appearance and scales it to an OBP-like number. XWOBA does the same thing as WOBA but instead of using the hits you have hit (singles, doubles, etc.) it uses exit velocity and launch-angle to determine, on average, what your hits would be (in theory stripping out luck) both WOBA and XWOBA utilize BB% (the percent a hitter walks and pitcher walks batters) and K% (the percent a hitter strikes out and pitcher strikes out batters) Some stats used are not explained but if you see a slash (/) it means it is divided by that and a subtraction mark (-) means it is subtracted. I hope this helps


      Hyun-Jin Ryu finds himself (at the time of this writing) at the top of the FanGraphs player search leaderboard. This, to me, is a fantastic achievement. The player normally residing there is Mike Trout, and, if it is not the best player in the world, it is usually someone who has just had a blog post written about them. Ryu is neither of those (yet).

      The sudden spike in interest over Ryu is obvious enough. He just took a no-hitter into the 8th inning against the Washington Nationals. Pitching 8 innings allowing 1 hit and walking 1 to go along with 9 strikeouts is always a good way to get noticed, but if that hit had happened in the first inning would Ryu have gotten all of this attention? Probably not, but for the past two seasons, in limited time, Ryu has been worthy of our attention.

      Starting your career for a team with prime Clayton Kershaw, it is easy for another elite starter to get overlooked. Ryu was never the ACE of the Dodgers and for good reason, he never pitched enough innings and was never better than best modern pitcher during his absolute peak. Since his Rookie year in 2013, Ryu has thrown fewer and fewer innings each season (discarding 2016 where he only got 14 outs due to injury). For a guy built like a brick shit-house, it seems amazing that he has maxed out with 192 innings in a single campaign, but for a team like the Dodgers, with tremendous depth, getting 170 innings high-quality innings is more than enough. And really isn’t quality over quantity what we want?

      Ryu has been getting ace-like results for his last 135 innings. After coming back in the second half of the 2018 season he has been pitching to a 1.87 ERA with a FIP of 2.89 over 134.2 innings. Moving the inning’s threshold to 130 over the last two seasons he has the 7th best FIP right below Gerrit Cole and right above Blake Snell and has the best ERA over that stretch. Yes, everyone around him has thrown many more innings and I had to drop the innings threshold to get him in there, but when he’s been on the bump Ryu has been an absolute stud, and this year he’s taking the rock every 5th game and giving the Dodgers at least 6 innings.

      Taking players’ current pace and multiplying it out to a full season is relatively useless, but it is fun, and isn’t baseball all about having fun? So let us have some fun with Hyun-Jin Ryu the Korean Brick Shit-House. Ryu is averaging about 6.2 innings per start. Over the course of 32 starts that would get him to 208 innings and a new career high! Here’s a hypothetical high-five for Hyun! With his current WAR total of 1.5, he would be sitting at about 6 WAR for the season, which easily eclipses his career high of 4.1 from the 2014 season. It’s never a bad idea to pair a contract season with a career year is what my grandmother always use to tell me. He has only walked 3 guys this season and struck out 54, again, prorated out, that would give him something in the neighborhood of 12 BB’s and 216 K’s which would again be career bests. In fact, that would be fewer walks than he had all of last season in only 82.1 innings. So is any of this possible?

      The short answer is no. Ryu has not been a model of health in his career so banking on him remaining healthy is low, but is banking on him dealing every 5th time so crazy? I say it is actually incredibly likely. Ryu has been lucky with a .230 BABIP but he has also given up more home runs than one would expect with a 16.7% HR/FB this season. If those two numbers drift towards his career norms the increase in hits will be slightly offset by the decrease in dingers, which is currently the preferred method of scoring runs these days. As good as his FIP has been this season his xFIP has been better and while baseball savant has his current wOBA at .226 (top 7% of the league) his xwOBA is only .266, which puts him 13th in all of baseball for pitchers who have pitched at least 100 PA (starters). While Ryu has definitely been lucky allowing a .189 batting average, his statcast data indicates he should be allowing a .229 batting average. Factoring in his current 1.6% walk rate, Ryu, has been turning Major League hitters into Major League pitchers at the plate.

      The final piece to the puzzle for Ryu is his new avoidance of the dreaded BB. Over the last two seasons, and the 130 inning threshold, no starter has had a lower walk rate. His 1.2 BB/9 are tops in baseball as is his BB% of 3.5%. Now his BB% only has a .3% lead over Miles Mikolas, but he does sport over a 10% lead in K%. This season he has upped first-pitch strike rate to 63%, but even if that regresses, he sported 4.6% BB% last season with only a 58.6% first-pitch strike rate. Really the only area where there is some concern for Ryu is that his K% is not elite-elite. He is only 17th over the last two seasons for guys that have pitched at least 130 innings but is 8th over that period of time in K%-BB%. For real I am totally nitpicking because that is awesome.

      Hyun-Jin Ryu has been dealing over his last 23 starts. He has pitched like an ace and gotten lucky with his batted balls in play, which is the secret Cy Young formula. His FIP and xFIP over that period are almost identical. He has managed to walk fewer and fewer batters while striking more batters out. He is an ace, and now, probably, the ace of a pitching staff with Clayton Kershaw. He might not be the brick shit-house the Dodgers deserve or really need, but he is the brick shit-house they have. Here is to a fully healthy season for a great pitcher that has finally earned his place in the spotlight.