Gio González Has Become an Escape Artist
With Matt Wieters behind the plate, Gio has become an elite pitcher in tough situations.
Gio González has had an excellent and surprising first half of the 2017 season. Through half his starts this year, Gio owns a 2.77 ERA, good for sixth in all of baseball among starting pitchers, and the lowest mark of his nine year major league career. He is on pace to throw a career high number of innings (107.1 right now, a pace of nearly 215 innings) and is holding opponents to his lowest BABIP (batting average on balls in play) ever. He is also set to surpass his career high in strikeouts, with 104 thus far and 208 projected for the end of the season.
Yet, González has a FIP of 4.18, and has been worth just 1.5 wins above replacement. He looks very much like Alex Cobb, whose 107.2 innings and 4.21 FIP are good for a slightly worse fWAR of 1.3. Cobb’s ERA however, is 4.01, while Gio’s ERA is 2.77.
FanGraphs uses FIP instead of ERA to calculate pitcher fWAR (though it is adjusted slightly to include soft contact) which shows why his fWAR is low despite an excellent ERA. It’s worth noting Baseball Reference uses RA/9 in lieu of FIP to calculate bWAR, and Gio ranks fourth in baseball with 3.60.
It’s very clear Gio has been over-performing this year. His ERA looks like a top of the rotation starter, while his fWAR and FIP say otherwise. In fact, his ERA is 1.41 points lower than his FIP, the fourth-highest difference of any pitcher this year, indicating regression might be coming.
Casey Boguslaw’s Barrel FIP is very close to FanGraphs’ regular FIP as well, though in the last 30 days Gio’s BFIP has dropped to 2.87, and he’s been allowing barrels at a lower rate than anyone on the staff over the last month. So while overall this season he’s been over-performing, in the last month his expected stats and his ERA have started to line up.
When looking at Gio González this year, many of his peripheral stats look pretty much the same as usual. His K/9 is up a tick from last year, but his BB/9 has jumped up almost a full point from last year. His K-BB percent is the worst it’s been since 2011, and he’s allowing home runs at the highest rate of his career since his rookie season. Compared to last year, he’s walking more batters, striking out fewer, giving up more home runs, and yet his ERA is 1.80 points lower.
So what’s he doing different this year? The difference this year is who is doing the catching behind the plate for González. While framing and catcher defensive metrics rank Matt Wieters poorly, there are no stats (yet) that describe the impact a catcher has on his pitcher’s psyche and the catcher’s ability to call a good game.
Gio has always been known in the Nationals fan base as a wild pitcher. He would typically be cruising in an outing until a runner got on base, then sometimes he would fly off the rails and surrender runs, and a lot of them. His splits with runners on seem to indicate this quite well.
In 2016, with runners on base Gio had an ERA of 8.88, and with runners in scoring position he had an ERA of 18.34. Opponents were batting .280 with runners on and .320 with RISP, and his WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) was 1.36 with at least one runner on and 1.84 with runners on second or third. Needless to say, if a runner reached, there was a good chance he would score.
This year however, things have changed dramatically. His ERA with RISP is down to 5.19, and opponents are batting just .110, which is lower than all but five pitchers and the lowest among starters. His wOBA is again lowest among starters, so is his OBP, and his WHIP as well. Just two starting pitchers have lower SLG against with runners in scoring position than Gio, and one of them is Clayton Kershaw. González also has the sixth most innings pitched in these situations, with 26 IP. All year he has allowed just nine hits with RISP, fifth fewest among starters.
Between 2016 and 2017, his problems with runners on (specifically runners in scoring position) disappeared. Opponents AVG was cut in half, same with OBP and opponent’s SLG is .300 lower this year. Gio has opponents increasing soft and medium contact percentages in these situations, and opponents hard contact percent has fallen more than ten percent. He is getting weaker contact and lowering hard contact at the same time. He is striking out ten percent more batters than last year with RISP, and only walking one percent extra. In the blink of an eye, Gio went from one of the worst pitchers in these situations to almost unhittable.
Matt Wieters is known for his ability to work with pitchers extremely well, and he reviews enormous amounts of film in preparation for his pitcher’s starts. He says he usually watches the past three or four starts for the pitcher he is catching that day. When Gio has the ability to trust what his catcher is calling, he doesn’t have to doubt the pitch and instead can focus on delivering a strike.
I just want pitchers to be able to be comfortable to where they feel like they can shake, at the same time if they don’t really want to shake then I’ve put in the work that they know they can lean on.
— Matt Wieters on Between Innings with Dan Kolko
When Gio is able to trust his catcher, and trust that he has put in the work to call the right pitches to the right hitters at the right time, Gio can focus on pitching, and his stats with runners on show a huge difference. Not only is Wieters able to call the right pitches, he is able to calm Gio down before he goes off the rails.
Gio’s success with RISP seems unsustainable, at least for a starting pitcher. Eventually whatever has changed, whether it is Wieters or just dumb luck, is bound to regress at least partially.
Nonetheless, Nationals fans should be encouraged by his progress in the right direction this year. If he remains even close to the numbers with runners on that he has right now, he may very well become the middle of the rotation starter that everyone hoped he might be.
