When the Cincinnati Reds traded Johnny Cueto to the Kansas City Royals for three pitchers earlier this season it was John Lamb who was generally acknowledged to be the third piece of the group. Lamb was the oldest of the group that came over in the trade and he was the first to reach the big leagues with the Reds, making his big league debut on August 14th.
In his four starts he has posted a 5.24 ERA in 22.1 innings pitched and opposing hitters have hit .310/.351/.529 against him with four home runs and seven doubles. The ERA and the line against him are clearly things that must improve moving forward.
There are some good signs within the stats though. First, his batting average on balls in play against is sitting at an incredibly high .418. Unless we believe that he’s not a Major League caliber pitcher, that number is surely going to drop. Of the 253 pitchers in 2015 with at least 50 innings pitched, the highest BABIP against is .365. The league average BABIP is currently sitting at .296.
So, the question is: Is John Lamb a Major League caliber pitcher? It’s only four starts, but the overwhelming evidence suggests that he is. He’s walked five batters and has 29 strikeouts in 22.1 innings. While it’s highly unlikely that he continues to have such a high strikeout rate, which is sitting at 30.2% (which would rank 4th among all starting pitchers if he had enough innings to qualify) on the season.
Pitchers that have the kind of stuff to miss bats at that level in the big leagues, even in a small sample size, are Major League caliber pitchers. So we should expect his BABIP against to drop rather significantly moving forward. His advanced ERA predictors all suggest significant improvements with his SIERA and xFIP both under 3.00.
The batted ball breakdown against him is rather interesting to look at in the early part of his career.
| GB | FB | LD | IFFB |
| 31% | 40% | 29% | 17% |
The two things that really jump out from those numbers is the high rate of line drives and the high rate of infield fly balls. The league average line drive rate is 21% and the infield fly ball rate is 9%. A high line drive rate isn’t good, but a high infield fly ball rate is as they turn into outs over 99% of the time. With just four starts under his belt and a lot of strikeouts mixed in, the sample size is too small to really put much into the current rates moving forward. The odds are that both the line drive rate and infield fly ball rate will fall and the groundball and fly ball rate will rise a little bit.
With all of the new technology in baseball we are able to get our hands on some data that we used to only be able to dream about. My favorite part of the new data is the exit velocity on batted balls. We know that there’s a strong correlation to how hard the ball is hit to how often the ball goes for a hit.
ICYMI, Here’s a statistical breakdown of exit velocity by MPH range. pic.twitter.com/V5rFrCanx4
— Daren Willman (@darenw) August 22, 2015
The average exit velocity in the Major Leagues this season is 88.4 MPH. John Lamb currently sits at 84.2 MPH on his exit velocity. This is a very small sample size, but for pitchers with at least 40 data points to look at that ranks 17th lowest out of 454 pitchers.
Batters are not making solid contact against John Lamb, yet they are getting an incredibly high rate of hits against him. The left hander is missing a lot of bats, he’s avoiding walking batters and he’s inducing weak contact. Those are all signs of future success. For now, the Reds rookie pitcher is still dealing with the small sample size, but if he’s able to continue with what he’s been doing, all of the signs point to a very strong rebound moving forward.