Against a tough Pirates squad looking to fight their way back into the playoff picture, Tanner Roark turned in yet another impressive outing Saturday night. Although he couldn’t quite go the distance, he did turn in eight scoreless innings in the Nationals’ win. The Pirates struggled to even put together anything that could resemble a rally while Roark was on the mound. Pittsburgh can at least take some solace in the fact that they haven’t been the only team to struggle against Roark in 2016. He’s been on a tear since his first outing in 2016 and now holds an ERA under 3.00.
On the surface, Roark doesn’t look like a pitcher who should be putting up sub 3.00 ERA seasons. He doesn’t have a prospect pedigree. He spent time in independent ball and was merely a 25th round selection in the MLB draft. He never blew anyone away in the minor leagues, regularly posting ERAs over 4.00 at various stops in his career. He was a throw away piece in a trade to the Nationals. After an impressive 2014 season as a starter, even the Nationals didn’t regard him highly enough to keep in the rotation, bumping him to the bullpen to make room for Max Scherzer in 2015.
Despite all that, here we find ourselves in mid-July and Roark is keeping pace with some of the best arms in baseball. On the surface, nothing about Roark stands out. He strikes out batters at a 21% clip, nearly identical to the league average rate. He walks opposing hitters 7% of the time, spot on with the average big league starter. But Roark has been one of the biggest over performers of the season and has an ERA far below the league average 4.37. What gives?
Thanks to the wonderful world of Statcast, I think we have an answer. While Roark doesn’t have an overpowering fastball like Max Scherzer or killer off speed pitches like Stephen Strasburg, he is elite at limiting hard hit balls. In fact, he is just as good as Scherzer or Strasburg at limiting contact and falls in the 85th percentile of starters for average batted ball speed allowed according to BaseballSavant.com. His 87.8 MPH average allowed puts him in the same company as Scherzer, Strasburg, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, and Cole Hamels. He’s been better this year than luminaries like David Price, Madison Bumgarner and Julio Teheran. Roark induces a ton of weak contact and it’s hard for opposing teams to put runs up on the board if they can’t square anything up.
While Roark doesn’t have one world beating pitch, all four of his offerings are effective at limiting good contact. When batters put a ball in play off of Roark’s sinker or slider, it’s a ground ball over 50% of the time. When it’s off of his curve, that rate jumps to nearly 65%. His changeup is the least effective of the group but still results in ground balls over 45% of the time. Put it all together and Roark induces groundballs against 52% of opposing batters. That’s miles ahead of the league average and good for the 24th highest ground ball rate in the majors among starting pitchers. Pitchers love groundballs because to produce runs off of ground balls, opposing teams must string together multiple hits in a row and pray not to hit into a double play. When Roark is on the mound, odds are most hitters will be hitting a ball weakly on the ground and that’s been the key to his success.
No one is ready to call Roark an elite level pitcher, he doesn’t have nearly the track record for that. But this year is no fluke because Roark is elite at limiting hard contact. It’s not fancy, it’s not headline grabbing, but Roark has a skill that gets big time results in the majors. It’s time to start giving him his due.
Tags: Nationals, Nats, Tanner Roark, Washington Nationals
Leave a Reply